Fadfada

The first time I heard about Kolena Laila was through a tweet from my cousin. I was really intrigued to find out more about it. I mean, why Laila? Why not Samia, or Rawya or any other name? Kolena Laila or "We are all Laila" is a virtual initiative on the blogosphere that calls to review values and prevalent ideas related to females, and how society enacts them with no consideration of their impact on women themselves. The call here is not to propagate a certain value or culture, but it is rather a call to criticize and review our own daily behavior, with a true desire to change and purify our attitudes in life. The idea started with a group of female bloggers, and despite the fact that Kolena Laila was founded by bloggers from Egypt, the founders assure that it is for all Arab women in general, not only Egyptians. Why Laila? Simple, it is an adoption of the heroine’s name from the novel "The Open Door", written by the Egyptian novelist " Latifa El Zayyat ...

I have watched lately Jad Choueiri’s video Funky Arab , I read the comments on Youtube, face book and listen to people at the office arguing about it. To be honest when I first saw the video I was totally shocked. One of my colleagues said "I understand your shock but at least he is out there trying to do something to change how people, especially in the west, perceive Arab." As an Arab, I for once am totally against labeling Arab as angry bearded men or women covered in black, but the question here is do I want to be labeled in the way Jad reflected in his video?! I honestly don’t think that what Jad reflected has anything to do with how the Arab or funky Arab looks. I didn’t know that being funky meant wearing bikini, botox injecting my face, smoking and dancing around like a B***h, or wearing sunglasses at night and chains all around my neck. Is this really the kind of image I want people to perceive Arab as! Some of the comments on Youtube accused those against...