Secular Café: What's the "Arab Spring" worth in Egypt?

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What's the "Arab Spring" worth in Egypt? Oct 26th 2012, 12:27 Many activists risked their lives in the recent struggle for basic human rights in Egypt. Are the hopes of women in particular going to be crushed? See this article: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct...ution-20121008 Quote: Eman Mostafa, a village girl from southern Egypt, was shot and killed last month when she dared to spit in the face of the man who groped her. Ramadan Salem told authorities he mistakenly shot Mostafa, 16, after she cursed him. It is uncertain whether Salem will be convicted: The only witness willing to testify — Mostafa's friend, Sahar Mamdouh — has been threatened in a society that often blames women and girls for provoking sexual crimes against them. After an uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak early last year, women and minorities hoped for a nation that would guarantee long-denied equal rights. But their pleas have gone unanswered as Egypt has shifted from military control to the conservative designs of a new Islamist president. Mostafa's death symbolizes for many women the prospect that civil rights would be further jeopardized by a new constitution. Scores of Egyptians, with the support of 33 women's rights organizations, protested outside President Mohamed Morsi's palace last week against the proposed constitution, particularly Article 36, which says the state is "committed to providing all measures to ensure the equality of women with men, as long as those rights are not contradicting the laws of Islam," or sharia... ...Yet Islamists are the country's main political force, and they will probably control the tone of a constitution in what has become a pivotal battle between liberals and Islamists who run the gamut from ultraconservative Salafis to the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood. The struggle is tilted in favor of the Islamists because women's groups and liberal parties are often divided and disorganized. "Equality should be a given, with no conditions. This [article] is strictly meant to hinder the women's rights movements and the way women express themselves. It is meant to target basic rights that women fought for decades ago," said Dalia Abdelhameed, a researcher with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

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