We always remember the good old days when women used to be able to wear whatever they wanted and not be bothered or harassed on the streets.

But hang on a minute — that was not, actually, too long ago.

No, that wasn’t some 50-odd years back when we used to be a different society. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and until the late 1990s — when a wave of conservative wahabi attire suddenly grew popular — I saw women donning the latest fashions and comfortably walking on the streets.

The wave of long beards, niqabis and extremist preaching against motabarejat (women who dress up or wear make up) was unheard of even 15 years back. No, growing up, I had never seen a religious preacher shouting at the audience on television and telling them they will all go to hell because this is a corrupt, obscene society that needs cleansing.

I grew up accustomed to seeing the late Sheikh Mohamed Metwally El Shaarawy and the progressive Islamic thinker Mostafa Mahmoud. The preachers who had been popular back then had nothing to do with the extremist Salafists on the airwaves now. They were well read, highly educated researchers in religion and based all their opinions on thorough readings and research.

Looking back, it is plain to see that the overtly conservative form of hijab, the niqab and Salafism hit Egypt after the economic infitah (open door policy) the middle and lower classes travelled to the Gulf and Saudi Arabia to work there. But although they had travelled in the 1970s, the wave of migration back to Egypt came around the time of the Gulf War in 1991.

So it was not until the late 1990s that we started seeing this construct of anti-feminism, extremist religion and an overall wahabi culture that had nothing to do with the moderate Islam our esteemed Al-Azhar had been preaching.

And it was not until last year that the wahabi and salafi movements, represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nour Party respectively, began being institutionalized rather than marginalized, emerging from underground to mainstream media. Extremist Islam has infiltrated our political scene and made its way into the mainstream public sphere after having been a sidelined force. This is spreading a wahabi and salafi culture that aims at making moderate Muslims and liberals feel as a minority in their own community.

But I insist: This is not our culture, and I hope we don’t let it be.

Proud heritage

Egyptian women come from a strong line of feminists, pioneering ladies who fought their way into the public sphere, into the workforce and even onto the political scene. Our history makes feminists around the world proud — we even had a queen ruling the strongest civilization, for God’s sake.

When Hoda Shaarawy threw off the face veil upon her return from Rome in 1923, she triggered a wave of controversy and celebrations. In many ways, Shaarawy and her comrades, Nabaweya Musa and Ceza Nabarawy, liberated last century’s Egyptian female population through their pioneering fight against oppression of women.

Editor’s note: Read more about our pioneering feminists here.

Mind you, Shaarawy threw off a face veil that she only had to wear in public, on top of western outfits. It was not the niqab we know today, it was merely a tradition that had nothing to do with religious beliefs.

That was 90 years back, and from the 1930s until the late 1990s, or about 60 years, Egyptian women walked the streets wearing whatever they saw fashionable and became a vibrant part of all aspects of our society. They were respected as the other half of this nation and esteemed as mothers of generations and working women who added to the society. Doors were being opened for them and their bags held for them as any true gentleman would. They certainly did not walk behind their husbands face held down to the ground and back hunched over carrying two babies and holding another in their hands because they feel awkward walking the streets, inferior to the man they are walking with and know it is their duty to pump out babies for the Islamic Ummah.

Now, this is not about outfits or mini-skirts; it is about being so obsessed over isolating and covering women that we want not an inch of them showing and would much rather have them stay home and confine to domestic chores. It is about placing women in that mold some masochistic patriarchal minds want to enforce on us to feel more manly and grand.

This is about fighting for what Shaarawy had given us almost a 100 years ago.

It isn’t about niqab, it isn’t about conservative outfits, it is about a whole culture infiltrating our society and objectifying women on all fronts; starting with the notorious mut’a marriage that allows men to marry women for a month to satisfy a sexual urge, and ending with various fatwas claiming a woman is best serving her home than mixing with men at the work place.

Many sheikhs are calling for women to become mindless creatures whose sole duty is to sexually please her husband whenever he asked for his ‘marital rights’ and our Muslim Brotherhood former member of the Parliament, Azza El Garf, is calling to take the right of khul’ away from our women.

How was this ever our culture? Even when women wore the yashmak they enjoyed more freedoms. This wasn’t, and is not, our culture.

Egypt had always been, throughout its very long history, a country with moderate religious orientations. We believe in God and have been quite religious throughout history, but we have also always been quite moderately religious. Extremism is something new to our culture, it is an invasion of a wahabi and other extremists lines of thought that infiltrated us and made the younger generations think this is Egypt. It is a culture that we need to educate ourselves very well about to be able to differentiate between the moderately religious culture of Egyptians and the imported wahabi, oppressive culture that aims to put women back in their homes.

I do not feel like the odd one out in my society. I comfortably walk the streets of my neighborhood with my head held high. I do not feel the need to cover up and I do not feel the need to rush to my car — I am the Egyptian woman, I represent our values, culture and traditions and I will not yield to a culture that is not my own. I come from a proud heritage and I intend to keep it.

I intend to educate my daughters on our proud heritage and on the women who fought for our right to participate in the society — a right some women are sadly willingly brainwashed into giving up. I intend to tell them to walk proud and never feel the need to hide from society so that they extend the line of strong Egyptian women the history has witnessed.

If we give up and start feeling like the odd ones out, then we are handing over our minds, culture and traditions to ones that are foreign from our own.

Now why would a culture that has been around for hundreds of years suddenly become marginalized for a culture that only started emerging 20-something years ago?