Mostafa Hosny

2020 has been full of surprises, we know, but these surprises just never seem to end. If you’ve been online today, then you’ve seen the latest in this string of never-ending shocks — today, Islamic preacher Mostafa Hosny apologized for his old video about the hijab.

Understandably, you can see why this is surprising. Not just because it’s been nearly 10 years since that video but because Mostafa Hosny thinks this is all that it takes for his apology to be accepted.

Before you go on a rampage of “but he apologized” and “what else do you want“, allow us to give you a little background on what the impact of Mostafa Hosny’s hijab video was.

See, a long time before this video was taken apart for reaction memes, it had an impact. This is was a time when the preacher was insanely popular and people, mostly young adults, hung on his every word.

And so when Mostafa Hosny made a video about the hijab, it was all everyone could talk about. Everyone had seen it!

And that meant everyone saw how the man criticized the way the mannequins were dressed. How he said that type of dress “provoked” people and how essentially anything a woman was exposed to was her fault for not being modest.

What happened later was nightmarish. This is not to say that sexual harassment didn’t happen in Egypt before, but Mostafa Hosny’s video very well revolutionized it and gave harassers as many excuses as they needed for why they did something so heinous.

In a nutshell, it gave men an alibi and it gave women a life sentence of subjection to sexual harassment.

Seeing all this, now you get it. Now, it’s not so surprising that many women aren’t exactly jumping for joy for Mostafa Hosny’s long overdue apology for “the way he worded things” and “how harsh he was“, saying nothing about the actual things he said.

Not understanding his video’s impact (or choosing to ignore it) is catastrophic. See, words like “these are the type of clothes that provoke people” and “how can we live with seeing this every day” are the kind of words that set up for incidents like the public harassment case in Mansoura.

Again, we’re not saying Mostafa Hosny didn’t do the right thing by apologizing. The thing is, he needs to do more. He needs to recognize the impact his words had.

He needs to address it and try to change it, through his platform — and then, maybe his apology will ring genuine with those who don’t believe it.

Does it take more just one video to undo all the irreversible damages to society?