Mona El Tahawy’s “Why do they hate us”

Mona El Tahawy’s most recent article “Why do they hate us” published by Foreign Policy has provoked many debates. The way new social media are employed in order to discuss the article shows once more in what way those media can be useful and fruitful, but also what their limits are. Mona El Tahawy argues in her article that misogyny is such a wide spread phenomena in the Arab world that it denies women freedom. Subsequently she has been accused of portraying her country and the Arab countries in general in a very negative way and of only reinforcing the stereotypes the West has about the Arabs. Plus Mona El Tahawy was criticized for being simplistic and even reproducing an orientalist vision in order to attract more attention. On the blog “Tahrir and beyond” Mona El Tahawy’s article is even called “disgraceful” and “one-dimensional” and the blogger considers her argumentation as “vague-over-generalized-orientalist”.

Mona El Tahawy appeared on the Melissa Harris Perry show on MSNBC on April 28th 2012 where she could defend her article and discussed about it with the famous Egyptian scholar and feminist Leila Ahmed. During the show Mona El Tahawy argued that the treatment of women in the Arab world can’t just be concealed, because it might create a bad image of Arab societies. But to her opinion issues that important have to be discussed openly. The show gave birth to even more debate on the article on social media, in particular on twitter. 

The social media seem to be an important outlet for involved people who want to share their opinion on different issues with others. Nevertheless one has to say that the comments on social media are usually very short and therefore not that profound. Consequently social media are an important tool in order to measure reactions from different people on different topics, but they can’t completely replace more traditional tools, such as newspaper and TV shows. Professional journalists have to analyze the issue and reactions to it in more depth. However social medias are very valuable because they allow everybody to contribute to different issues and debates with their opinion. Furthermore we have to distinguish between often superficial comments on media such as facebook and twitter and media such as blogs which allow people to write more profoundly about issues they are concerned with. Some blogs, for instance “Tahrir and beyond” also point out interesting articles on blogs and mainstream media on the topic of Mona El Tahawy’s article, which can be helpful for readers who want to get more information and different perspectives on the topic. Finally blogs often reproduce interesting comments the authors found on social media, such as facebook and twitter. Consequently the social media help to acquire a broad impression on the topic and the different existing opinions very quickly, but can a only be very fruitful if readers combine them with other more traditional media.