Nobody really knows, but it probably can probably be rooted in Pre-Islamic middle east. Women in that society were considerably stronger, emotionally and mentally than other women of that time. (Do you think there would be female business women like Khadija now??… I dont think so). It has been postulated before that women would often initiate sex with their husbands and would have very satisfying sex lives, but this increase power in the bedroom could perhaps lead to increased power in society. Now this is merely my own speculation (but how it happened isnt really that important because its undeniable that women were more powerful sexually and mentally in pre-islamic middle east) but i think that in an attempt to lower women’s status in society and make them weak and subservient, the big players during Islam’s early days created rules, some of them added to the Quran perhaps and others said by scholars that became part of regular life for women and men….and thus we are now in the 21 century.

This has huge implications for Arabs and people in the middle east as it always has. This sex phobia has created a society of super horny 17 and 18 year olds that jump at the intital chance to get married to anybody just because they are dying to have sex. I have a female cousin (she hasnt told me that sex was the reason but its pretty obvious) who got married at 18 and then divorced a year later because she said the guy was an asshole. There are other women (and men) who went through the same thing. They hold of sex their whole life, dying to have physical contact of any kind with the opposite sex, they marry, have sex, and within 2 years they are divorced because they actually had the ability to think now that they werent superhorny anymore. Sexphobia also leads to an immense obession with sex. Yes..OBSESSION. These people are so sex deprived that they are looking for any excuse to talk about sex, usually ways to make it less noticable and more haram, but nonetheless, they are looking for any excuse to talk about sex. This is not the way to raise a healthy society, and it does not “honour” women, it degrades them by covering them up and making them afraid of men, it destroys their intellect since they are not taught to be independent at all and it leads to generations of 21 year olds who are already divorced and living in their parents’ flat.

I think I started reading psychology in the year 2000 when I was about 15 years old. Psychology helped me a lot in understanding motives and ways of thinking of others, so that was a great help to me in my political activism. Also, a book I read before, about psychology of militarists for Sigmund Freud,, helped me dealing with militarists in my struggle for peace and non-violence. My activism led me to jail, so I thought to use the wasted time here in making a field study doing some psychological analysis for criminals jailed with me. I’ll try to summarize my major notices, categorize them, even knowing that these information could have been written before by researchers on criminology and psychology, but I believe that adding a new field-study from a prison in Egypt, made by a prisoner could be of a positive value.
* Sample of study
- About 30 prisoners (drug dealers, thugs, robbers, killers)
All came by military trials

1- Denial
* Denial was the greatest psychopath. I saw here criminals are living in a parallel world, different from reality.
* Nearly, every prisoner believes that he is innocent, everyone denies his crime. For moments, I felt that I’m the only one made things against the law. Some people claim that they didn’t commit their crime, but police faked the case to harm them. Others don’t see anything wrong with their crimes; just as the drug dealer who says that there is nothing wrong in selling narcotics (even he knows that it causes harm). Also, the killer who sees that it was a normal reaction from him to kill the person who insulted him or tried to get close to one of his females.
* One of the prisoners usually says “I believe that God would stand with me, because I didn’t harm anybody ever in my life”… This man killed, injured, hostaged, was jailed in lots of countries for more than 25 years and was active in trading drugs in more than 5 countries, in Europe and Middle East!
* As being with a group came by military trials in a very exceptional time, this made us very interested to follow the political news. Everyone was hoping that a political change could happen, leading to canceling military trials and freeing them. They can’t accept the idea that they harmed innocent people and deserve to be punished and rehabilitated in jail to be good citizens… But, look at it from another view, I, myself, don’t believe that I’m guilty, I don’t believe that I made anything wrong and I intend to continue my activism when I be released!

