Inside Egypt's Muslim Sisterhood

Supporters of Morsi shout slogans as they continue a sit-in protest outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo (Photo: Reuters)

[This story was originally published on Ahram Online on 7 October 2013] 

As army tanks came to a halt in front of a group of protesters lying in the road, the air thick with teargas, Wafaa Hefny didn’t hesitate.

“I walked up to the soldiers standing on each tank and said ‘your mothers will curse you. Do not fire at your brothers - go back,’” she recalls. “All the tanks moved back.”

Hefny, 46, is a university instructor and an active Muslim Brotherhood member. Speaking at home, she wears a crimson traditional dress, her hair streaked with a few grey lines. 

When security forces began to disperse a sit-in by supporters of Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi at Rabaa Al-Adawiya on 14 August, Hefny and her husband immediately went there.

Hefny had spent several weeks camping at the Rabaa protest with her family. When she arrived at the site - in Cairo's Nasr City - she found no way in. So she joined people going to nearby Al-Tayaran Street where they forced tanks to retreat. 

After her encounter with the tanks, she spent the night transporting dead bodies out of the ruins of Rabaa. 

Women on the streets

Hefny was not the only female member of the Brotherhood who took to Cairo’s streets when the protest camps were dispersed.

Though the Brotherhood, an 85-year-old Islamist group founded by Hassan El-Banna, is seen as a male-dominant group, it has a lot of “sisters” who participate in different roles. They may not, however, reach leading positions or rise to the fore after a lot of the men were arrested recently.

“Women are more active on the street than men,” Sameh Eid, a former member of the Brotherhood, tells Ahram Online. 

“They engage actively in public relations and elections campaigns; they are passionate and enthusiastic members,” he says.