Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, the Egyptian girl who – together with his boy friend – posed fully naked on the internet, is beaten up by some protesters and taken out from Al-tahrir square’s recent protests, while being protected by some others. And this is happening at the eve of the international day for the elimination of violence against women.
Her boy friend, Kareem Amer, spent four years in prison for blog posting deemed insulting to Islam and for calling Mubarak a symbol of tyranny. Now under the new regime some Islamists demand sharia punishment for this couple.
Not only what they did would be perceived as hurtful by the conservative sectors of the Middle Eastern society, but also many seculars criticized their action to be “too early”. Their argument was that the act was not mature enough and did not convey a comprehensible message for the society, considering its expensive cost of giving threatening messages to the fundamental Islamists.
It is true that it may give enough reason to the conservatives to be scared of the secular sectors of the revolution and it may make them keener on hijacking the revolution from the other rivals. But, sooner or later the Middle East would need such radical actions done not only in the sexual realm but also in other areas, simply to make the society numb to such “pain”. Bringing sexual taboos to the public sphere is an inevitable step to proceed. Let’s hope this specific act won’t cost more than it achieved.