2- Schizophrenia
* Denial leads to having two identities; real one outside the prison and the other identity is the innocent one inside the jail and in front of investigators.
* I noticed also that most of criminals have two or three names. It’s common in Egypt to have two names (without a noticeable cause for that), but criminals have lots of names for lots of purposes. They use this variety to run from investigations and trials (as an accusation to Mr. A doesn’t lead to accusing Mr. B, when the investigator doesn’t know that Mr. A is Mr. B). Having two names helps them to hide their crimes from their families or any other people they don’t want them to know about their crimes. Also, having two names helps them escape from police officers and secret service.
* The direct result of having two names is having two identities (personalities) and you can be surprised at any second of changing in manners of the man in front of you. He just switches between both of them or switch on and off the other identity he doesn’t want to show in jail.
* Practically, when you deal with them, you find some of them faithful, religious, courageous, slightly enlightened… etc. But, all of that can change in seconds to see a selfish bloody person, full of hatred.
* Prisoners are also pretending all the time; pretending being rich is a common thing here. Lots of prisoners here pretend to be millionaires, they act as if they are going to buy you and your family. By time, you discover that they are poor people. Even if you didn’t get information proving they aren’t rich as they claim, their way dealing with money and how they fight for small and cheap things, make you believe that those people can’t have the amount of money they claim.

3- Lying
* Prisoners lie just for lying. One of them says a piece of a poet every day (the same piece); a part of it says, “tell me about prisoners and their lies; tell me about lies which run in their views”… Also, this man claims that he never lies, even though he lies every second!
* Prisoners don’t lie for a logical cause, they are just used to giving wrong answers as a normal reflex. They also feel power in deceiving others. They keep telling opposite (contradicting) stories about their lives. They tell false names for their sons. They could even claim of being sons of families, other than their true families.
* Dealing with prisoners taught me that you should believe that he is lying until he proves the opposite. You can’t deal with them as if they are telling they truth.

4- Ego
* Prisoners have enlarged egos. I think that the ego is the cause of all crimes. The man who kills another man because of a couple of words, the ego forced him to kill. The same with stealers and rapists. Ego is the mother of all crimes.
* The criminal doesn’t understand the idea of having borders between him and others. He sees it’s normal to interfere in others’ lives, insult them, use them, make fun of them, on the other hand, he can’t accept being treated the same way.
* Criminals also don’t believe in private property. When he sees something he likes, he just goes on and takes it (without a permission from its owner) and he doesn’t see something wrong with this. That’s why stealers don’t see something wrong in taking others’ money.
* Ego of criminals also gives them the impression that they have the right to use others and use them as slaves. When he wants something, he just orders any weak prisoner to do it. You need to have also an enlarged psycho-pathetic ego to make them fear you, and so fear of treating you the same way.

5- Complicated relation with religion
* I think this could be part of the schizophrenic point, but it has notices which should be focused on.
* Criminals have very fantastic opinions. They don’t see that Bin Laden did anything wrong. They don’t respect Jews or Christians in general (even though they respected me, thinking I’m a Christian). They hare non-believers and atheists. They are ready to kill or injure anyone telling them a bad opinion about their religion.
At the same time, they don’t pray nor fast. Their crimes (killing, injuring, stealing) are banned in their religions and they don’t see anything wrong in committing them. They use narcotics everyday, even they believe it’s forbidden by God.
* Criminals also are superstitious. They believe that dreams are messages from God which will come true. They feel good or bad when they hear specific types of birds. They believe in ghosts. They also believe in lots of myths not related to Islam.

6- Self-hatred
* This gets on surface when he is weak. It becomes obvious that he hates his life, his principles, may be even himself.
* When someone emotionally close to him tells him bad news, talk to him hardly, he starts blaming everyone led him to that crime, takes decisions to stop making crimes when he is released. Deep inside, he wishes if he had a different (regular/normal) life. Maybe, the hard time we live here in jail is the cause which makes him hates his crimes.

7- Sex-phobia and homophobia
* I believe it’s normal to be a homosexual when you are forced to live years without seeing a female. But, even if it’s spontaneous and good for them, they are still homophobic. When they know about a gay prisoner, they start insulting and beating him.
* But, this behavior isn’t related only to homosexual behavior, they nearly do the same thing towards whoever they know that he masturbates or owns sexual pictures with him.
* Schizophrenically, they like to talk a lot about their sexual adventures, with stimulant sexual details!

