Egypt’s Media Saves the Country While Burning it Down

BY NADA ISMAIL

“A British tourist says she was raped, but she was drinking and she mysteriously kept prolonging her vacation in Egypt. It really is a comedic matter,” said Naela Emara, host of the Hezb Al Kanaba talk show, last week.

Emara concluded her segment saying, “Egypt is the mother of the world, you just don’t understand.”

Emara was responding to the news report of a British woman who was raped on Sunday in her room in a five star hotel at the Red Sea Resort in Sharm El-Sheikh.

The 40-year-old said that the security guard who was escorting her to her room sexually assaulted her.

Emara joins Tamer Amin’s rhetoric of the sexual harassment incident that took place in Cairo University two weeks ago.

Amin said that the girl who was harassed was wearing “dancer’s” clothes and that she was going to campus for non-educational reasons. This justifies the actions of the poor, sexually deprived boys on campus who just couldn’t control themselves, he added.

Amin was explaining that factors behind the sexual harassment of a girl who was wearing black skinnies and a hot pink sweater.

The girl ran into the bathroom out of fear from the harasser but they followed her. She was luckily saved by campus security and escorted off campus.

If I continue to list anchors and journalists who share the same discourse regarding sexual harassment incidents and issues, I think I will take up the pages of this entire issue.

So I’ll just leave it at these disastrous two.

I will not defend the women or talk about the cultural sexual crisis we are in now, as I think these are givens.

What really bewilders me is why the media responds to sexual harassment and rape with such an attitude.

If we assume that they are trying to save face, then obviously it is backfiring. They claim that there is no sexual crisis in Egypt, they say Egypt’s men are perfectly well behaved and it is just the women that need to tweak their clothing the teeniest tiniest bit.

If they are so blatantly lying on air to show that Egypt is as developed and as safe as any other country, they merely highlight the corruption and lack of education that floods the country.

No developed country would blame the victim for being attacked and their attempt to do so shows the entire world the cultural backwardness we live in today.

If we take another approach and assume that the anchors really do believe what they are saying, it is an even bigger crisis.

If the country’s information gatekeepers and the people who most significantly influence the thoughts and beliefs of citizens hold such regressive attitudes towards the issue, then our sexual harassment epidemic should come as no surprise.

Even worse, these are supposedly part of the most educated and aware stratum of the community. So when they make such accusations, we cannot blame the truly uneducated and unaware for following in their footsteps.

I cannot fathom another reason for the attitudes of anchors and reporters towards the issue. If it is not propaganda and if it is not true ignorance, then what could it be? Were they all transported form the Dark Ages with a mysterious time machine or are they all mentally retarded?

Either way it is no excuse for spreading and encouraging such a backward attitude towards a truly serious issue.