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      A furor in Egypt over sex in a conservative society
    
By Neil MacFarquhar The New York Times
  
Thursday, January 27, 2005
CAIRO The standard three-step program for any unmarried, upper-class 
Egyptian girl who gets pregnant is an abortion, an operation to 
refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first 
unwitting suitor the family can snare.
.
But Hind el-Hinnawy, a vivacious 27-year-old costume designer, did the 
unthinkable here: She had the child and then filed a public paternity 
suit, igniting an unprecedented scandal and prompting a national debate 
over the clandestine marriage contracts that young couples are using to 
have sex in this conservative, religious society.
.
"The whole society says: 'No! No! No! Don't say this. It's shameful. 
It's a scandal. Go have an abortion. This girl was not well raised. 
She's loose,"' said Attiyat el-Abnoudi, an Egyptian documentary maker 
who, after hearing about the case, became so involved that she has 
become the child's godmother.
.
"The importance of this case is that it is out in the open. The whole 
society has to question whether it is only her, or whether the society 
is changing. Young people want to make love without getting married."
.
This case has mesmerized the country because Hinnawy says the father of 
her daughter is Ahmed el-Fishawy, a 24-year-old actor.
.
He is both the scion of a family of movie stars and well-known as the 
host of a television talk show dispensing advice to devout Muslim youth. 
The show has been canceled.
.
Fishawy contends that he and Hinnawy never had sex.
.
He says they never even met off the set of a television comedy pilot, 
called "When Daddy Returned," for which she helped create his wardrobe.
.
By filing suit, Hinnawy did more than just shatter a social taboo.
.
A legal precedent may grow out of her requesting that the court order 
Fishawy to submit to a DNA test to establish whether he is the father of 
the child, Leena, born last October with a shock of soft black hair.
.
DNA testing is relatively novel here, having never been used to prove 
paternity in court.
.
In Egypt, and across the Arab world, respectable sex requires marriage, 
particularly for a woman, and especially for the first time.
.
Hinnawy says she and Fishawy had an urfi marriage, a practice in Sunni 
Islam that allows couples to marry in private with a contract they draft 
themselves. Urfi marriages have become more common in recent years 
because the combination of tough economic times and a renewed emphasis 
on Islamic mores means that conventional marriages remain an elusive 
dream for many.
.
Tradition dictates that a young man who wants to wed first buy an 
apartment, furnish it and shower his fiancée with gold jewelry - an 
unreachable expense for many bachelors, even those well into their 30s. 
High-level corporate executives and politicians who are married have 
also found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with an 
Islamic seal of approval.
.
But the emphasis on such marriages is their clandestine nature - the 
word urfi itself has come to mean secret in Arabic - which makes 
reliable statistics impossible to obtain. Made public, Hinnawy's saga 
became the talk of Egypt.
.
Conservative commentators decried the demise of the traditional Egyptian 
family. Gossip magazines splashed the scandal across their covers. The 
Mufti, the highest religious authority in the country, issued an edict 
reminding everyone that secret marriage or no, the welfare of the baby 
girl was paramount.
.
Hinnawy said she had purposely held off telling her parents, who had 
already rejected four suitors as unacceptable, that she was pregnant 
until it was too late to abort. "I am trying to say to other people, not 
only girls, to try to have the courage to be responsible for what you 
do," she said during an interview at her family home. Her baby daughter, 
whom she will not allow to be photographed, was bouncing on her knee.
.
She lamented that Egyptians prefer hypocrisy to what they consider 
public disgrace. "I did the right thing: I didn't hide, and eventually 
he will have to give the baby his name," she said. "People prefer that a 
woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn't matter as long 
as it doesn't become a scandal."
.
Elective abortion is illegal in Egypt, but doctors are given wide leeway 
to interpret two general Islamic guidelines: that it is acceptable in 
cases where pregnancy might jeopardize the health of the mother and that 
the fetus gains a soul only at three months.
.