8- Continuous making of troubles
* Life in jail is very boring. Some prisoners will have to spend in prison 20 years or more. Egyptian prisoners have nearly nothing which can help you spend time without being bored. That’s how prisoners discovered a new way to kill time: making troubles.
* One of the prisoners told me, “the prisoner is a son of a bitch, if you gave him a finger, he will take you all, he will step on your head”… He was describing how prisoners deal with each other inside jail.
* The advantage of making troubles is that it kills lots of time and it brings with it lots of positive and negative feelings. They need those feelings while they are isolated by speechless walls.
That’s why prisoners fight each other every moment, interfere in others’ privacy, deliberately understand every word as an insult to use it to begin a fight… etc.
* Prisoners don’t know how to spend time positively and prison management doesn’t try to teach them how to do that. They don’t like to read newspapers or books. They usually aren’t interested in continuing their study from within jail.
* Long boring time and the inability to use it pushes them to use narcotics continuously to kill time and drugs make them make more troubles, and the cycle goes on.

- Final general notices

• Being a prisoner myself, made it hard for me to focus more than this. I wish I could make larger and more detailed research.
• Also, I felt changes in my behavior inside jail. Some changes are good adaptation, others are bad changes, I’ll need to visit a psychiatrist to fix them. What I’m trying to say is that in prison, there is a behavioral state affecting anyone inside and each prisoner is forced to take reaction towards it.
• Legally, there should be a psychiatrist and a social professional in jail to help prisoners. I don’t know if they exist, but if they do, we are not in contact with them in an way. This way in prison management doesn’t fight crime, but produces new criminals to society.

Maikel Nabil Sanad
El-Marg prison
18-5-2011

The psychiatrist present in the show basically affirmed that those persons could “be cured.” In November 2010, a facebook page invited people to rally for an LGBT pride in Tunisia on June 28. A few months later, the event was cancelled after a number of cybercitizens expressed strong disapproval and created several opposed pages. It seems that homosexuals are not generally discriminated against in Tunisian society but how far is this true? What do young people think about LGBT individuals?

I wrote a survey in which I posed some of the questions I wondered what Tunisians thought about and conducted it with the help of a number of friends in the first week of December 2010 and then in the first week of May 2011. We asked 141 students in those universities which brought together young people from all social classes from all over the country to tick the answers that best correspond to their opinions: Higher Institute of Management (ISG). Higher School of Commercial and Economic Sciences (ESSEC), Institute of Literary Studies and Human Sciences of Tunis (IPELSHT), Higher Institute of Techonological Studies (ISET), Faculty of letters and arts, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Tunis (ENS), Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of Tunis (FSHST), Institute of Advanced Business Studies (IHEC) and Higher Institute of Social sciences of Tunis (ISSHT). We had interesting discussions with many of them. Students are aged from 18 to 25 and answered the French version of the following survey:

This Questionnaire is anonymous.
Age: ……………. Sex : ………….. University: ………………………

1) What do you think about homosexuality (or bisexuality)?
- It’s repugnant
- It’s immoral. I don’t accept it.
- It’s an illness, a behaviour problem.
- It’s abnormal but I accept
- I accept homosexuality but not bisexuality.
- It’s totally normal just like heterosexuality. I perfectly accept it.

2) Do you know any homosexuals?
- Yes.
- Yes, unfortunately.
- No
- No, fortunately!

3) You think that people
- Are born homosexual
- Become homosexual

4) Homosexuals are:
- Just like everyone else
- Different
- Sick
- Perverts
- People who have problems integrating into society
- People who want to distinguish themselves from others

5) You think homosexuals
- Feel good
- Don’t feel good but live with it
- Suffer from a certain malaise and want to change

6) Are you for marriage between homosexuals?
- Yes
- No

7) Are you for the adoption of children by a homosexual couple?
- Yes
- No

8 ) In your opinion, how should society react to homosexuals?
- Execute them. We must absolutely put an end to this plague
- They are sick. Society and the government must help them receive treatment and get over it
- Accept them the way they are
- Grant them all the civil rights that heterosexuals enjoy

