TAKE BACK THE NILE:

Egyptian women are saying 'Enough!' (Michael Slackman, 6/10/05, The New York Times)

[A] recent attack on a small group of women, in which they were groped and assaulted by a crowd of men chanting support for the ruling National Democratic Party while the police stood by and watched, has helped to unify and motivate various groups that have been calling for a more open and democratic government.

The images of women being groped and beaten - particularly offensive in this conservative Islamic society - have helped unite groups as diverse as the religion-based Muslim Brotherhood and the left-leaning Center for Socialist Studies in their calls for change.

For a country where political life has atrophied after more than two decades of living under emergency laws, the attacks have also inspired many new people to become politically active, in general creating a backlash that has taken the government by surprise.

"At least now there is dialogue and meetings between us as Communists and the Muslim Brotherhood," said Kamal Khalil, director of the Center for Socialist Studies. "We share our visions and there is a kind of coordination - of course the event, assaults of Wednesday the 25th, helped - we can't deny this."

Those assaults last month also seem to have jump-started the women's movement here. It is not a Western-style feminist movement but one in which women have moved to take the lead in a political battle for empowerment.

"We are opening a real popular female movement," said Ghane El Halafawy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, speaking Thursday night at a forum called "The Street is Ours," which was organized by women who were attacked.

It has been less than a year since the once unthinkable began to occur in Egypt's political life: Groups of people started taking to the streets criticizing President Hosni Mubarak, a line few had been willing to cross before. But the movement called itself "kifay," or "enough," and its goal was to stop Mubarak from a sixth term as president.

In February, Mubarak agreed to allow more than one candidate, himself, in the race for president. On May 25, on the day of a scheduled referendum to amend the Constitution, a small group of protesters met in central Cairo, insisting that the referendum was no more than a fig leaf. They were greeted by an army of riot policemen and undercover security agents and uniformed officers. Witnesses said groups of men who arrived in buses were allowed, with the police standing by, to attack and beat the protesters. Witnesses said that in some instances the police kept protesters cordoned in, while the men beat them.

While the violence made for national news here, the images and stories of women whose clothes were torn and bodies groped have caused the greatest backlash against the government.