The mass sexual assault of women in public has been documented in Egypt since 2005,[n 1] when Egyptian security forces and their agents were accused of using it as a weapon against female protesters during a political demonstration in Tahrir Square, Cairo on 25 May.

[n 4][11] The issue attracted more discussion following the Eid al-Fitr holiday in 2006, when on 24 October a crowd of young men who had been denied entry to a cinema in Cairo engaged in a five-hour-long mass sexual assault of women in Talaat Harb Street.

[13]: 13–14 The attacks gained prominence outside Egypt in February 2011 when Lara Logan, a correspondent for the American network CBS, was sexually assaulted by hundreds of men in Tahrir Square, Cairo, while reporting on the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

[2]: 41 [18] Describing the Tahrir Square attacks, women said they were often separated from friends by the crowd, or out alone, and encircled by a large group of men who groped their breasts, genitals and buttocks.

[2]: 41 Volunteer groups in Cairo, including OpAntiSH (Operation Anti Sexual Harassment), organize "extraction teams" who push into the circles wearing padded clothing, helmets and gloves, and get the women out.

[22]: 7  Journalist Shereen El Feki, author of Sex and the Citadel (2013), writing about sexual harassment in general (taharrush jinsi), blamed unemployment, social media and a "breakdown of family surveillance" because of overworked parents.

[25] Nehad Abu Komsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights, argues that sexual harassment is a symptom of the country's political and economic oppression, and that men are "lashing out at those next down the line in the patriarchy.

"[26]: 126  Hussein el Shafie of OpAntiSH has argued that the attacks are like a "tear-gas bomb" to get women off the streets – not sexual but stemming from a sense of entitlement.

[28] Following this, two films – Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story (Yousry Nasrallah, 2009) and 678 (Muhammad Diyab, 2010) – brought the issue of sexual assault to cinemas.

[9]: 26 The mass sexual assaults have been on the increase since the fall of Hosni Mubarak on 11 February 2011, the end of the 2011 revolution, particularly during protests in Tahrir Square and religious festivals.

[29] Taylor et al. call this Egypt's "liminal moment," following the anthropologist Victor Turner's idea that, during political upheaval, people are liberated from their "cultural script."

[29][31] Logan, a correspondent for CBS, was sexually assaulted for 30 minutes by around 200 men in Tahrir Square before being rescued by a group of Egyptian women and soldiers.

'"[33]Girl in the Blue Bra,Tahrir Square, December 2011[34] Egyptian president visits a victim,June 2014[35] From 2011 onwards, footage of women being assaulted began to appear regularly on social media, including one of a woman in Alexandria in 2011 being dragged along the ground and hoisted onto men's shoulders.

[36] The Girl in the Blue Bra video (Sit al Banat) in December 2011 showed a woman partially covered by an abaya being beaten, stomped on and dragged around by the military in Tahrir Square.

[38] A video taken on 8 June 2014, also in Tahrir Square, showed a naked woman being sexually assaulted during inaugural celebrations for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

[44][45] After the particularly high number of assaults on 25 January 2013, women met that night at Café Riche on Talaat Harb Street, near Tahrir Square, and decided to start telling their stories.

[22]: 26 In March 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood opposed the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, arguing that it would lead to the "disintegration of society.

[49] The attacks in Egypt, and the term taharrush ("harassment" in Arabic), came to wider attention in 2016 when women in Europe reported having been sexually assaulted by groups of North African men during New Year's Eve celebrations.

[52] The news coverage prompted allegations that similar attacks had taken place in Stockholm in 2014 and 2015 during We Are Sthlm, a music festival for teenagers, but were covered up.

[54] On 10 January 2016 the German newspaper Die Welt published an article under the headline "The phenomenon 'taharrush gamea' has arrived in Germany".

[55] Writing in the Spectator, Dan Hitchens said that mass sexual assault was a feature of Egypt, rather than of the Arab world, and that linking it to the attacks in Europe was "over-excited.

"[56] Yasmine Fathi, Al-Ahram, 2013: "During the attacks [in Cairo], the women often find themselves trapped inside what some have called 'the circle of hell,' a mob of 200 or 300 men who fought with one another to pull, shove, beat and strip them.

Mona el Naggar, Michael Slackman, "Silence and Fury in Cairo After Sexual Attacks on Women", The New York Times, 15 November 2006.