9) In your opinion, Society is generally,
- Intolerant
- Indifferent
- Tolerant

10) Your sister/brother announces to you that she or he is a homosexual. How do you react?
- You put an end to your relationship
- It shocks you and you take some time to accept it
- You try to change her or his sexual orientation
- It bothers you a bit but you do as if you learnt nothing new. It’s her/his private life
- You perfectly accept it

11) Do you think that SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery or sex-change operation) should be facilitated for those who feel they belong to the opposite sex (transsexuals)?
- Yes
- No

12) Would you take part in an LGBT Pride in Tunisia?
- Yes
- No

13) Would you take part in an association whose goal is to defend homosexuals’ rights?
- Yes, I’d love to.
- Yes, why not.
- No, I don’t have time.
- No, I refuse

14) Does Islam condemn homosexuality?
- Yes
- NO
- Rather yes
- Rather no

15) You are rather
- Heterosexual
- Homosexual
- Bisexual

16) What if there are three genders (rather than two only: female and male)
- This is absurd
- That’s a weird idea
- I never thought about it
- This is interesting
- I totally agree
- I have always contested the classification of gender into two
- That has always been my opinion

Results:
Answers were really varied. A few of those who said they did not accept homosexuality said they accepted same-sex marriage. This probably means that they personally do not accept homosexuality and think it is morally wrong but do not mind or care whether homosexuals get married or not. Those who accepted adoption of children by homosexual couples did not always accept same-sex marriage. These students seem to think that homosexuals can provide children with a good and healthy upbringing just like everyone else but do not accept that homosexuality itself becomes recognized and tolerated in society. Others think that same-sex marriage is all right but that adoption of children by homosexuals leads the children to inevitably become homosexual themselves or have a behavioural trouble of any kind and think therfore that homosexuals should stay away from children or at least not be allowed to adopt children. Someone said that adoption can be allowed when the couple make sure children are also raised by someone else (a third person) who is heterosexual and from the opposite sex. A few people agreed with this idea. Some people refused the idea of becoming a member in an association for LGBT rights but said they would gladly take part in an LGBT pride or the contrary.

On 1st April 1979, Iran voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic, and to approve a new theocratic constitution, whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country in December 1979. The great Persian civilization has suspended. Hundred thousands of secular, liberal, and socialist Iranian families have fled westwards in the aftermath of theocratization of Iran.  This small family is one of them.

Socialist Persian Mother, socialist Azeri father, and liberal prodigal son. The mother and son, pictured above, speak openly with Mideast Youth about their own efforts to outreach their fellow Iranians within the borders, and outside it. In addition to glimpses from the past, and thoughts about the future.

Two generations who share the dreams, aspirations and homesickness, however use two different languages, literally and figuratively.

Shahla, the mother, a digital and native refugee, is active offline. Meanwhile Dennis, the son, perfectly extends his mother’s activism and takes it to the online world throughout using the modern technology in order to spread the word about his country. Dennis, who puts the Iranian flag on his Facebook profile picture, works as a human connector between the strangled social media hubs in his home country from one side, and the world’s renowned media outlets from the other. Despite the generation gap, they both share an implied opinion; “Iran is under theocratic dictatorship, and if we don’t participate in altering this reality, who will do it?!”

Mother’s dream: A socialist revolution. She’s very blunt about it. Even democracy isn’t on her A-list, maybe because Ahmadinejad claims that he’s democratically elected, but socialism is!

Son’s dream: To trace his blood routes, visit his family and friends, and wander in the streets of free Tehran. He definitely knows the whereabouts of the digital #Tehran well, but he wants to touch its walls, plays football, his favourite sport, on its grounds, and talks in his mother tongue with relatives who he has never been able to meet in the coldness of the Nordic Sweden. The Islamic Republic is older than Dennis with 13 years, but he’s quite sure that he’ll live longer than it.

