The last two decades have seen a vigorous revival in the political and social movements of Islamic inspiration… The movements aiming at cultural eman… - Nawal El Saadawi

When I travel in the Arab countries, I notice that the TV screen often shows two contradictory images one after the other. A religious man talking about the need to veil women appears on the TV screen, and immediately following is a half-naked woman or belly dancer advertising some makeup or perfume. Girls and women in our countries are torn between these images. According to the moral and religious system, they are supposed to be veiled, but they are also supposed to be exposed and naked (fashionable, feminine, beautiful) in order to conform to the media advertisements and the global culture.

The solution can only come from us, from the people who were beaten by the system. But we were beaten because we were not organised, not powerful. All of the demonstrations, against the Iraq war, at Davos, against the Israeli attack on Gaza: why didn't we win? I have to answer that it is because young people are not organised; they don't represent a political power.

Yet not for a single moment did I have any doubts about my own integrity and honour as a woman. I knew that my profession had been invented by men, and that men were in control of both our worlds, the one on earth, and the one in heaven. That men force women to sell their bodies at a price, and that the lowest paid body is that of a wife. All women are prostitutes of one kind or another.