Unveiled Syrian Facebook post stirs women's rights debate

[Cherokee]

Among the dozens of Facebook groups spawned by the Syrian uprising, a page supporting women's rights has suddenly received a wave of attention, because of an image posted there by one of its followers. The picture was of 21-year-old Dana Bakdounis, without the veil she had grown up wearing - and it polarised opinion.

Dana Bakdounis has been brought up in conservative Saudi Arabia, but it was as a reaction against conformity that she first removed her veil in August 2011.

"The veil did not suit me, but I had to wear it because of my family, and the society," she says.

"I did not understand why my hair was covered. I wanted to feel the beauty of the world… I wanted to feel the sun and air."

By then, she was already following The Uprising of Women in the Arab World page on Facebook.

With nearly 70,000 members, it has become a forum for debate on women's rights and gender roles in the Arab world. Women, and men, from non-Arab backgrounds also comment on its photos.

On 21 October, Dana decided to do something for the page, and for oppressed women and girls around the Arab world by posting a photo of herself.

Looking right into the lens, her short-shorn hair in full view, she held an ID picture of her previously veiled self, along with a note that read: "The first thing I felt when I took off my veil" and "I'm with the uprising of women in the Arab world because, for 20 years, I wasn't allowed to feel the wind in my hair and [on] my body".

The image proved hugely controversial, attracting over 1,600 likes, nearly 600 shares, and more than 250 comments.

Dana has received much support, and while many of her friends have un-friended her, many more have sent friend requests.

Some previously veiled women have even posted copycat pictures in support, and the Twitter hashtag #WindtoDana has been created as a channel through which to express solidarity.
'Brave girl'

She has also received hundreds of messages of derision, along with threats.

Her mother, with whom relations have cooled because of her disapproval of her daughter's actions, received a death threat against Dana's life.
Dana taking part in a protest in Cairo Dana has protested in both the real and virtual worlds

"Everything has changed for me since I took my veil off," says Dana.

The debate is growing more nuanced. One woman comments that opposition to the veil is misplaced, saying instead "our fight should be for equality in society… that's what we should be fighting for; when a veiled woman is refused a job because she covers! Take pride in your veil women, it's a blessing!"

For Dana's part, she is pleased to have provided a source of optimism for many of her religious, veil-wearing friends, and strangers alike.

"I was so happy when I received lots of messages from girls wearing the veil. They showed their support for me, saying 'we respect what you did, you're a brave girl, we want to do the same but we do not have the audacity'. I even received messages from old women."

Causing almost a bigger stir as the image itself has been what many perceived as a heavy-handed and censorial reaction by Facebook to the picture.

The administrators of the Facebook page have vocally claimed, both through the page and in local and international press, that Facebook administrators removed Dana's photograph on 25 October, four days after its original posting, blocking Dana, along with the accounts of the administrators of The Uprising of Women in the Arab World page.

They also alleged that copies of the photo reposted by supporters of Dana were also removed, and that the group's entire account was blocked between 29 October and 5 November.

Facebook, when asked to comment, were at pains to make the point that the issue was never the cause that the page itself is supporting, but merely a couple of mistaken enforcements of their rules.

A member of their PR team explains: "The images of the woman were not in violation of our terms. Instead, a mistake was made in the process of responding to a report on controversial content", going on to say that "what made this situation worse is that we made multiple mistakes over a number of days, and it took time to rectify each of these missteps."

Mistakes aside, the allegations alone have raised interesting questions about the non-formalised and seemingly omnipotent role that one of the best-known social media channels plays in this process of intense regional change and upheaval.
Online nexus

But it will take more than threats and barriers to stop 21-year-old Bakdounis.

"I want to take another picture, but from inside Syria, just to show that I could be a fighter against injustice and power. With my camera, I can help the people and support the Free Syrian Army."
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

I want justice because I already have my freedom, and I'm not afraid of anything now, now I can do whatever I believe it is right to do”

Dana Bakdounis

Increasingly, reports from inside Syria highlight the presence of fundamentalist Islamist factions within the anti-regime movement, hijacking the struggle.

With the influx of these non-Syrian ****** fighters, there are growing fears for the future of women's rights in the nation and the region.

Dana and those like her want to see a new Syria.

"[A Syria] full of rights, with justice between men and women. I want justice because I already have my freedom, and I'm not afraid of anything now, now I can do whatever I believe it is right to do."

Dana is just one of the women who are making their voices heard despite the uproar.

