Shereen El Feki Quotes

#1. Although I was raised in Canada and the U.K., my roots are in Egypt through my father, in a family line that stretches back generations and runs along the Nile, from the concrete of Cairo to the coast of Alexandria.

Shereen El Feki

#2. HIV brings out the best and the worst in humanity, and the laws reflect these attitudes.

Shereen El Feki

#3. Throughout its history, Islam has borrowed and adapted from other civilizations, both ancient and modern.

Shereen El Feki

#4. Part of my job at 'The Economist' was writing about HIV, and that included the grim task of reporting on the state of the global epidemic.

Shereen El Feki

#5. The patriarchy is alive and well in Egypt and the wider Arab world.

Shereen El Feki

#6. Egypt, once a melting pot of peoples, classes, cultures and religions, has, after 30 years of Mubarak's rule, become a place of intolerance and distrust of the other.

Shereen El Feki

#7. Where you criminalize people living with HIV or those at greatest risk, you fuel the epidemic.

Shereen El Feki

#8. Social change doesn't happen in the Arab region through dramatic confrontation, beating, or indeed, baring of breasts, but rather through negotiation.

Shereen El Feki

#9. If you really want to know yourself, start by writing a book.

Shereen El Feki

#10. The law can seem remote, arcane, the stuff of specialists. But it isn't, because for those of us who live in democracies, the law begins with us.

Shereen El Feki

#11. Laws that treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk with respect start with the way that we treat them ourselves: as equals. If we are going to stop the spread of HIV in our lifetime, then that is the change we need to spread.

Shereen El Feki

#12. Where I work, in the Arab region, people are busy taking up Western innovations and changing them into things which are neither conventionally Western, nor are they traditionally Islamic.

Shereen El Feki

#13. I'm half Egyptian, and I'm Muslim. But I grew up in Canada, far from my Arab roots. Like so many who straddle East and West, I've been drawn, over the years, to try to better understand my origins.

Shereen El Feki

#14. I'm Egyptian and Muslim, but I grew up in the West, far from my Arab roots. I began 'Sex and the Citadel' to help outsiders - like myself - to better comprehend this pivotal part of the world, up-close and personal.

Shereen El Feki

#15. The achievement of Tahrir Square wasn't just its grand political movement but the tiny personal battles fought and won against the frictions wearing down Egyptian society: between religions, classes, sexes, and generations.

Shereen El Feki

#16. Civil society must be strengthened to help raise awareness among people living with HIV, and those at risk, of their rights, and to ensure they have access to legal services and redress through the courts.

Shereen El Feki

#17. Now there are laws in many parts of the world which reflect the best of human nature. These laws treat people touched by HIV with compassion and acceptance. These laws respect universal human rights and they are grounded in evidence.

Shereen El Feki

#18. Some countries have good laws, laws which could stem the tide of HIV. The problem is that these laws are flouted. Because stigma gives unofficial license to treat people living with HIV or those at greatest risk unlike other citizens.

Shereen El Feki

#19. Why, in our age of science, [do] we still have laws and policies which come from an age of superstition?

Shereen El Feki