Abortion is an option for women with means. For women in poor Cairo 
neighborhoods or along the upper reaches of the Nile, out-of-wedlock 
pregnancies often end in death - the girl killed by her father or 
brother to end the public shame and cleanse the family honor.
.
Hinnawy's family lives in the Moqattam Hills, a favorite new suburb of 
Cairo's well-to-do on the eastern desert plateau overlooking the heaving 
metropolis. The parents - Hamdi Abdo el-Hinnawy, an economist, and Selwa 
Mohamed Abdel Baki, a psychology professor - acknowledge that they were 
appalled when their daughter first told them. Some of the extended 
family remain horrified.
.
Hamdi Hinnawy has made an unusual decision in supporting his daughter.
.
"I don't make the link between honor and sex," said Hamdi Hinnawy, a 
short, soft-spoken man whose wiry hair is shot with gray. "Honor is one 
thing and sex another. Any guy or girl can have sex without sacrificing 
their honor. Of course there are certain conditions - that there be 
love, for example."
.
On Jan. 6, the first day of arguments in the case, he was squeezing his 
way through the habitually packed corridors at Cairo's Family Court, 
trailed by television cameras, when a veiled woman screamed above the 
bedlam: "Go teach your daughter some values! It's a scandal, and you are 
filming it! Go fix your daughter's mess!"
.
Hamdi Hinnawy retorted: "She did not make a mess! It's only a scandal 
for you and those like you!"
.
Hind el-Hinnawy's lawyer, Mamdouh el-Waseemy, argued that Fishawy must 
submit to the DNA test to ensure the baby's welfare.
.
In an interview, he said about 18,000 paternity suits were running 
across Egypt. DNA was used for the first time just six months ago, in a 
complicated rape trial where the criminal charges trumped the paternity 
issue.
.
Waseemy said the Family Court judges were eager to find a test paternity 
case to push for DNA evidence, considering it far more scientific than 
the usual method of summoning witnesses like doormen to testify that 
they had seen the couple entering the same apartment.
.
.
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the 
International Herald Tribune.
.
< < Back to Start of Article
CAIRO The standard three-step program for any unmarried, upper-class 
Egyptian girl who gets pregnant is an abortion, an operation to 
refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first 
unwitting suitor the family can snare.
.
But Hind el-Hinnawy, a vivacious 27-year-old costume designer, did the 
unthinkable here: She had the child and then filed a public paternity 
suit, igniting an unprecedented scandal and prompting a national debate 
over the clandestine marriage contracts that young couples are using to 
have sex in this conservative, religious society.
.
"The whole society says: 'No! No! No! Don't say this. It's shameful. 
It's a scandal. Go have an abortion. This girl was not well raised. 
She's loose,"' said Attiyat el-Abnoudi, an Egyptian documentary maker 
who, after hearing about the case, became so involved that she has 
become the child's godmother.
.
"The importance of this case is that it is out in the open. The whole 
society has to question whether it is only her, or whether the society 
is changing. Young people want to make love without getting married."
.
This case has mesmerized the country because Hinnawy says the father of 
her daughter is Ahmed el-Fishawy, a 24-year-old actor.
.
He is both the scion of a family of movie stars and well-known as the 
host of a television talk show dispensing advice to devout Muslim youth. 
The show has been canceled.
.
Fishawy contends that he and Hinnawy never had sex.
.
He says they never even met off the set of a television comedy pilot, 
called "When Daddy Returned," for which she helped create his wardrobe.
.
By filing suit, Hinnawy did more than just shatter a social taboo.
.
A legal precedent may grow out of her requesting that the court order 
Fishawy to submit to a DNA test to establish whether he is the father of 
the child, Leena, born last October with a shock of soft black hair.
.
DNA testing is relatively novel here, having never been used to prove 
paternity in court.
.
In Egypt, and across the Arab world, respectable sex requires marriage, 
particularly for a woman, and especially for the first time.
.