She and others like her are expressing a feeling of newfound liberation, some are de-veiling, and many are engaging in a global debate about women's rights, forming a brave and vocal online nexus to a region that is often, at least in the West, synonymous with extremism and female submission.

This is the Page on Facebook for anyone interested : https://www.facebook.com/intifadat.almar2a?ref=ts&fref=ts

 

[Cherokee]

 

[Al Bhatti]

And most of the friends request and replies will be from the opposite gender

 

[Cherokee]

And most of the friends request and replies will be from the opposite gender

You Should Read the Page Before Judging . You will Find most comments by women .

 

[Cloakedvessel]

Die Revolution sind wir! - Nachrichten Print - WELT AM SONNTAG - Politik (Print WAMS) - DIE WELT

Translation:

We are the Revolution!

Disappointed with the Arab Spring, women go on the offensive. Using Facebook to organize their resistance.

I support the uprising of women in the Arab world, because I'm 16 and was sexually harassed, since I was twelve. I feel like I lost a part of my innocence just because I'm a girl in the Arab world, "It's on a piece of paper that holds a girl in front of him -. Their face makes them uncovered, and its name is they award:.. Yara Essam Yara is one of around 1,000 women who published her portrait picture with a message of liberation on the Internet, on a specially created Facebook page "revolution of women in the Arab world", ie, the action ( www.facebook.com/intifadat.almar2a). Since the beginning of October, the site has more than 67,000 "friends" won in the world, "but most of the supporters are from Arab countries," said co-initiator of the Diala Haidar Lebanon. Actually, there is the "rebellion" for almost a year, but only now lifts the thing off properly, since the five combatants inside for freedom who have thought up the cause, launched a campaign on Facebook and Twitter.

The self-portraits on the page range from poignant to clever. "I am for the uprising of women in the Arab world, because women's sexuality is still taboo, but sexism, rape and pedophilia as normal," is on the list of Marwa from Tunisia. Neama from Egypt writes: "I am for the uprising of women so that young girls are not married by their families and deprived of their childhood."

For the women of the region of the Arab Spring came as a great hope - but now it is an even bigger disappointment has become, says Haidar. You do not want to go so far as to say that women are the big losers in the events, but ". Of the three major demands of the movement - dignity, freedom and justice - is for us women not only been realized" From these, the once secular, liberal democracy movement a much more conservative, islamischere matter has become. Not that religion is crucial: "The oppression of women is a more general, cultural thing," said Haidar, and it is ultimately not a big difference if this was in a Muslim, Christian or secular environment.

How many women are deprived of their rights in the Arab world is, expressed in a cartoon that was linked on the Facebook page. A (disguised) asks a doctor since their much stronger veiled patient by name. "Mother of Ali", was the answer. Then the doctor: "No, no, I mean your name." The patient: "Daughter of Mosleh". The Doctor: "Listen, I need your name!" What the patient says, "Woman of Dschabber". The woman, the being without a name, without a reason to exist. Except the husband, children and the family That is what will overcome the five activists. On their side they celebrate small successes for "the cause", about an Egyptian court judgment against a grabber (sexual harassment of women in public is a real nuisance, especially in Cairo).

The comments from the participants and their views are as diverse and contradictory as the Arab world. Currently, on the occasion of the Israeli air strikes, there are patriotic, and for Gaza proägyptische tones, mixed with observations by other commentators over what that got to do with women's rights now. The organizers on Friday Posts were these lines: "The defense of one's country is the highest aspiration for freedom, freedom for women and societies, most of which were suppressed because of the occupation." This sounds a little like women would disenfranchised in Gaza primarily because Israel. In a statement to this newspaper, the organizers declared: "What we're saying, that the emancipation of women, and neither can be held under occupation is like under a dictatorship."

In general, the fault lines where the Arab Spring are laboring, to some extent also visible in the Facebook revolt of Arab women. It is not only secular and pro-Western: One should not change at all, will slip on the western path, "the would not be good," says one participant. As they may well feel the advice of a Western "friend" of the initiative called Johanna bay that encourages Arab women on the Facebook page, search for "sexual adventure" to emulate the men? It's not easy. "We are for the uprising of women in the Arab world, that creates in us a new Zenobia," reads together in a portrait of the same five women. Zenobia was an Arab "warrior queen" from the third century, which moved successfully to war against Rome.

