A Friday Restoring Dignity - A Week Disgracing Women

Another one of Egypt's long list of Friday protests went on last night.

Today, the smoke started to clear over Cairo's Moqattam after a "Friday of Restoring Dignity."

It's the culmination of week-long tension between thousands of anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters, the police and Brotherhood sympathizers around the group's headquarters. The biggest chunk of about 200 wounded people country-wide were from the Cairo protest.

Molotov cocktails, knives, rocks, branches. It was fiery and angry.



I didn't think I'd be getting into such a heavy topic this soon into my blog, but it's getting harder to pretend like things aren't failing all around us.

Morsi's Twitter account is quick to push the blame abroad, saying outside enemies "seek to break the unity of Egyptians." How much faith can you put in a government that won't take responsibility for all the damage they say they want to fix? Their failures are leading the country here - not foreigners.

When the UN proposed the unfortunately non-binding Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) declaration, the Brotherhood jumped into a defensive position. Last week, it full out rejected the proposal, 'End Violence Against Women.'

"That title...is misleading and deceptive," says their detailed official statement. "The document includes articles that contradict established principles of Islam, undermined Islamic ethics and destroy the family, the basic building block of society, according to the Egyptian Constitution."

It apparently would also cause the complete "disintegration of society," and be just another way the outside world can negatively influence the sanctity and moral principles the Islamic world is built on.

What horrible, destructive clauses are they referring to?

Sex education, allowing the reporting of and subsequent punishment of marital rape and harassment, ending Female Genital Mutilation, safe abortion policy, raising the legal age of marriage, and - the worst yet - realizing marriage is a partnership, not guardianship.

There are so many more the Brotherhood takes offense to, like "cancelling the need for a husband's consent in matters like: travel, work, or use of contraception."

They condemned it and hoped other countries would, too.

May we all not "be deceived with misleading calls to decadent modernization and paths of subversive immorality."

What frustrates me to this day - what I can't get past the memory of - are the many liberal men who sat in our living room before the presidential elections, trying to convince me why the conservative, Islamist choice that can in no legitimate way be associated with the idea of tolerance, the potential for educational progress, and the economic growth of this desperate country, was the only real choice...out of principle. They were the same men and women who made a choice that we all knew very well would lead to sexist decisions like this...out of principle. They were some of the same liberals and progressive thinkers who fought so hard and so passionately for the sake of our home's dying future.

They were the same who now are abused by a government who choses to continuously ignore calls for serious political concessions.

Egypt was handed over to this. So, Egypt has to fight back again, hoping there won't be that much more damage to try and fix later.

This is, and will continue to be, a savagely split country - and hope, like the almost useless Egyptian pound, drops and drops as we wait for something to finally go right.