My female friend went to Cairo

I should blog more often.

I heard something that disturbed be a little when talking with my friend Romy this weekend. She related a story about her interaction with some Muslim men in Cairo.
Romy and a girlfriend were traveling with Romy's Egyptian female cousin, and Romy made the mistake of looking at and making eye contact with a group of men in a nearby car. The men proceeded to repeatedly ram the cousin's car, driving her off the road. She drove on the sidewalk for a bit, then tried to escape the wrong way down a one way street. The men caught up with them anyway, and continued to ram the car. As her bumper was about to fall off, the cousin got out of the car and went up the men and asked them in arabic if they needed anything, without looking at them, of course. Dissuaded by realizing they were dealing with at least one local, the men finally left them alone. The cousin returned to the car on the verge of a nervous breakdown for confronting the men thusly.

It really took me a little time to get my brain into those guys' heads. I've experienced on many occasions the prejudice that western women, American women in particular, are promiscuous, and it often leads to a foreigner believing he's about to get laid. Humorous at best and creepy bordering on dangerous at worst, it never leads to instant out-and-out anger.
Romy also mentioned that women can never go to bars, there would be a mob outside ready to beat them to death if they tried. I was rather apalled.

So I read a little Islamic clif notes on wikipedia. Two things jumped out at me:
1. There is no gender equality in Islamic law, just gender complementarity.
2. Women are solely responsible for inciting sexual temptation according to Islamic law.

It's number two that really helped put all the pieces into place. By making eye contact with those men, Romy instilled thoughts in them that were impure. She basically forced them to stop thinking about God and to think about her. So their instant response is "How DARE she interact with me? All women know that men desire them and only by covering themselves up completely can men go about their business in God's grace. To act in such a manner is to prey upon weak Muslims and coerce them into sin by having premarital sex."
Obviously that was not what Romy was trying to get across, but that is what was interpreted. Cultural differences are different.