The pursuit of Arab women for more freedom transcends but sensitive issues such as religion, nation, sexual adventurism or the evil Israel. It's all about human dignity and personal freedom. That sounds in messages like this, Farah Sedky from Libya, "İch am for the uprising of women in the Arab world, because my parents and brothers say that they trust me - but they do not want me to study abroad or there let go, or out with my friends can allow or that I have male friends, if I ask for freedom, it is as if I were to ask her to be a prostitute may "..

Of the five organizers of the action Rana Jarbou of Saudi Arabia is the last to have been added in October. It is, as many of the original pioneers of the Arab Spring, a product of the globalized world - learned in America, now lives in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. She is living the free life she calls for all. The former banker is to document social change in their world rocked by violent upheavals and is collecting graffiti for years, personally, but also by using friends and acquaintances in other countries. She wanted to publish this writing on the wall next change already, everything was prepared, since the outbreak of the Arab Spring. And suddenly there was so much different and new, developing so rapidly that they halted the project and dear once more collected. "Before that I had found almost never feminist graffiti, but she suddenly sprang up everywhere," says Jarbou. There's the woman's head in the form of a map of the Arab world, now the symbol of the uprising action, or already playing an iconic scene in Cairo, as a police woman's clothes off and rip it almost kill. Jarbou experimented on himself and documented it - about how it feels to be under the full veil. You can not communicate with others, she states - that's probably the point of the veil.

The Facebook page, it says, is only a beginning. "We're thinking about other forms and actions for," says Jarbou. At a Tahrir Square full of demonstrating feminists but you will have to wait, yet the initiative is probably too small for it. And the resistances encountered by the women, are probably greater than those of the military dictatorship to democracy movement. It's the whole social system of values. Values ​​that kill. "If you If you were my sister, I'd shoot you," said a visitor to the site from Yemen.

Other hurdles come rather unexpectedly. Facebook itself, the platform of action, put out the self-portrait of a Syrian woman named Dana Bakdounis without cause and detained temporarily for all five administrators access to the site. In the photo, the young woman is not veiled, to see with radically cropped hair and a challenging look and keeps her open pass in front of him, on the photo she is veiled. Provocative is perhaps in the Muslim world - but for Facebook censors? The five activists still do not understand why the picture -. It is now back online - was even deleted, much less why their Facebook accounts have been temporarily blocked "I got the explanation that I had with a status update of the rules violated," said Haidar. She had called only to support the "revolt" on Twitter. Maybe Facebook Twitter feels so than competition. As for the deleted photo, so Facebook had stated that they had to check first whether it really must see and Dana Bakdounis been uploaded by itself is. Millions of Facebook users, who represent themselves and their friends on Facebook, oddly, no similar problems.

While rushing to at least the impression that the creators have in Facebook no idea what significance the media today. Not for nothing that the Arab Spring was also called Facebook revolution. Perhaps with the revolt of women is at the next revolution. And on Facebook to any unsuspecting managers lose in petty interpretation of rules. But an idea whose time has come, no one can stop, neither Arab nor Munder Before grabber and Facebook. Loads of support is now available for men, and people from Western countries. The women of the Arab world are not alone.

 

[Umair Nawaz]

Another example of a Kamzoor Emaan or in this case i should say no Eman at all

 

[SHAMK9]

Good for them, hope they succeed

 

[Cherokee]

Another example of a Kamzoor Emaan or in this case i should say no Eman at all

yeah . You are the Mighty Judge appointed directly by Allah to judge people's Emaan .

 

[Cherokee]

Good for them, hope they succeed

When Women are hellbent upon something . They get it .

 

[Umair Nawaz]

yeah . You are the Mighty Judge appointed directly by Allah to judge people's Emaan .

Actions speak dude, you dont know abt islam we know as its our religion.

 

[Najam Khan]

A story to start a new chapter in Syria 'uprising of women'...ignorant people like these only see their Muslim brothers/sisters and criticize their religion instead of reading and giving more thought into the actual teachings of Islam. They should see the religion its teachings not its followers.

 

[SHAMK9]

Actions speak dude, you dont know abt islam we know as its our religion.

Islam doesn't give you the right to judge others by their beliefs either, what you said is absurd.

 

[JonAsad]

Lol- let the syrian women be naked all they want- Viva La Revolutione-

 

[Umair Nawaz]

Islam doesn't give you the right to judge others by their mean either, what you said is absurd.

How do u know??? what is written in Quran n hadith is wrong according to u??? if a person is not following the path of Allah n is even showing it as an achievement in fb, is obviously an example of low knowledge or awareness abt Islam or is an example of of low Eman or none at all.

As A Muslim by its defination means ''A person who submits his/her to the All Mighty.''