#MosqueMeToo: Women share experiences of sexual harassment inside religious places

NEW DELHI: Taking a leaf out of the #MeToo campaign on social media, which helped thousands of women across the world to come out in open and share their experiences of sexual harassment, hundreds of Muslim women are rallying behind the hashtag #MosqueMeToo to narrate similar encounters.

#MosqueMeToo is a trend promoted by an Egyptian-American feminist and journalist Mona Eltahawy who started the campaign after she shared her experience of sexual assault during Hajj in 2013.


Within hours of her tweet, people from around the world started using the hashtag to narrate similar experiences.

A woman recalled horrible memories of sexual assault on her as she performed Hajj in Mecca.


A girl revealed how a man sexually assaulted her, when she was 10 years old, inside a mosque while offering Friday prayer.


As the hashtag became popular, Eltahawy tweeted a list of "Things You Will Be Told When You Say You've Been Sexually Assaulted".


Another user said that women are not the sole victims of sexual assaults in religious places, even young boys have been victims of sexual assault inside these religious sanctuaries.


More and more women are coming forward to reveal details of horrid experiences they were subjected to inside mosques and other religious places.

The hashtag is among the top trends of Farsi Twitter and has been tweeted thousands of times since it was first introduced.