1065 Give Nagla the Attention She Deserves

…Which is to say none at all. Perhaps if everyone pretends Nagla al-Imam doesn’t exist, she’ll go away. In the meantime, she’s shooting her mouth off to anyone who’ll listen.

Nagla was sent by a women’s rights organization to fly the flag at the trial of the man who sexually harassed Noha Rushdie. After the trial she falsely claimed Noha was Israeli (she’s not; she’s Palestinian, born in Libya and raised there and in Egypt), and proclaimed she was going to work for the convict’s release. I understand Nagla lost her job because of the controversy she caused.

Then, speaking on Al-Arabiya on October 31, she called on Arab men to sexually harass Israeli women as “a form of resistance.” (leave it to MEMRI to feature the stupidest, ugliest things said on TV in Arabic, ignoring the condemnation). I tried to ignore this offensive idiocy (have Arab women and men and “resistance” really fallen so low?), hoping it was her last cry for attention before she faded into obscurity.

No such luck. Now she’s telling Youm al-Sabaa that the convicted man’s name was on President Mubarak’s list of people to pardon this Eid. Youm al-Sabaa quietly acknowledged at the bottom of the article that it has no source for this story save a phone call to Nagla, and that the president traditionally pardons only convicts who have already served at least nine months in jail. But that didn’t stop the paper from calling Nagla and running her claims under the alarming headline, “News of the Release of the Man Who Molested Noha Rushdie.” The following day, Youm al-Sabaa ran another story saying the rumor (they started) was not true.

Only Noha comes off well in this whole sorry tale. The man who harassed her comes off like a sleaze. Nagla comes off as unhinged. And the journalists who give her a platform look so desperate for news over the holiday that they’ll call up any loon with something inflammatory to say, dress her rants up as fact, and then get a second story out of saying their previous story was untrue.

There are millions of stupid people with inflammatory things to say in this world. Let’s not neglect them. If Youm al-Sabaa‘s journalist will send me his email address, I promise I will supply him with one inflammatory and inaccurate quote collected from someone on the streets of Cairo a day, so long as he stops calling Nagla.

2 Comments »

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  1. ???? ???? ?? ?? ??????

    Comment by Mostafa Hussein — December 12, 2008 #

  2. Yeah, sorry, that was a bit of a rant. Perhaps I should take up exercise or some similarly healthful way of letting off steam.

    Comment by The Skeptic — December 13, 2008 #

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