Hypatia- Christian censorship victime

Old news
Hypatia was murdered by christian monks in a riot in Alexandria year 415. She was working in the Library of Alexandria until the pope Theophilus ordered it's destruction, he is now a saint in the coptic church. When the pope died Cyril became pope after his uncle. He ordered massacres of jews and pagans, and where in a conflict with the roman prefect, how had Hypatia as his advisor and philosophy teacher. That made Cyril trying to get her out of the way by all means, until he started a small riot so that monks attacked Hypatia on her way home, stripped her naked and dragged her through the city to a Christian tempel were they skinned her with tiles and then cut her body in parts. Finally they burnt her body. Cyril is a saint in most of the Christian churches, and one of the church fathers according to the Catholics.

That's history and fact, but how does that affect us?
2009 a great epic Spanish movie, Agora, went in the cinemas in most European countries telling this story, and it became the most visited spanish movie in Spain that year.. It was broadcasted in Swedish television this week. When the end of the movie came with the death of Hypatia (not showing all the cruellity made by the monks), my beloved one cried out load in the sofa next to me. She could not understand why and how, and she is a student of theology and christian history- knowing her subjects.

Censorship
In Spain the catholic defens group Observatorio Antidifamación Religiosa wrote an open letter how the movie where raising hatred against Christianity and reinforcing false clichés about the Catholic church. When the director Amenábar responded that he wanted to say the movie was against those who kill in the name of their god the group responded "Why didn't you make a movie about the Middle East (the muslims they ment)?". Hey are we supposed to hide the truth here? That is facts, written by christian bishops during the time it happened.


In the US they did not want to buy the movie claiming it "was to intellectual and heavy". A silly claim. making US citizens look stupid by their own leaders (I know that is not true, not my friends there anyway...) The real reason seems to be the religious causes too. The companies where affraid to buy it, making the right fanatics of christianity in the US angry, and then loosing a lot of money. Maximum of theatres showing the movie duing a weekend in 2010 (the year they showed it there after a year of censorship) was 17. Only 17 in all of the US of A! What a terrible shame.


The coptic church, what did they do? Well, they stopped the movie from being shown in Egypt and poor Hypatias hometown Alexandria by claiming it "is an insult of the religion". Of course they say so, their saints real faces would be shown for the masses, scary to show that even christians have killed lika that?


School
I lika Hypatia. I use to show her as a good example, while teaching, of a woman scientist struggling because her sex, but being one of the best. She and Marie Curie will help the girls to find good examples that they are as good, or better, than the boys. That girls are ment to study math and science too!!!


May Hypatia not be a brick in a religios fight about a religion she did not even believe in. She believed in philosophy!

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, a HERO!

A beautiful young Egypt nude woman, proud of her body, but with a sad look in her face.
That could be one description of the 20 years old Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, when you look att her pictures on her blogg.
Why does a woman expose her body like that, and in a islamic country where you have to cover even the hair on your head...if you are a woman?
Well, THAT is just the point. She doesn't want to live in a fundamental islamistic country and did this in protest against people using a book they sees as holy to supress others. She wants freedom now, when they have been fighting for it together with the men. She is most probably afraid that Egypt will be like Iran, were the women was a very strong power during the revolution to help the new leader... but after that, when he didn't need teir help anymore he put them into women slavery laws again.
She sows it very well by in a second copy of the photo cover the sexual organ, the mouth and her eyes: "The yellow rectangels on my mouth, eyes and sex organ resembles the censoring of our knowledge, expression and sexuallity, she wrotes according to the Daily Beast.

To really understand why she did it we have to look closer to the Arab revolution in Egypt, and what happened last March. When soldiers took female activists during the protests they forced them to strip and then they inserted two fingers into their vaginas to see if they were virgins, according to the Guardian, who also wrote in the same article that that specific action will be the spark that lights the next part of the revolution. Here it comes.
According to the same article on the Guardian it is standard procedure to check the virginity when women are getting married in Egypt, but that is in the family. Poor stone age society, that even have to order artificial hymen from China to cover up a thing that science has known for ages: Not every women will bleed when having sex for the first time. The hymen is nat a proof of virginity-But this action is a proof of a patriarchal society trying to supress the women. Hope the women will start to protest against this too.

These nude protests have even spred to Israel, where a lot of women also strip now (not completely) in support of Aliaa, writes the Guardian in another article.

Maybe nothing will happen this time, but the more support Aliaa and the women gets now the easier it will be for them to win freedom. After Egypt we have Iran, and then Saudi Arabia (read my previous article about that).

You have my support, Aliaa!!!