Thirteen candidates, who include Islamists, liberals and Mubarak regime figures, are contesting the election. No outright winner is expected to emerge from the two-day vote starting Wednesday. So, a runoff between the two top finishers will be held June 16-17. The winner will be announced on June 21.

“It’s a miracle,” said Selwa Abdel-Malik, a 60-year-old Christian from the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria as she was about to vote. “And it’s a beautiful feeling too.”

For most of his 29-year rule, Mubarak — like his predecessors — ran unopposed in yes-or-no referendums. Rampant fraud guaranteed ruling party victories in parliamentary elections. Even when, in 2005, Mubarak let challengers oppose him in elections, he ended up not only trouncing his liberal rival but jailing him.

Egypt’s next president will be the nation’s fifth since the monarchy was toppled following a 1952 coup that ushered in six decades of de facto military rule. Like his three predecessors — Anwar Sadat, Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Mohammed Naguib — Mubarak has a military background.

Many of the candidates in the race have called for amendments in Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which most Egyptians continue to view as their nation’s number one enemy. Though none will likely to dump the pact, a victory by any of the Islamist or leftist candidates could mean strained ties with Israel and a stronger backing for the Palestinians in the peace process.

The generals who have taken over from Mubarak after an 18-day uprising forced him to step down 15 months ago have promised to hand over power by July 1, ending a turbulent transitional period defined by deadly street clashes, a faltering economy, a dramatic surge of crime and human rights abuses.

The military has said it has no intention to cling on to power, but it is not clear what authority it wants to retain after the election of a new president. The generals have said they have no preferred candidate, but they are widely thought to be favoring Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander and Mubarak’s last prime minister who has steadily gained in opinion polls over the past week.

Other front-runners are Mubarak’s foreign minister of 10 years Amr Moussa, Mohammed Morsi of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, a moderate Islamist whose inclusive platform has won him the support of some liberals, leftists and minority Christians.

The election comes less than two weeks before Mubarak, 84, is due to be sentenced after he was tried on charges of complicity in the killing of some 900 protesters during the uprising against his rule. He also faced corruption charges, along with his two sons, one-time heir apparent Gamal and wealthy businessman Alaa.

Whoever wins will face the unenviable task of having to tackle a host of formidable problems, ranging from economic, a tenuous security and soaring unemployment. The next president will serve a four-year term.

“May God help the new president,” said Zaki Mohammed, a teacher in his 40s as he waited to vote in a district close to the Giza Pyramids. “There will be 82 million pair of eyes watching him.”

Another voter in line, tour agent Salah Ali, said: “We need someone who works more than he talks.”

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Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Alexandria, Egypt.

But she was barred from entry, an insult added to injury by the military, a powerful and patriarchal institution that has been accused of many violations, including the sexual assault of its own female prisoners and aggressive indifference to the rights of women on a wide scale.

“They were denying me entry because it was 2 a.m., with the excuse that I am a female so it is ‘too late’ for me to enter the premises,” she told GlobalPost. “I stood there regardless and continued to demand to enter because each detainee has the right to a lawyer.”

Fifteen months after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians head to the polls Wednesday and Thursday to choose the country’s first-ever civilian president. This election and the constitution to be framed in its aftermath will set a course for Egypt’s fledgling democracy, and there is almost no one who has more at stake than the country’s women.

As the debate continues about how much power the new president will have relative to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and how much influence the majority Islamist parliament will exert on society, women like Omran who were on the forefront of the revolution say they’re now being pushed out of public and political life, at best an afterthought to two rival and very male camps — Mubarak’s “old guard” and the Islamists.

None of the presidential candidates — all men after former television presenter Bothaina Kamel failed to qualify for the ballot — have demonstrated significant interest in women’s issues, advocates say, while many women have been targeted for violence and intimidation by the ruling military. But many women are pushing back against this campaign of marginalization, fighting to secure a role in Egyptian society at a pivotal time in the country’s history.

“Not a single candidate made efforts to sit down with the female coalition’s movement during his campaign, except for Amr Moussa,” said Fatma Emam, who is currently a researcher at Nazra for Feminist Studies and an activist blogger.

Emam, an outspoken 29-year-old woman from Nubia in Southern Egypt, said she is disappointed by the current front-runners, which include Moussa, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, Abdel Moniem Aboul Fotouh and the Nasserite candidate Hamdeen Sabahy.

“What’s happening now in the elections shows that women’s rights are not a concern,” she said.

Emam believes economic and security concerns have trumped social issues — including women’s rights, fair laws and education reform — in voters’ minds. Recent Pew Research Center polling confirms that 81 percent of Egyptians consider economic improvement to be “very important” in the election — more than any other issue.

However, according to Egypt’s National Council for Women, 33 percent of Egyptian households are headed by women.

“Up until recently, five years or so ago, women were not given tax cuts by the tax authority because they were not considered heads of households, even though now at least 33 percent of women are breadwinners,” Emam said.

