Raping women in Tahrir square 'is not a red line' railed Egyptian Salafi preacher Abu Islam in February, during a bout of some of the worst instances of sexual violence visited upon women since the Revolution. 'Naked women' he exclaimed (referring to any woman not dressed in the correct Islamic way according to him)'are going to Tahrir Square because they want to be raped'.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood never officially echoed this view, the preacher's comments are sadly indicative of a similar level of contempt towards women continually demonstrated by the actions of Egypt's ruling party. Little more than a month after Abu Islam's video was posted online, the Brotherhood condemned a UN declaration to end violence against women on the basis that allowing women to prosecute their husbands for rape 'would lead to the complete disintegration of society'.

Statements like these will make any reasonable person's blood boil. And rightly so. But we must take care of where we direct that anger.

When I first came to Egypt, it was so easy for me to put every inequality I saw down to an age-old dialectic which still dominates the western mindset. These women are oppressed, I thought, because they are Muslims, because they are Egyptian. They are controlled by men and devoid of agency. I, as a western woman, am liberated, my rights protected. I possess agency which I am able to exercise to the same extent as the men around me.

This dialectic is flawed on a number of levels. It is true that there are oppressive regimes, and oppressive aspects of every religion which are often visited upon women in negative and harmful ways. But the essential truth of this fact has been expanded in order to justify an over-simplification which ignores the complexities of agency and freedom, which might be exercised by different women in different ways. It ignores the complexities of the different ways, positive and negative, in which a woman's culture may impact upon her.

It also places contemporary western culture at the endpoint of the struggle for women's rights. The west has defined the terms of 'liberation', and that we have apparently achieved those ends allows us to judge the lives and choices of other women, and even intervene on their behalf if we deem it necessary.

In this sense, the over-riding western mind-set asks us to channel our anger against cultural difference and the abuses against women which are apparently inherent in it, as opposed to systematic abuses which are being committed against women world-wide. It forces us to look out instead of in. To trivialise the inequalities we perceive in our own cultures – because what do we have to complain about? After all, western women are liberated, the women of Egypt oppressed.

As a 'liberated western woman', I don't have to listen to Abu Islam telling me that if I go to Tahrir Square dressed a certain way, I am asking to be raped. But I do have to listen to western feminist Caitlin Moran telling me that if I wear high heels walking down the street at night, I will attract rapists. I do have to listen to Joanna Lumley telling me not to 'stagger around in the wrong clothes at midnight'.

If my husband rapes me, as a liberated western woman, I can take my complaint to the police and have him prosecuted. But, like scores of women across London, I may well be pressured into dropping my accusations. Even if the police take me seriously, the likelihood of prosecution is famously low. And were my case to reach the ears of the media or, God forbid, the Twittersphere, I may well be consistently told, like the Steubenville rape victim, that I brought the whole thing on myself. Just as though I were one of the 'naked' women in Tahrir Square.

Rather than separating the anger we may feel at any one of these incidents from the anger we felt at Abu Islam’s comments, we should recognise their basic similarities. By directing our anger not at cultural difference, but at a globalised rhetoric which, through a consistent language of victim-blaming, perpetuates and normalises rape, we can begin to deconstruct the ‘oppressed/liberated’ dialectic.

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it legitimises the relevance of feminism in liberated’’ countries since it removes the temptation to grade the importance of abuses against women’s rights according to prejudice based on cultural difference.

Secondly, it potentially allows women to embark on a more sensitive and engaged negotiation with feminism globally. If we recognise that basic abuses against women, such as the rhetoric surrounding rape culture, are pervasive in different contexts, and in different ways, and yet are something to which all women are nonetheless subject, we can have the humility to realise that we should not be trying to ‘save’ women from other cultures, but to engage with them as individuals on their own terms.