Shahla Nouri, a prominent member of Organisation for Women’s Liberation (OWL) – Iran, speaks in this interview, through her son who finds himself a Persian-English interpreter, as well as an interviewee throughout this podcast, about her organisation, and how they help women refugees from Iran and Kurdistan in Stockholm, where they live and operate. They also fight what they call the “gender apartheid” between men and women in Iran, help homosexuals of Iran, and spread awareness about human trafficking through their satellite channel which is received by many Iranians through cables.

“The organisation runs a lot of campaigns to stop stoning and execution of Iranian women in their homeland.” – Shahla Nouri.

OWL – Iran cooperates with a lot of anonymous active organisations in Iran, whose names can’t be announced, otherwise, the life of those operating the organisations would be threatened.

Shahla is burdened by memories which date back to 32 years ago, when she was forced to flee Iran in 1979, alongside her Kurdish political activist husband, and never returned back home. The family who has fled Iran 32 years ago, until they settled in Sweden 7 years later, after wandering through many countries in between.

“I want to see my homeland after 32 years abroad.” – Shahla Nouri

OWL was launched on 14th December 2002 in London, upon direct response to the growing women’s movement in Iran for equality and liberation The contemporary history of women’s movement in Iran dates back to the 1979 uprising, when their struggle and aspirations for an equal and just society for all was crushed by the newly empowered Islamic Republic of Iran, which didn’t hesitate since then in showing their alter ego, especially against women.

“Women were the first social strata of the society to be suppressed by the Islamic regime. The imposition of Islamic laws, such as the compulsory veil, gender segregation in public places, negation of the right to divorce or custody of children for women, and the subsequent punishments for defying these laws, such as arrests, imprisonment, stoning and execution have all made life a hell for millions of women in Iran.” – OWL – Iran official website.

There’s a growing women’s movement to combat suppression and humiliation in Iran. Today, a lot of  Iranians are very vocal when it comes to freedom, equality, separation of religion from state, and an end to sexual apartheid, whether outside or inside the borders, however the latter population need a proxy and a creative pseudonym. OWL is overwhelmed with reform, and merged in this movement overseas.

“We regard political Islam as one of the main obstacles in the path of women’s movement for change, especially in the Middle Eastern countries.” – OWL – Iran.

The organisation’s founder and director is the prominent activist Azar Majedi, well-known for her freedom and equality efforts. I was honoured to read one of OWL‘s publications, and I was really amazed by Ms Azar’s deep analysis and insightful approaches.

Check out OWL’s official website here.

On the other side of the table, stays Dennis, the interpreter and the son, who has just finished his high school in Sweden, the country where he was born and raised for all his life.

Dennis, soon to turn 20 year old, has refused, prior to recording, to declare his full name, because that would put his family and extended family at risk.

Dennis, an Iranian-Swedish who has only navigated to his homeland through Google Earth, talks in this podcast about how he used social media in the 2009 presidential elections in Iran, and how he helped decrypting the social media news leaking from behind the Mullah-Firewall, and defusing them into the internationally recognized media outlets. Smuggled news were the world’s media headlines during the presidential campaign, however the state controlled propaganda strived to label the foreign news sources as conspirators and spies.

We can see through this family, how two different, yet united, generations, share an old struggle against an oppressive regime in their homeland by connecting the offline and online worlds together – Streetbook, as my English friend would like to call it.

The last question to both of them was about their future dreams. The emotional Shahla couldn’t help her tears, while uttering, “revolution!” But at the end, they both shared laughs while spelling their website domain on the Internet – an Iranian internal joke apparently.

Listen to this podcast with this small, yet strong, Iranian family, or download it now!

Check out our newest projects, Ahwaa, a safe and dogma-free space to debate LGBTQ-related issues in the MENA region!

“Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused.”

Let’s start by defining rape. What is rape? Rape is basically a sexual form of violence that involves sexual assault on another person, coercing them into engaging in acts of sex without their consent. In most cases, sexual offenders and rapists are male, with only rare cases of the sexual offender or rapist being a female.