Hinnawy says she and Fishawy had an urfi marriage, a practice in Sunni 
Islam that allows couples to marry in private with a contract they draft 
themselves. Urfi marriages have become more common in recent years 
because the combination of tough economic times and a renewed emphasis 
on Islamic mores means that conventional marriages remain an elusive 
dream for many.
.
Tradition dictates that a young man who wants to wed first buy an 
apartment, furnish it and shower his fiancée with gold jewelry - an 
unreachable expense for many bachelors, even those well into their 30s. 
High-level corporate executives and politicians who are married have 
also found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with an 
Islamic seal of approval.
.
But the emphasis on such marriages is their clandestine nature - the 
word urfi itself has come to mean secret in Arabic - which makes 
reliable statistics impossible to obtain. Made public, Hinnawy's saga 
became the talk of Egypt.
.
Conservative commentators decried the demise of the traditional Egyptian 
family. Gossip magazines splashed the scandal across their covers. The 
Mufti, the highest religious authority in the country, issued an edict 
reminding everyone that secret marriage or no, the welfare of the baby 
girl was paramount.
.
Hinnawy said she had purposely held off telling her parents, who had 
already rejected four suitors as unacceptable, that she was pregnant 
until it was too late to abort. "I am trying to say to other people, not 
only girls, to try to have the courage to be responsible for what you 
do," she said during an interview at her family home. Her baby daughter, 
whom she will not allow to be photographed, was bouncing on her knee.
.
She lamented that Egyptians prefer hypocrisy to what they consider 
public disgrace. "I did the right thing: I didn't hide, and eventually 
he will have to give the baby his name," she said. "People prefer that a 
woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn't matter as long 
as it doesn't become a scandal."
.
Elective abortion is illegal in Egypt, but doctors are given wide leeway 
to interpret two general Islamic guidelines: that it is acceptable in 
cases where pregnancy might jeopardize the health of the mother and that 
the fetus gains a soul only at three months.
.
Abortion is an option for women with means. For women in poor Cairo 
neighborhoods or along the upper reaches of the Nile, out-of-wedlock 
pregnancies often end in death - the girl killed by her father or 
brother to end the public shame and cleanse the family honor.
.
Hinnawy's family lives in the Moqattam Hills, a favorite new suburb of 
Cairo's well-to-do on the eastern desert plateau overlooking the heaving 
metropolis. The parents - Hamdi Abdo el-Hinnawy, an economist, and Selwa 
Mohamed Abdel Baki, a psychology professor - acknowledge that they were 
appalled when their daughter first told them. Some of the extended 
family remain horrified.
.
Hamdi Hinnawy has made an unusual decision in supporting his daughter.
.
"I don't make the link between honor and sex," said Hamdi Hinnawy, a 
short, soft-spoken man whose wiry hair is shot with gray. "Honor is one 
thing and sex another. Any guy or girl can have sex without sacrificing 
their honor. Of course there are certain conditions - that there be 
love, for example."
.
On Jan. 6, the first day of arguments in the case, he was squeezing his 
way through the habitually packed corridors at Cairo's Family Court, 
trailed by television cameras, when a veiled woman screamed above the 
bedlam: "Go teach your daughter some values! It's a scandal, and you are 
filming it! Go fix your daughter's mess!"
.
Hamdi Hinnawy retorted: "She did not make a mess! It's only a scandal 
for you and those like you!"
.
Hind el-Hinnawy's lawyer, Mamdouh el-Waseemy, argued that Fishawy must 
submit to the DNA test to ensure the baby's welfare.
.
In an interview, he said about 18,000 paternity suits were running 
across Egypt. DNA was used for the first time just six months ago, in a 
complicated rape trial where the criminal charges trumped the paternity 
issue.
.
Waseemy said the Family Court judges were eager to find a test paternity 
case to push for DNA evidence, considering it far more scientific than 
the usual method of summoning witnesses like doormen to testify that 
they had seen the couple entering the same apartment.
.
.
