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For almost half a
century, the Arab pride was in deep slumber. It was awakened by a
woman’s slap in a small Tunisian town of Sidi Buziz. A woman’s
slap in fact ignited a revolution which we call today the Arab
spring. No wonder then, if a woman from Yemen, Tawwakul Kirman was
honored with a noble prize; for the Arab spring is essentially a
woman movement in which the Arab women have played a leading role.
Woman has always been
good for revolution. In the Arab world they have a history of
fighting along with their male counterparts against colonial
rulers. That is why when Benghazi fell to the revolutionaries
people discovered that an underground women organization
Mukhtar’s nieces sprang to give logistic and organizational
support to the revolution. The more deeply we dig and try to
understand the phenomenon we find that those who led and commanded
the movement in Tunissia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain were
women activists who had a natural talent and skill to social media
tools.
For example, take the
case of Tunis. Buazizi’s death might have gone unnoticed had there
been no Lina Mhenni, the blogger whose efforts brought some five
thousand men and women to the funeral procession of Buazizi. Soon
the unrest spread to other cities and Bin Ali had to leave.
The same happened in
Egypt when a young woman Asma Mahfooz uploaded a short video on
YouTube and face book invoking the Arab man’s sleeping pride. She
announced, “Whoever says women shouldn’t go to protests because
they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come
with me on January 25th.” Mahfooz appealed the
Egyptians to honor four young men who, following the example of
Mohammad Buazizi, had set themselves afire. The video proved to be
a wakeup call bringing tens of thousands of people to Tahrir
Square on January 25th, thus causing a popular
revolution.
In Libya, things went
out of hand and the unrest turned into a revolution only when a
woman protestor Iman al-Ubaidi broke into a government press
conference in Tripoli to charge that Ghddafi’s troops had detained
her at the check point and then raped her. The incident provoked
popular anger causing an unending protest till the regime fell. In
Yemen, we all know well that the first protest against the regime
in which some 2,500 people participated was led by Tawwakul Kirman,
a woman journalist and now also a recipient of the Noble for
peace. It was she who invented the popular chant “Ali! Ali! Join
your friend Bin Ali”.
In Bahrain, women
were literally on the forefront receiving bullets in Pearl Square.
In the early days of revolution when men were afraid of the regime
it were women in black chador and abaya who thronged to the Pearl
Square with make-shift tents. In the process Zainab al Khawaja
became an icon of resistance. Imagine, in the early two months of
revolution over 100 women were arrested and some of them even
disappeared. This is a huge number in the tiny kingdom of Bahrain.
Dear friends! Now let
me tell you a secret. If the Arab spring is a success and is still
a phenomenon to reckon with, it is because of women. How? Let me
explain. The woman brought with her some space for revolution and
revolutionaries. The presence of women demanded that some space be
created for them to lie down, take rest, and more so, to have a
functional command centre. This space was instrumental in bringing
the regime to fall. It was symbolic, as well as, crucial
for the revolution to survive. Later, when the Arab spring
inspired victims of capitalism in America and a movement called
‘Occupy the Wall Street’ started in New York, it realized the
symbolic and pragmatic significance of the tent. The system too,
realized how dangerous it was to have women and the tents in any
demonstration. Eventually, the park was vacated by force.
In the Arab world, as
elsewhere, the enemies of revolution are trying hard to get the
women and tent out. Because woman is perceived as the agent of
change and tent as the natural command centre, and to some extent,
also the space for survival and comfort for the revolutionaries.
The rulers in the Arab-world know it well that once women are off
to kitchen, the revolution will lose its vigor. Ali Abdullah Saleh,
never known for his Islamic credentials, asked the Yemeni people
that they should not let their women intermingle with men in
public demonstrations. This is against our values, he retorted.
In Egypt, to weaken
the revolution the military regime brought a bunch of salafis who,
turned the main revolutionary slogan into an anti-woman campaign.
Instead of keeping the pitch high of الشعب يريد
إسقاط النظام
they started chanting: الشعب يريد اسقاط النساء.
This is a dangerous move. When oppressive rulers had their day,
they gave us the impression that they were working for women
libration.
Now, this time, it is the same issue of woman-honor and its
protection that are being raised by the regime. As long as men and
women work together, as enshrined in the Quran
أَوْلِيَاءُ بَعْضٍ وَالْمُؤْمِنُونَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتُ بَعْضُهُمْ ,
the Arab spring will thrive, but, if women are forced to go back
to kitchen, God forbidding, I’m afraid, it would turn into an
Arab-winter.
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