Though women are currently a crucial part of the Egyptian economy, the society still lacks a fair legal system that would guarantee the rights of all citizens, according to Mozn Hassan, a self-described women rights defender and head of Nazra for Feminist Studies.

From “virginity tests” allegedly administered by the army upon Samira Ibrahim and dozens of other women, to excessive violence strategically targeting female protesters like the “girl in the blue bra,” the women’s struggle has been closely tied to a larger movement against military rule in Egypt.

“A huge part of the idea of militarization in society involves targeting women,” said Hassan. “All of these events, including the virginity tests, are a part of it all, [and] this won’t end with presidential elections.”

The Women’s Vote

While many Egyptians hope that significant change will come with a newly elected president, Egyptian women say they must retrieve their rights themselves.

Dalia Ziada, one of the country’s most active women’s rights advocates, is currently leading a study at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Democratic Studies that focuses on the situation of women after the Arab Spring.

Ziada, director for the Ibn Khaldun in Egypt, will be working closely with the center’s researchers to monitor this week’s elections in 22 governorates across the country, including Cairo, Alexandria and Upper Egypt.

As an Egyptian woman, Ziada believes that many of today’s candidates have failed to address female voters, which make up 52 percent of society.

“Although he is associated with remnants of the old regime and he may easily prolong military rule behind the scenes, [Amr] Moussa, as a liberal, is the only candidate who has reasserted that women’s rights would be a priority,” she said.

But Ziada believes even Moussa exhibits a chauvinism that is pervasive in Egyptian politics.

“When asked about the role of the first lady, all of the candidates said they do not want their wives to be involved in politics,” said Ziada.

“If a president does not respect his wife and does not see that she can play a role in politics, then how will he respect the average Egyptian woman?”

Women Taking Action

Shortly after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011, a few hundred women marched on International Women’s Day hoping to protest against sexual harassment, which has been a social epidemic in the Arab world’s most populous country for years.

But the women were attacked and harassed by small groups of men in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the country’s uprising. The men yelled “now is not the time” for trivial demands.

Later in December 2011, images of soldiers slapping elderly women on the face, stripping young female protesters, and dragging women by their hair quickly circulated.

Despite evidence of violence, many people brought blame on the women, criticizing their presence in the streets and, in some cases, their “provocative” clothing.

This time, thousands of determined women of all ages and social backgrounds marched in unprecedented numbers to protest the Egyptian army’s excessive use of force and sexual harassment against pro-democracy protesters. As the women marched, male protesters made a human cordon around them, fearing that the women might be attacked again.

Meanwhile, the SCAF defended the soldiers’ actions, stating that they were acting “according to the circumstances.”

In March 2012, a court ruled against Samira Ibrahim, who accused a military doctor of forcefully administering a virginity test after she was detained by the military while protesting against the SCAF’s prolonged rule on March 9, 2011.

Although military generals had publicly admitted that the military conducts virginity tests as a safeguard against allegations of sexual assault or rape in military confinement, the court stopped short of assigning specific blame.

Many advocates see it as their role to denounce the autocratic regime, which is still “very much in place” and without much female representation.

Just 10 women won seats in Egypt’s parliamentary elections earlier this year. Women’s representation in the constituent assembly, which will be tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution, remains a contested issue.

“We have drafted a list of amendments in the constitution that need to be adjusted immediately, said Emam.

“The Egyptian Young Feminist Movement has also provided the speaker of parliament with a list of women who are eligible to serve on the constituent assembly who can help draft a constitution, but all of these efforts have been overlooked,” she added.

The Struggle with Legal Reform

With Islamists making up as much as 70 percent of the people’s assembly, Hassan fears that women’s voices will continue to be stifled.

“Till this day, the parliament has not passed a single progressive decision regarding the past incidents of violence,” she said. “There is also no law till now that would protect women from domestic violence.”

As the country’s ruling powers fail to hold accountable those responsible for such violence, society follows suit.

“The Nadim Center [for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence] recently drafted a petition hoping to include a law that would support victims of domestic violence, but only 2,000 citizens actually signed the petition,” Emam said.

Parallel to legal reform, Emam strongly believes there must be societal and governmental restructuring so that women can successfully work to achieve their rights.

“I hoped they would discuss these issues in parliament, but instead they discuss our age of marriage,” Hassan said, referring to parliament’s controversial debates regarding a bill that would lower a woman’s legal age of marriage from 16 to 14.

However, Hassan believes that while the current people’s assembly ignores women’s concerns, the military institution does not even hear them.

“Even if Islamists are aggressive in their decisions regarding women’s rights, the military does not even see us,” she said.

Despite these obstacles, however, Egyptian women are proving that they are doers, not victims.

“I’m against the idea of victimizing women,” Hassan stressed. “You are in a patriarchal society, they already see you as victims. But if we are subjected to violence, we are not looking to be consoled. We are aiming to empower ourselves and to to be in positions that would allow us to put an end to these problems.”

Although they both work independently, Ziada from Ibn Khaldun shares Hassan’s sentiment when it comes to the threat of rising extremism.

