Mona Eltahawy

Join host Rebecca Carroll and guests Kara Brown, Mona Eltahawy, and Ziwe Fumudoh for a conversation about accountability in media and Trump’s America. 

The Egyptian American writer and activist Mona Eltahawy argues for full equal rights for women in the Middle East.

Egyptian writer and activist Mona Eltahawy will discuss the recent news from Egypt, including her detention and the injuries she sustained at the hands of security forces.

Yesterday afternoon former President Bill Clinton said in a statement: “The world is watching the situation in Libya with alarm. The government of Libya has a responsibility to respect the universal rights of the people, including the right to free expression and assembly.” The EU, Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other European figureheads made similar condemnations. But it's not always as simple as tyranny against democracy, is it? Lybia is a country in which the West is invested. 

Guests today include: 

• Benjamin Barber, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the New York think tank Demos and Walt Whitman Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Rutgers University; 
• Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration; 
• Simon Schama, University Professor of art history and history at Columbia whose work focuses on revolutions; 
• Mona Eltahawy, Egyptian New Yorker and columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues; 
• Jeff Goodwin, professor of sociology at NYU and author of No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991;
• Youssef M. Ibrahim, an Egyptian and a former New York Times Middle East and European correspondent who served as the paper's Tehran bureau chief in 1978-1979; 

As well as Shinasi A. Rama, deputy director of the NYU Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy and one of the leaders of the Albanian student movement; Suketu Mehta, New York City-based journalist, professor of journalism at NYU, and author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found; Neferti Tadiar, professor and chair of women's studies at Barnard College; Anne Nelson, adjunct associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University who's covered revolutions as a journalist in Central America; Omar Cheta, PhD candidate in the departments of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at NYU; Shiva Sarram, who was eight years old during the 1979 revolution in Iran and the founder of the Blossom Hill Foundation, which works with children affected by conflict.; Gladys Carbo-Flower, recording artist and witness to Cuba's revolution; Didi Ogude, a recent NYU graduate who was ten years old during South Africa's regime change in the nineties; Hesham El-Meligy, a Muslim-American community organizer from Staten Island; and Ali Al Sayed, Egyptian New Yorker and owner of Kabab Café in Little Egypt, Astoria, Queens.

Women have long been on the frontlines of poliltical uprisings in Egypt. We see them now in the streets chanting for Mubarak to step down. Women were also integral in the 919 revolution in Egypt, which pushed out Egypt’s British occupiers. It is a misconception that women are not part of the pro-Democracy demonstrators, says Mona Eltahawy, columnist and speaker on Muslim and Arab issues.

This is Egypt focusing on Egypt. Yes, Mubarak has been one of the major allies of US administrations for decades now, and they knew very well that he was a dictator and ran a police s...

Mona Eltahawy, columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues, Amira Al Hussaini, Global Voices Online regional editor for the Middle East and North Africa, continue the conversation about protests in the region.

→Read More And Join The Conversation At It's A Free Country

Mona Eltahawy, columnist and public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues talks about the protests in Egypt and the government's response.

Read a recap of this conversation at It's A Free Country»

President Obama received a standing ovation after his speech yesterday in Cairo calling for a “new beginning” between the U.S. and the Muslim world. But was the response around the Mu...