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the 
International Herald Tribune.
.
< < Back to Start of Article
CAIRO The standard three-step program for any unmarried, upper-class 
Egyptian girl who gets pregnant is an abortion, an operation to 
refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first 
unwitting suitor the family can snare.
.
But Hind el-Hinnawy, a vivacious 27-year-old costume designer, did the 
unthinkable here: She had the child and then filed a public paternity 
suit, igniting an unprecedented scandal and prompting a national debate 
over the clandestine marriage contracts that young couples are using to 
have sex in this conservative, religious society.
.
"The whole society says: 'No! No! No! Don't say this. It's shameful. 
It's a scandal. Go have an abortion. This girl was not well raised. 
She's loose,"' said Attiyat el-Abnoudi, an Egyptian documentary maker 
who, after hearing about the case, became so involved that she has 
become the child's godmother.
.
"The importance of this case is that it is out in the open. The whole 
society has to question whether it is only her, or whether the society 
is changing. Young people want to make love without getting married."
.
This case has mesmerized the country because Hinnawy says the father of 
her daughter is Ahmed el-Fishawy, a 24-year-old actor.
.
He is both the scion of a family of movie stars and well-known as the 
host of a television talk show dispensing advice to devout Muslim youth. 
The show has been canceled.
.
Fishawy contends that he and Hinnawy never had sex.
.
He says they never even met off the set of a television comedy pilot, 
called "When Daddy Returned," for which she helped create his wardrobe.
.
By filing suit, Hinnawy did more than just shatter a social taboo.
.
A legal precedent may grow out of her requesting that the court order 
Fishawy to submit to a DNA test to establish whether he is the father of 
the child, Leena, born last October with a shock of soft black hair.
.
DNA testing is relatively novel here, having never been used to prove 
paternity in court.
.
In Egypt, and across the Arab world, respectable sex requires marriage, 
particularly for a woman, and especially for the first time.
.
Hinnawy says she and Fishawy had an urfi marriage, a practice in Sunni 
Islam that allows couples to marry in private with a contract they draft 
themselves. Urfi marriages have become more common in recent years 
because the combination of tough economic times and a renewed emphasis 
on Islamic mores means that conventional marriages remain an elusive 
dream for many.
.
Tradition dictates that a young man who wants to wed first buy an 
apartment, furnish it and shower his fiancée with gold jewelry - an 
unreachable expense for many bachelors, even those well into their 30s. 
High-level corporate executives and politicians who are married have 
also found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with an 
Islamic seal of approval.
.
But the emphasis on such marriages is their clandestine nature - the 
word urfi itself has come to mean secret in Arabic - which makes 
reliable statistics impossible to obtain. Made public, Hinnawy's saga 
became the talk of Egypt.
.
Conservative commentators decried the demise of the traditional Egyptian 
family. Gossip magazines splashed the scandal across their covers. The 
Mufti, the highest religious authority in the country, issued an edict 
reminding everyone that secret marriage or no, the welfare of the baby 
girl was paramount.
.
Hinnawy said she had purposely held off telling her parents, who had 
already rejected four suitors as unacceptable, that she was pregnant 
until it was too late to abort. "I am trying to say to other people, not 
only girls, to try to have the courage to be responsible for what you 
do," she said during an interview at her family home. Her baby daughter, 
whom she will not allow to be photographed, was bouncing on her knee.
.
She lamented that Egyptians prefer hypocrisy to what they consider 
public disgrace. "I did the right thing: I didn't hide, and eventually 
he will have to give the baby his name," she said. "People prefer that a 
woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn't matter as long 
as it doesn't become a scandal."
.
Elective abortion is illegal in Egypt, but doctors are given wide leeway 
to interpret two general Islamic guidelines: that it is acceptable in 
cases where pregnancy might jeopardize the health of the mother and that 
the fetus gains a soul only at three months.
.
