This article was published in Dutch in ZemZem 1/2021 on climate change.

According to the ninth century Arab historian Ibn al-Kalbi, Hind bint al-Nuʿman, a pre-Islamic princess, was the first Arab woman who fell in love with another woman. Her beloved was the legendary Zarqa al-Yamama, a woman with miraculous sight. Her name, zarqa means ‘blue-eyed’, but her eyes were more than that: she could see from a very far distance.

The question ‘Whatever happened to the Egyptians?’ strikes a chord with a wide segment of the Egyptian middle-class. It expresses concerns about the presumed essence of ‘the real Egyptian’.  In this essay, I turn to social media posts to explore how this question resonates online. I will focus on the images of female stars and their different images and perceptions.

‘The term “NGOization” is commonly used among many social movements, activist networks and academics to refer to the institutionalization, professionalization, depoliticization and demobilization of movements for social and environmental change,’ as noted by researchers Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor.[1] In Arabic-speaking countries, the NGO-ization of queer activism over th