....But the 1940s generation was conservative compared to what came in the 1960s, the Sexual Revolution created a cultural earthquake, the tremors of which were felt in the Middle East. In Egypt, Afghanistan and across the region women let their hair down, literally, doing away with headscarves and dressing in mini-skirts. In Iran, the Shah gave women the vote and encouraged them to get a good education. The result was another Revolution, this one Islamic: Ayatollah Khomeini coming to power in 1979 and immediately stripping women of their rights.
Which brings us to the fourth seminal moment, the spread throughout Europe of Salafism, the ultra-conservative strand of Islam inspired by 7th Century Arabia. Salafism took root in Europe twenty years ago, propagated in France by the country’s Algerian diaspora. In the same period, Western Europe experienced the ‘Girl Power’ phenomenon, the emergence of an assertive (i.e., stupid and poorly led) generation of young women for a new millennium. Girl Power and Salafism were never going to harmonise, not when the latter exhorts women “to recognise the importance of modesty and realise the evils of nakedness”.
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