DW Akademie Study Safer platforms, stronger participation
Another case is journalist Yara Halabi, who presented an
episode about the women of Sweida who have been
kidnapped, raped, and forcibly disappeared. Comments
used accusatory, rhetorical questions portraying her as a
traitor or collaborator, linking her to alleged support for
Israel and disregarding violations committed by Al-Hijri
(Druze’s Spiritual leader) against Bedouins and Bedouin
women, for example: “Where is the girl from Sweida
among those who raise the Israeli flag in Al-Karama Square
and demand independence from Syria? And where is she
in relation to the crimes of al-Hijri against the Bedouins,
such as beheadings, the rape of Bedouin women, and their
expulsion from Sweida after the rapes and detention?
Where is the Syrian Observatory? And where is the girl
from Sweida in the face of the crimes of al-Hijri and his
followers?”.
God damn her. That’s how women’s rights
organizations are, defending any woman
except chaste Muslim women. Like their
Western masters, they don’t care about the
hundreds of thousands of Muslim women
who have been killed in Syria or tortured in
prisons. The only thing that concerns them
is the following question: Will women wear
the hijab?
Although high‑profile campaigns against Ziena Shahla,
Farah Yousef, and Hiba Ezeldin attract public attention and
fuel further gender‑based violence and online hate
Women should first learn to walk on the
street before learning to drive the car.
I think it is better for you to devote your
attention to your children and home only
and leave driving to men.
The original role of a woman is to stay at
home. A woman's place is in the kitchen,
not among men.
Another example is Hiba Ezeldin who leads a women’s‑rights
organization and has publicly criticized forced marriages
and discussed dress‑code policies in women‑only spaces,
which opponents have seized on and distorted to claim she
insults Islamic norms (Front Line Defenders, 2025). Examples of GBVO comments against her include “God damn her.
That’s how women’s rights organizations are, defending any
woman except chaste Muslim women. Like their Western
masters, they don’t care about the hundreds of thousands
of Muslim women who have been killed in Syria or tortured
in prisons. The only thing that concerns them is the following question: Will women wear the hijab?”. As in the case
of Ziena Shahla, Hiba Ezeldin threats affected her real life
where she had to close her social media accounts until her
life was secured and the “trend” was over.
3.5.3 Spread of appearance-based
harassment regardless of dress or status
speech, many GBVO incidents never surface because
survivors stay silent to avoid escalation. Our monitoring
indicates that perpetrators do not restrict their attacks to a
single profile: women who are conservative and
non‑conservative, prominent and less visible, are all
targeted. There is no consistent correlation between a
woman’s dress or social status and the likelihood of being
attacked; instead, attackers exploit whatever vulnerabilities will most effectively shame or delegitimize the target.
Online abuse frequently combines sexualized offenses
with sectarian and political accusations to maximize harm
and social exclusion. For example, Latifa Al‑Droubi (Syria’s
First Lady) has been subjected to explicitly sexual and
derogatory language intended to humiliate and erase her
credibility. These patterns show that GBVO functions both
as immediate personal violence and as a broader tactic of
social control: by shaming individual women, attackers aim
to deter other women from speaking out or participating in
public life. Comments include: “Latifa Aldroubi, she looks
like a man,” “Latifa Al-Droubi is a whore,” and “Her moustache is longer than mine.”
3.5.4 Using GBVO to marginalize women’s
presence in the public sphere
Commentary marginalized women’s presence in public life
by combining sarcasm, moral policing and outright exclusion. Many voices mocked women drivers as a social
inconvenience or joked that women should master walking
the street before learning to drive, while others insisted
women belonged at home and should prioritize childcare
over public mobility. Some accepted limited mobility only
under strict conditions, no mingling with men and demonstrable “responsibility”, and a minority escalated to dehumanizing rhetoric that framed women as a social threat.
Examples captured in the scans included comments such
as: “Women should first learn to walk on the street before
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