Aliaa Magda Elmahdy i Stockholm

Foolish act of bravery? Egyptian activist risks her life after
posting full frontal nude shot online sparking outrage among Muslims


Wearing nothing but a pair of
stockings, red ribbon in her hair and a pair of flat red shoes, the
black and white shot would not look out of place in a nude photography
book.

But this is no
ordinary art project. It is the work of a feminist Egyptian activist who
is making a bold and potentially dangerous statement.

Aliaa
Magda Elmahdy, a 20-year old university student from Cairo, has sparked
outrage in the Middle East with the controversial full-length image,
posted on her blog last week.





Controversial: Egyptian university student Aliaa
Magda Elmahdy posted a nude picture of herself on her blog, attracting
1.5million hits



It has since received 1.5 million hits and thousands flooded the site with
insults. Some denounced Elmahdy as a 'prostitute' and 'mentally sick' or
urged police to arrest her.

Elmahdy's posting is almost unheard of in a country where nudity is strongly frowned upon - even as an art form and could lead to her being jailed.




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Most women in the Muslim majority Egypt wear the headscarf
and even those who don't rarely wear clothes exposing the arms or legs
in public.
On her arabic blog, Aliaa defends her actions, writing: 'Hide all art books and smash naked archaeological statues.
'Then take off your
clothes and look at yourselves in the mirror, then burn your body that
you so despise to get rid of your sexual complexes forever, before
subjecting me to your bigoted insults or denying my freedom of
expression.'




Brave? Liberals fear she will taint them in the
eyes of deeply conservative Egyptians and thousands have flooded the
blog with insults

But her attempts at protesting limits on free expression may have backfired.
Rather than garner support from the Liberals hoping to win the November
28th election, they are keen to distance themselves from the blogger.

They
fear she will taint them in the eyes of deeply conservative Egyptians
and, ruining their chances at competing with fundamentalist Islamic
parties.

Egypt, a
nation of some 85 million people, is polarised between Islamists and
liberals ahead of the elections, the first since the February downfall
of former President Hosni Mubarak.



Most women in the Muslim majority country wear the headscarf
and even those who don't rarely wear clothes exposing the arms or legs
in public

Members of the most hardline Islamic movement, the Salafis, have warned voters that liberals will corrupt Egypt's morals.
'This
hurts the entire secular current in front of those calling themselves
the people of virtue,' Sayyed el-Qimni, a prominent self-described
secular figure, said referring to Islamists.
'It's
is a double disaster. Because I am liberal and I believe in the right
of personal freedom, I can't interfere,' El-Qimni said on Egyptian TV.
The
April 6 movement, one of the most prominent liberal activist groups
that led the 18-day uprising against Mubarak, issued a statement denying
claims by some on the web that Elmahdy is a member of the group.
The posting prompted furious discussions on internet social media sites, with pages for and against her put up on Facebook.
One activist, Ahmed Awadallah, praised her in a Tweet, writing, 'I'm totally taken back by her bravery.'
A
supporter, who identified himself as Emad Nasr Zikri, wrote in a
comment on Elmahdy's blog, 'We need to learn how to separate between
nudity and sex.'
He said that before fundamentalist influence in Egypt, 'there were nude models in art school for students to draw'.
Some 100 people liked his comment.



Elmahdy and her boyfriend Kareem Amer, also a controversial blogger, have challenged Egypt's social conventions before.
Earlier
this year, they posted mobile phone video footage of themselves
debating with managers of a public park who threw them out for public
displays of affection.
Amer spent four years in prison for blog posting deemed insulting to Islam and for calling Mubarak a 'symbol of tyranny'.