So why do men rape women? Well, there’s no definite answer that could explain why but there are several reasons that I can basically think of, because there are a lot of factors involved in the act including the nature of the rapist himself, the victim and the setting in general; when and where it happened.

When rape can be sometimes impulsive, where some guy’s sexual urges reach a critical point beyond which he can consciously control; being lacking of discipline, thus giving in to his primal urges and attempting to rape the woman he’s been so prodigiously wanting, in order to achieve sexual gratification. Rape can also be an act with a purpose behind it.

How is that possible? Well… it is, as you will see in a bit.

Power rape, this is one form of rape where the man sexually assaults a woman not because of sexual urges primarily, but because rape to them is a way of compensating for their underlying feelings of inadequacy and incompetency. The act of rape itself feeds their issues of mastery, control, strength, authority and capability allowing them to think that they are able. A power rapist’s intention is to assert his competency and validate his masculinity, superiority and prowess as a male, not much brute force is used in that form of rape, it mostly relies on verbal threats and intimidation, with enough force to only subdue the victim. Usually this type of man fantasizes a lot about rape and has the belief that once they overpower the victim, that she starts to actually enjoy it, they basically NEED to believe that the victim enjoyed it.

However with this only being a fantasy, it does not really reassure the rapist of his adequacy, forcing him to find another woman to rape, and hence it becomes repetitive, leading to a series of rape incidents in a short period of time.

Anger rape, this is another form of rape where the purpose of rape is to humiliate and debase the woman. The rapist expresses contempt to the woman through the use of excessive physical violence and verbal profanity. For an anger rapist, sex is their weapon to degrade the woman, it is the ultimatum of their expression for their anger. Usually this form of rape is characterized by physical brutality, much more physical force is used during the assault than would be necessary if the intent were simply to overpower the victim and achieve penetration. He usually attacks their victim by grabbing, striking and knocking the victim to the ground, beating them, tearing their clothes, and raping them. He doesn’t have sexual conquest fantasies, he doesn’t need to know if the victim enjoyed it.

To him, rape is just his conscious expression of anger and rage. This is usually common with cases were males rape lesbians in an attempt to “correct” their sexual orientation, a process termed as ‘corrective rape’, or if we want to adopt Middle Eastern examples, a man raping a woman to force her into “correcting” herself and becoming more “Islamic”.

And last but not least, sadistic rape. This in my opinion is the sickest and most morose of all. For such rapists, the act of aggression itself is eroticized. Sexual excitement and gratification to them is associated with the infliction of pain upon their victim, and torturing them. He finds the intentional maltreatment of his victim to be sexually satisfying to him, along with the victim’s torment, anguish, helplessness and distress. Sadistic rape usually involves torture and restraint, which sometimes takes on a ritualistic nature with bizarre characteristics, the rapist may use some type of instrument or foreign object to penetrate their victim and sometimes, some sexual areas or erogenous zones of the victim’s body become a specific focus of injury or abuse.

Such a rapist’s assaults are deliberate, calculated and planned. They will often wear a disguise or will blindfold their victims. Prostitutes or other people whom they perceive to have high sexual promiscuity are often the sadistic rapist’s targets. He believes that such people should be either punished or disciplined, or that they should be introduced first hand to what he believes to be the real essence and purpose of sex.

Sadly enough, most victims of a sadistic rapist may not survive the attack, because for some of them, the ultimate satisfaction is gained from murdering the victim, and perhaps later on continuing to engage in the act of raping her body.

And with that, we conclude our short journey, where we explored and had a look on how a rapist’s mind works. I hope it was informative to all of you, especially the women out there.

So watch out, always keep that mace/taser or whatever else you have at the ready, don’t talk to strangers, and remember that trust in a person is earned, not given.

To my surprise, here are the sample of comments that followed. These are 5 comments that translate to “she deserved it,” with one generally mocking her appearance instead of commenting at all about the sexual crime.

It is not a mystery why people commonly sympathize with rapists or why sexual harassment has become prevalent in our societies, with often little to no consequences to punish the criminals who have the law and the mainstream media on their side.

Of interest, here are other examples: