From Verses to Tragedy: The Story of Basant and the Missing Question of Justice

During the first half of last month, the primary focus of attention for Egyptians was neither the American Israeli war with Iran nor any other international development. Instead, the central issue dominating public attention was the tragedy of the Egyptian blogger Basant Suleiman, the Alexandrian woman who decided to end her life during a live broadcast. She jumped from the thirteenth floor balcony of a building in the upscale district of Smouha, in an incident that shook public opinion and reopened painful questions about Egypt’s personal status laws, the role of the state and society, social media, and psychological pressures.

Some may ask: why is this article coming weeks after she “asked to leave our world”?
The answer is simple. Every time I attempt to write, I am overwhelmed again by the same intense anger that took hold of me the moment I fully grasped what she had been subjected to the causes, the events, and an entire system of practices and behaviors that effectively pushed her toward the decision to commit suicide, and then to carry it out live before millions. A scene that cannot be separated from its social and psychological context.

This was not merely an individual act. In its brutality and public exposure, it became a direct indictment almost an eternal stigma against both the state and society together. A testimony written with her final decision and signed before everyone, as if declaring that the accumulated neglect, complicity, and absence of a real protective system for women in Egypt were the real cause.

What makes this anger persistent is that the core reason behind what happened is still deliberately concealed; neither discussed nor acknowledged, as if there were an unspoken agreement to bury it. It is a disturbing reality that becomes painfully clear when approached, revealing how silence itself can become a full partner in manufacturing tragedy whether through social complicity, weak intervention, or leaving Egyptian women alone to face their fate until the end.

For this reason, and after regaining some relative calm, I began writing this article, trying as much as possible to balance anger with analysis, without losing clarity of truth or the sharpness of criticism. Because the issue is not merely an isolated incident, but a complete structure of pressures, neglect, and accumulated failures that cannot be reduced to a single moment of collapse.

In the following lines are some chapters of suffering or what can be described as (symptoms of the original cause, the known but forbidden disease) which seems unwelcome to discuss directly. These were experienced by Basant in her marriage to a financially well-off husband who works as an engineer in one of the Gulf countries. He is the son of a former police general who passed away recently, after having inflicted severe hardship upon her. His brother also works as a police officer, which reflects the extent of influence and power within the family.

As is well known, in Egypt my country, governed by a militarized authoritarian system even a well-connected police officer can turn an ordinary citizen’s life into a form of hell. So what about a general, alongside a major within the same security apparatus?

Basant Suleiman stated in more than one media appearance that she lived through a turbulent marriage filled with continuous conflict, which directly affected her psychological stability. She spoke about severe pressure and repeated humiliation from her ex-husband, as well as from his parents, and described a series of actions that if even a fraction of them had occurred in a country governed by the rule of law would have resulted in imprisonment for those responsible.

She also spoke about the lack of financial responsibility and failure to meet obligations related to raising her two daughters after divorce. With these pressures accumulating without real relief, she eventually reached a state of severe psychological exhaustion that ended in the tragedy that shook public opinion.
The question now is: if these are all the symptoms and visible manifestations, then what is the disease itself the original cause? Very well… I will answer.

Egyptian personal status laws applied to Muslims in Egypt are still primarily based on the Hanafi school of Islamic jurisprudence, which is the official reference in most family matters, according to Laws No. 25 of 1920 and No. 25 of 1929 and their amendments.

The Egyptian legislator has also adopted the principle of jurisprudential selection (takhayyur) in some reforms, such as Law No. 100 of 1985, drawing on opinions from other Sunni schools (Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali) in matters such as divorce due to harm and alimony, in order to overcome the limitations of certain Hanafi rulings.
For some time now, discussions have been ongoing about a new personal status law expected to come into force around 2026. The draft reportedly contains around 355 articles and aims to modernize the system, while establishing rules said to be based on Islamic Sharia.

Here arises the central question: has Islam done justice to women? And has Sharia derived from verses, texts, and hadiths truly done so in its current jurisprudential applications?

A definitive, final, and categorical answer: it has not done so at all. This is an established truth. All the referenced jurisprudential interpretations, across their various schools, ultimately remain confined within a single interpretive framework circulating within it without the courage or ability to move beyond it.

What happened to Basant was not an exception, but the logical outcome of a long accumulation of legal, social, and psychological distortions, institutionalized and legitimized under a system presented as authoritative. A system that strips women of their individuality, reducing them to serving men and fulfilling expectations at the expense of their own human dignity and autonomy.

Naturally, such an unjust system ultimately produces a reality in which women are left alone to face their fate, without sufficient protection or effective mechanisms of justice.

Therefore, any serious discussion of this tragedy cannot stop at sympathy or condemnation. It must extend to a genuine moral and structural review of the entire system: its laws, its foundations, its mechanisms of enforcement, and its suitability for the modern world a world beyond classical frameworks.

The question is no longer: what happened?

But rather: how long will this pattern continue producing tragedies?

And is there any real will to break this cycle, or are we simply waiting for the next victim?

Basant Suleiman’s final words in her last video to her followers were: “Take care of the two girls.”

Perhaps, through this article, I have fulfilled what my conscience demands by addressing the root cause, in the hope that it may contribute, even slightly, to revealing the truth before the tragedy repeats itself once again.