Negar Azimi has an interesting article about gay rights (or lack thereof) in Egypt in the NYT Magazine. I remember at the time of the Queen Boat arrests being on the periphery of some of the debates in the human rights community whether to take on the case of not — I was advocating being as aggressive on this as any other issue that involves unlawful arrest and police brutality, and pushed for giving decent coverage of the case in the Cairo Times at the time, going against the judgement of its publisher, Hisham Kassem, who was (and still is) the president of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. While I could understand some of the reluctance human rights activists, already tarnished as fifth columnists, had in giving their support to this case, I thought they should on a purely technical basis — i.e. as defenders of human rights, not defenders of gay rights.
Those Egyptian human rights activists who decided to avoid the case received a lot of flak from major Western donor organizations, while those who took it on found that certain embassies and rights groups were now keen to donate funds for projects. It is understandable that some people will see this as a form of Western pressure, thus reinforcing the fifth columnist image of the human rights community. But I wonder how people would see a similar case today — after 9/11, after MEPI, after the rise of the whole clash of civilization discourse on both sides of the Mediterranean. Would it make them more or less likely to take on a case like the Queen Boat? This is an excellent case to test the impact of the mostly Western funding of human rights groups in the Arab world and its relationship to “cultural politics.”
The editorial stance at the CT on homosexual rights left much, make that everything, to be desired.
It got worse over time, actually.
Rights shopping – the idea that you can pick and choose the rights that you want, and discard those of people you don’t like. The distinction between defending human rights and just kind of jockeying for a better deal for your own group is all too often blurred.
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Great piece by Negar. I don’t know that I agree with all her characterizations, but at least she has shown Mustafa Bakri for the sensationalist opportunist that he is.
The silver liing is that events like the Queen Boat and even discussions such as this in the public domain go a long way toward combatting bigotry and hypocrisy which is rampant not only in Egypt, but also in the US…. It would appear to be a by-product of social life in various shades of grey.
I would love to see a piece detailing the growing dichotomy between the haves and have-nots in Egypt…. maybe I will take it up on Just Dahlia.
Cheers
Dahlia
I thought it was quite interesting. I am going to be reveiwing The Yacoubian Building (the book) soon, so it is nice to have a little bit of background. I briefly followed the boat affair while working for TV news but lost sight of it forawhile, Very interesting, FYI, Parvez Sharma and the producer (Sandy something) of Trembling Before G-d are showing a work-in-progress version of their doc, In the Name of Allah, on being Gay in the Arab and Muslim World.
Parvez has been working on this thing for years! I remember convincing him not to go to Saudi…
I know, but they finally some kind of rough cut together and are making the rounds- it may be partially to pick up another round of funding but I’m not sure. If it is anything like Trembling Before G-d- it should be really good.
Interesting that she does not quote or make any reference to Joseph Massad’s polemical article on the topic, “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World” ( published in Public Culture), although reading Negar’s piece, I am quite positive she must be familiar with it.
When she says lisbians have not been subject to the same kind of attacks that men have been in Egypt, “because of their relative invisibility,” is she talking about the “invisibility” of women (I take issue with that), or the “invisibility” of lesbians?
As is often the case even in the US, attacks on homosexuals is a convenient way to distract people from the real issues at hand, in Egypt’s case, government corruption, lack of transparency and accountability, poverty, etc, etc.
I think the facts she brings out here is good. Her analysis is rather weak, particularly the conclusions concerning HRW. And they are absolutely not new–human rights groups have been discussing these issues for at least a decade. One example is the debate around sati in India.
Also, there are several mistakes.
Amr Khaled is the lay preacher, not Ahmed Khaled.
Yusuf Qaradawi is not the host of Shariah wal Haya, he is just a frequent guest.
She also obviously does not know Arabic, despite the rather awkward aside that one of her interviews mentioned something “in Arabic.”
What does the sati debate have to do with this?
Well, as in the case of the sat in India, there was debate amongst human rights groups as to how to advocate for the end of the practice, FGM is another example.
MM – given that the anti-sati movement took place largely in the latter half of the 19th century and was spearheaded by religious reformists + brits, I don’t know that it can be compared in a contemporary setting. Unless you are referring to the Roop Kanwar case in the 80s.
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