Dan Hitchens

Taharrush Gamea: has a new form of sexual harassment arrived in Europe?

The Swedish and German authorities say they have never encountered anything like it: groups of men encircling then molesting women in large public gatherings. It happened in Cologne and Stockholm, but is it really unprecedented? Ivar Arpi argues in the new Spectator that it may well be connected to a phenomenon called ‘taharrush gamea’, a form of group harassment previously seen in Egypt.

So what is taharrush gamea, and should Western police be worried? Here’s what we know.

‘Taharrush’ means sexual harassment – it’s a relatively modern word, which political scholar As’ad Abukhalil says dates back to at least the 1950s. ‘Gamea’ just means ‘collective’. Taharrush gamea came to attention in Egypt in 2005, when female protesters against the Mubarak government were sexually assaulted by plain-clothes policemen. Many subsequent cases were political in nature, but not all: as Mariam Kirollos writes, in 2006 ‘Egyptian bloggers reported cases of group sexual assault in downtown Cairo, where large groups of men groped veiled and unveiled women, and in some cases ripped their clothes off’. There were also cases of rape.

After the revolution in 2011, the attacks became more organised. The following year, volunteer groups of men began patrolling parts of Cairo to protect women from collective assaults. These became horribly frequent: in summer 2013, in the ten days around the time President Morsi was deposed, there were 186 documented cases of mob harassment, assault and rape.

Heather McRobie, a journalist and academic previously based in Egypt, says some of the assaults in Tahrir Square were co-ordinated political attacks – the authorities wanted to make the square unsafe, and to drive out women. ‘Some were also opportunistic, like at a festival – lots of people, easy to get lost in the crowd, and men can take advantage of that situation.’

Some news reports have said vaguely that this is an ‘Arab phenomenon’ which is ‘recognized in Egypt’.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in