Thread by @monaeltahawy

My essay on #LoujainAlhathloul: So clamorous was her courage, so loud her refusal to break that it made her more of a liability for the #Saudi regime inside prison than outside, so they sent her home, where her enforced silence would be a reprieve for them
feministgiant.com/p/for-loujain-…

Loujain’s astonishing courage and tenacity have long wrong-footed the Saudi regime. In 2014, when she was 25, she was arrested for the first time while attempting to drive across the border from the United Arab Emirates - where she had a valid driver’s licence - to Saudi Arabia.

In March 2018, the Saudis considered Loujain such a threat that they had her rendered from the UAE, where she was studying. She was stopped by security officers as she drove on a highway near her uni in Abu Dhabi, taken from her vehicle & forcibly returned to her home country.

She spent several days in prison before being released, and she was banned from using social media or leaving the country. A few weeks later, in May 2018, MBS had her arrested, held incommunicado for a while, and tortured, including being waterboarded.

In Dec 2020, Loujain was sentenced by a terrorism court. Notice the common thread:
- rendition
-waterboarding
-terrorism court

MBS and the Saudi regime are so threatened by feminism - and Loujain especially - that they consider feminism a form of terrorism.

In 2019, soon after Saudi teen Rahaf was granted refugee status in Canada,and while Loujain was still in prison, the Saudi regime’s “Authority to Counter-Extremism” made a one-minute ad in which it conflated women who escape Saudi male guardianship with men who join

https://twitter.com/ce_pss/status/1092796685972058116

Waterboarding. Electrocution. Sexual assault. Threats of rape and murder. For daring to advocate for women’s rights. For daring to demand an end to the guardianship system - the foundation of patriarchy. feministgiant.com/p/for-loujain-…

Feminism is an existential threat to authoritarians, whose power is undergirded by patriarchy. A woman escaping Saudi patriarchy=a man who joins an violent extremist group

I am an Egyptian who moved to Saudi Arabia as a teenager, before Loujain was born. I was traumatized into feminism in that kingdom of gender apartheid. And as an Egyptian, I celebrate today--Feb 11--the 10th anniversary of the ouster of Mubarak’s ouster by our #Jan25 Revolution.

Those revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and other countries in the region inspired protestors in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province, home to most of the country’s Shia Muslim protesters.

The protestors behind that political revolution might have been silenced by the royal family; the revolution that feminists like Loujain have triggered has broken through. Its vanguard is not a crown prince who claims to be an emancipator of women.

The true leaders are the feminists he has detained and banned from travel and silenced for daring to demand their freedom.

amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

Long live the feminists who do not fear the patriarch.

Long live the feminists who terrify authoritarians. 

Loujain we remembered you and we will continue to lift up your name and the names of your sisters and comrades until you are all free feministgiant.com/p/for-loujain-… #FreeLoujain

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This is what I told @dwnews about the release of #LoujainAlhathloul

#JusticeForLoujain #FreeLoujain