Muslim Brotherhood Rapes for Revenge

Sisi visits a 19-year-old who was gang raped during his inauguration

Rape in Egypt: The Muslim Brotherhood 'Gets Even' -Raymond Ibrahim

Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers recently went on a sexual assault and rape spree in Egypt as a way of "getting even" with those women who dared to celebrate the presidential victory of Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi—the former army chief who overthrew Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt.

On June 8, when tens of thousands of Egyptians congregated in Tahrir Square to celebrate Sisi's inauguration, dozens of women were sexually assaulted and many more harassed.

One 19-year-old female student [pictured above] was especially brutalized—and videotaped as she was stripped and sexually assaulted by a throng of men. (I saw the graphic video on YouTube, though it has since been removed; a much less graphic clip of the initial assault appears here.) A gun-waving police officer eventually managed to rescue the woman from her ordeal, though after sustaining injuries himself.

Sexually harassing or raping those supportive of Sisi by way of "retribution" is not uncommon in Egypt. Earlier, a six-year-old boy was raped by a Muslim Brotherhood member who was "angered" at the child for singing praises to Sisi. He lured the boy into a shed, locked the doors, and proceeded to rape him, while saying, "You're always holding pictures of this Sisi and singing his praises. Come, I'll humiliate and break you—and your Sisi."

[U]sing sexual harassment and rape to force people to comply with Islamist agendas has a long history, especially in Egypt. In 2011, during the "Arab Spring," when the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists were released from prison, legitimized and eventually rose to power, sexual harassment skyrocketed, as one graph showed. Moreover, UN research done in 2013, when Morsi was president, suggested that 99.3% of Egyptian women had experienced sexual harassment.

Indeed, in February, 2013, hundreds of Egyptian women took to the streets of Tahrir Square to protest this nonstop harassment. They held slogans like "Silence is unacceptable, my anger will be heard," and "A safe square for all; Down with sexual harassment." "Marchers also shouted chants against President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails," wrote Al Ahram Online.
The response was more sexual harassment and rapes. One woman was gang-raped for approximately 20 minutes and nearly died. And as Hala Sarhan pointed out, elements from the then Islamist-heavy government under Morsi blamed the women themselves...

The only silver lining in this cloud of Islamist rape that hovers over Egypt is that the differences between Morsi and his Brotherhood government, and Sisi and the post-Brotherhood government, are already apparent. In response to the endemic sexual harassment in Egypt, the new government passed a law criminalizing all forms of sexual harassment…
[Middle East Forum]
*