Parastou Hassouri critiques Mona Eltahawy's Foreign Policy essay:
Over the years, many accounts of women in the Muslim/Arab world, especially in mainstream media, have portrayed women as “objects” lacking any power and agency. For those of us who live in the region or have spent significant time here, and who know that the reality is far more complex, these depictions are particularly frustrating. Perhaps El Tahawy’s piece is too focused on violations, as opposed to the ways in which women are challenging them. However, she does end her piece by citing Samira Ibrahim, the only woman who filed a lawsuit after she was subjected to virginity tests by the Egyptian army, and who she quotes, “They want to silence us; they want to chase women back home. But we’re not going anywhere.” El Tahawy’s listing of the violations and citing of Ibrahim is a call to arms – she is specifically calling upon men and women to rise up against these practices.Others have been critical of the language Eltahawy uses, particularly in the title of her essay:
Lastly, pace the assertion of Eltahawy collapses all the serious problems of Muslim women onto the simple categories of “hate”, in a way that is reminiscent of the worst writings of Islamophobes such as Brigitte Gabriel who write books with titles like: “Because They Hate.” In fact thirty years of scholarship on Islam and women suggests that the actual problem is often much more complicated, dealing with a variety of factors such as economics, tribal structures, nationalism, colonial legacy, changing family models, and authoritative discourses that attempt to regulate the body. Hate, it turns out, is simply not a sufficient explanatory category.