Abortion is an option for women with means. For women in poor Cairo 
neighborhoods or along the upper reaches of the Nile, out-of-wedlock 
pregnancies often end in death - the girl killed by her father or 
brother to end the public shame and cleanse the family honor.
.
Hinnawy's family lives in the Moqattam Hills, a favorite new suburb of 
Cairo's well-to-do on the eastern desert plateau overlooking the heaving 
metropolis. The parents - Hamdi Abdo el-Hinnawy, an economist, and Selwa 
Mohamed Abdel Baki, a psychology professor - acknowledge that they were 
appalled when their daughter first told them. Some of the extended 
family remain horrified.
.
Hamdi Hinnawy has made an unusual decision in supporting his daughter.
.
"I don't make the link between honor and sex," said Hamdi Hinnawy, a 
short, soft-spoken man whose wiry hair is shot with gray. "Honor is one 
thing and sex another. Any guy or girl can have sex without sacrificing 
their honor. Of course there are certain conditions - that there be 
love, for example."
.
On Jan. 6, the first day of arguments in the case, he was squeezing his 
way through the habitually packed corridors at Cairo's Family Court, 
trailed by television cameras, when a veiled woman screamed above the 
bedlam: "Go teach your daughter some values! It's a scandal, and you are 
filming it! Go fix your daughter's mess!"
.
Hamdi Hinnawy retorted: "She did not make a mess! It's only a scandal 
for you and those like you!"
.
Hind el-Hinnawy's lawyer, Mamdouh el-Waseemy, argued that Fishawy must 
submit to the DNA test to ensure the baby's welfare.
.
In an interview, he said about 18,000 paternity suits were running 
across Egypt. DNA was used for the first time just six months ago, in a 
complicated rape trial where the criminal charges trumped the paternity 
issue.
.
Waseemy said the Family Court judges were eager to find a test paternity 
case to push for DNA evidence, considering it far more scientific than 
the usual method of summoning witnesses like doormen to testify that 
they had seen the couple entering the same apartment.
.
.
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the 
International Herald Tribune.
.
< < Back to Start of Article
CAIRO The standard three-step program for any unmarried, upper-class 
Egyptian girl who gets pregnant is an abortion, an operation to 
refurbish her virginity with a new hymen and then marriage to the first 
unwitting suitor the family can snare.
.
But Hind el-Hinnawy, a vivacious 27-year-old costume designer, did the 
unthinkable here: She had the child and then filed a public paternity 
suit, igniting an unprecedented scandal and prompting a national debate 
over the clandestine marriage contracts that young couples are using to 
have sex in this conservative, religious society.
.
"The whole society says: 'No! No! No! Don't say this. It's shameful. 
It's a scandal. Go have an abortion. This girl was not well raised. 
She's loose,"' said Attiyat el-Abnoudi, an Egyptian documentary maker 
who, after hearing about the case, became so involved that she has 
become the child's godmother.
.
"The importance of this case is that it is out in the open. The whole 
society has to question whether it is only her, or whether the society 
is changing. Young people want to make love without getting married."
.
This case has mesmerized the country because Hinnawy says the father of 
her daughter is Ahmed el-Fishawy, a 24-year-old actor.
.
He is both the scion of a family of movie stars and well-known as the 
host of a television talk show dispensing advice to devout Muslim youth. 
The show has been canceled.
.
Fishawy contends that he and Hinnawy never had sex.
.
He says they never even met off the set of a television comedy pilot, 
called "When Daddy Returned," for which she helped create his wardrobe.
.
By filing suit, Hinnawy did more than just shatter a social taboo.
.
A legal precedent may grow out of her requesting that the court order 
Fishawy to submit to a DNA test to establish whether he is the father of 
the child, Leena, born last October with a shock of soft black hair.
.
DNA testing is relatively novel here, having never been used to prove 
paternity in court.
.
In Egypt, and across the Arab world, respectable sex requires marriage, 
particularly for a woman, and especially for the first time.
.
