A welcome change!
"Egypt’s new first lady represents a break from past" by David D. Kirkpatrick and Mayy el Sheikh | New York Times, June 28, 2012
CAIRO — Naglaa Ali Mahmoud wears an Islamic head covering that drapes down to her knees, did not attend college, and never took her husband’s last name, because that is a Western convention that few Egyptians follow. She also refuses the title of first lady, in favor of simply Um Ahmed, a traditional nickname that identifies her as the mother of Ahmed, her eldest son.
Egypt has a new leader, Mohammed Morsi, the first president to hail from the Muslim Brotherhood, not the military. And it also has Mahmoud, 50, whose profile is so ordinary by contemporary Egyptian standards as to make her elevation extraordinary. Mahmoud could hardly be more different from her predecessors, Suzanne Mubarak and Jihan el-Sadat: aloof, British-Egyptian fashion plates with well-coiffed hair and advanced degrees.
They reveled in the corruption and the looting of the previous regimes.
With her image as a traditionalist everywoman, Mahmoud has come to symbolize the dividing line in the culture war that has made unity an elusive goal since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. For some, she represents the democratic change that the revolution promised. She is a woman in the presidential palace who looks and lives like their sisters and mothers.
But to some in the westernized elite, she stands for a backwardness and provincialism that they fear.
‘‘I can’t call her a first lady under any circumstances,’’ complained Ahmed Salah, 29, a banker having coffee with his friends on the Nile island of Zamalek.
Her image has become the subject of a rancorous debate on websites and in newspapers. A column in the newspaper El Fagr asked incredulously: How could she receive world leaders and still adhere to her traditional Islamic standards of modesty? ‘‘Don’t look at her. Don’t shake hands with her,’’ the paper suggested, calling it a ‘‘comic scenario.’’
Noran Noaman, 21, an engineering student, said Mahmoud embarrassed her. ‘‘If you travel to New York or wherever, people would make fun of you and say: ‘Your first lady wears the abaya, hahaha,’ ’’ she said. ‘‘Previous first ladies used to be elegant.’’
Many others, though, said it was her critics who were out of step. ‘‘People like Suzanne Mubarak are the odd ones out — you don’t see them walking down the street,’’ said Mariam Morad, 20, a psychology student. ‘‘This is exactly what we need: change.’’
Mahmoud, for her part, said she knew it would not be easy to be the wife of the first Islamist head of state, as she told the newspaper of the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old Islamist movement. If she tries to play an active role, she risks comparisons with Suzanne Mubarak, who was widely despised for her supposed influence behind the scenes. But if Mahmoud disappears, she said, ‘‘They will say that Mohammed Morsi is hiding his wife because this is how Islamists think.’’
Mahmoud’s unexpected path to the presidential palace illustrates just how foreign her experience is to the culture of the old Egyptian elite — or perhaps how foreign that elite is to Egypt. Hers was a very typical beginning: She grew up in the poor Cairo neighborhood of Ain Shams, and was 17 and still in high school when she married her cousin, Morsi, who was 11 years older. He also had grown up poor, but excelled in the engineering program at Cairo University.
Three days after their wedding, he left for Los Angeles, to complete his PhD at the University of Southern California. She finished high school and studied English in Cairo. A year and a half after their wedding, she joined her husband in Los Angeles, where she volunteered at the Muslim Student House, translating for women interested in converting to Islam.
It was in Los Angeles that she and her husband were first invited to join the Muslim Brotherhood, an offer that would later define their lives. ‘‘I always say that the Brothers don’t blindfold anyone,’’ she told the group’s newspaper. ‘‘From the beginning they told us about the situation and what was asked of us, and they told us that the path is long and full of dangers.’’
The brotherhood has been reputed to be a creation of western (mostly British) intelligence, and it would appear the CIA was recruiting these folks in the U.S.A.; however, that doesn't mean they can not have spun off on their own after a while. It would be like Israel creating Hamas and then them not listening.
One thing is for sure: it's not a CIA-Duh cover, at least not in Egypt. Maybe Syria.
After they returned, in 1985, Morsi taught engineering at Zagazig University near his hometown north of Cairo in the delta and began a climb through the Brotherhood’s ranks. Mahmoud, a homemaker, became an instructor in its parallel women’s auxiliary, teaching young girls about marriage. ‘‘Men are designed to lead and women to follow,’’ the group’s curriculums explain.
In Egypt’s patriarchal culture, and especially among Islamists, men seldom talk publicly of their wives, and mentioning them by name is almost a taboo.
I heard they hated their wives.
But Morsi is unusually appreciative of Mahmoud, even in public, sometimes saying in television interviews that marrying her was ‘‘the biggest personal achievement of my life.’’
He loves her!
He sometimes helped her with chores, she told the magazine Nesf el Donia, and even cooked for her. ‘‘I like everything about him,’’ she said. ‘‘Our fights never lasted for more than a few minutes.’’
She often appeared with her husband during the campaign, though she seldom spoke publicly. When a magazine journalist asked for a photograph, her answer was conditional. ‘‘Only if your photos make me look younger and a little thinner,’’ she said.
:-)
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