Hinnawy says she and Fishawy had an urfi marriage, a practice in Sunni 
Islam that allows couples to marry in private with a contract they draft 
themselves. Urfi marriages have become more common in recent years 
because the combination of tough economic times and a renewed emphasis 
on Islamic mores means that conventional marriages remain an elusive 
dream for many.
.
Tradition dictates that a young man who wants to wed first buy an 
apartment, furnish it and shower his fiancée with gold jewelry - an 
unreachable expense for many bachelors, even those well into their 30s. 
High-level corporate executives and politicians who are married have 
also found urfi marriages a convenient means to carry on affairs with an 
Islamic seal of approval.
.
But the emphasis on such marriages is their clandestine nature - the 
word urfi itself has come to mean secret in Arabic - which makes 
reliable statistics impossible to obtain. Made public, Hinnawy's saga 
became the talk of Egypt.
.
Conservative commentators decried the demise of the traditional Egyptian 
family. Gossip magazines splashed the scandal across their covers. The 
Mufti, the highest religious authority in the country, issued an edict 
reminding everyone that secret marriage or no, the welfare of the baby 
girl was paramount.
.
Hinnawy said she had purposely held off telling her parents, who had 
already rejected four suitors as unacceptable, that she was pregnant 
until it was too late to abort. "I am trying to say to other people, not 
only girls, to try to have the courage to be responsible for what you 
do," she said during an interview at her family home. Her baby daughter, 
whom she will not allow to be photographed, was bouncing on her knee.
.
She lamented that Egyptians prefer hypocrisy to what they consider 
public disgrace. "I did the right thing: I didn't hide, and eventually 
he will have to give the baby his name," she said. "People prefer that a 
woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn't matter as long 
as it doesn't become a scandal."
.
Elective abortion is illegal in Egypt, but doctors are given wide leeway 
to interpret two general Islamic guidelines: that it is acceptable in 
cases where pregnancy might jeopardize the health of the mother and that 
the fetus gains a soul only at three months.
.
Abortion is an option for women with means. For women in poor Cairo 
neighborhoods or along the upper reaches of the Nile, out-of-wedlock 
pregnancies often end in death - the girl killed by her father or 
brother to end the public shame and cleanse the family honor.
.
Hinnawy's family lives in the Moqattam Hills, a favorite new suburb of 
Cairo's well-to-do on the eastern desert plateau overlooking the heaving 
metropolis. The parents - Hamdi Abdo el-Hinnawy, an economist, and Selwa 
Mohamed Abdel Baki, a psychology professor - acknowledge that they were 
appalled when their daughter first told them. Some of the extended 
family remain horrified.
.
Hamdi Hinnawy has made an unusual decision in supporting his daughter.
.
"I don't make the link between honor and sex," said Hamdi Hinnawy, a 
short, soft-spoken man whose wiry hair is shot with gray. "Honor is one 
thing and sex another. Any guy or girl can have sex without sacrificing 
their honor. Of course there are certain conditions - that there be 
love, for example."
.
On Jan. 6, the first day of arguments in the case, he was squeezing his 
way through the habitually packed corridors at Cairo's Family Court, 
trailed by television cameras, when a veiled woman screamed above the 
bedlam: "Go teach your daughter some values! It's a scandal, and you are 
filming it! Go fix your daughter's mess!"
.
Hamdi Hinnawy retorted: "She did not make a mess! It's only a scandal 
for you and those like you!"
.
Hind el-Hinnawy's lawyer, Mamdouh el-Waseemy, argued that Fishawy must 
submit to the DNA test to ensure the baby's welfare.
.
In an interview, he said about 18,000 paternity suits were running 
across Egypt. DNA was used for the first time just six months ago, in a 
complicated rape trial where the criminal charges trumped the paternity 
issue.
.
Waseemy said the Family Court judges were eager to find a test paternity 
case to push for DNA evidence, considering it far more scientific than 
the usual method of summoning witnesses like doormen to testify that 
they had seen the couple entering the same apartment.
.
.