“The rising Islamism gave a justification for the patriarchal mentality,” said Ziada. “Everything in the past was inappropriate for women to do; now it is not only inappropriate, it is haram, or a sin. Before, it was not right to challenge society; but now you can’t challenge God, according to Islamists.”

Taking matters into her own hands, Ziada is currently working with Ibn Khaldun on a program that aims to empower women from Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

Still in the works, the program will choose women activists from the region and provide them with the tools that would allow them to compete for positions of power.

“We are going to start this initiative in two or three months. It will take about a year, and we hope to recruit women who have potential to lead in legal, religious, economic or political fields,” said Ziada.

By starting from the grassroots level and equipping Arab women with the skills of communication and international relations, the project aims to give them the opportunity to be part of the decision-making process.

“Our aim is to empower young women. This is what will achieve real change,” she added.

His status as a prominent Brotherhood outsider seems to be one of his main selling points — both for other Islamists eager to break free from the influence of the 80-year-old Brotherhood movement, and for liberals scared of its rise.

The Brotherhood’s own Islam-oriented Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won a sweeping victory in the country’s recent parliamentary elections and now dominates parliament. Critics worried that if they took the presidency as well, the Brotherhood’s power would be too great in Egypt’s post-revolution political landscape, with uncertain consequences for the country’s nascent democracy.

“It’s unacceptable to have both a Muslim Brotherhood majority in parliament and a Muslim Brotherhood president when the government should represent everyone,” said Essam Shebl, vice chairman of the moderate Islamist party Al Wasat, which endorsed Fotouh on Monday.

“[Fotouh] has an Islamist background, but is calling for moderate Islamic governance,” Shebl added. “This is what is best for the country, and I think the Salafi [more conservative Islamists] in general are starting to see the benefits of the moderate approach championed by Dr. Aboul Fotouh, and I see that was great progress.”

The Brotherhood’s own presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsi, is polling strikingly low — last, in some cases — according to surveys released by the government-linked Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Thirteen candidates will face off in the presidential elections on May 24, with a run-off between the top two slated for June 16. The Brotherhood had initially promised not to field a candidate for the presidential elections, but later back-tracked, causing many Egyptians to view their intentions with suspicion.

Fotouh, once a member of the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guidance Council, was suspended by the movement in May 2011 when he announced his intention to make a bid for the presidency. The Brotherhood and its party refused to support him.

But since then, he has built a swell of ground-level support by campaigning for the right to education and healthcare for all Egyptians, ending all military trials for civilians and boosting foreign tourism to save the ailing economy.

In contrast to some of the other Egyptian Islamists, Fotouh is against imposing Islamic law on non-Muslims. The rise of Islamic parties, which collectively hold roughly 70 percent of seats in parliament, have worried liberals and the Coptic Christian minority here.

Many said that without the support of the Brotherhood, Fotouh stood no chance of becoming Egypt’s next president. But several local think-tanks and newspaper polls have him either leading the race or in second place after former foreign minister and secular-liberal candidate, Amr Moussa.

On Tuesday, the secular Egyptian Google executive, Wael Ghonim — who became famous and galvanized protests during last year’s revolution when he wept during a live television interview — endorsed Fotouh for president on Twitter.

In addition to the moderate Al Wasat Party, the ultra-conservative Al Nour party and the former militant organization Al Gama’a Al Islamiya, which together encompass a wide swathe of the Islamist vote, endorsed Fotouh over the past several days.

But as fundamentalists, these parties may be less than interested in advocating Fotouh’s more measured interpretation of Islamic law than outflanking the Brotherhood’s seemingly invincible FJP.

Al Nour, of the Salafist strain of Islamist movements, which emphasizes practicing Islam in the manner of the Prophet Mohammed’s immediate followers in 7th- and 8th-century Arabia, holds 20 percent of the seats in parliament.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is dominating the political scene to a dangerous extent,” said Sameh Abd Al Hamid, a member of the Al Nour party’s central elections committee in Alexandria.

He used the Freedom and Justice Party’s creation last month of a 100-member constitution-writing committee composed of 25 of their own parliamentarians as an example of their attempt to eclipse other political forces.

According to a poll by the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 45 percent of Egyptians who voted for the party in the parliamentary elections said they would not do so again.

They have presided over a largely toothless parliament still subject to the will of Egypt’s military rulers, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces.

“Fotouh won’t be controlled by the Brotherhood because of his long-standing differences with them,” Hamid said.

But there are concerns the support of Al Nour and Gama’a Islamiya will pressure Fotouh to compromise on his more tempered Islamist principles — forcing him to concede to the more extreme elements in power.

Al Nour’s Hamid admitted that Fotouh held views at odds with their own “more pure” interpretation of Islamic texts.

“We do feel that Aboul Fotouh has an overly lenient [Islamist] ideology,” Hamid said, adding that the party wanted to end the “corrupt practices” of some foreign tourists and promote educational and medical tourism to Egypt.

“To be honest, we wanted a better Islamic candidate with a more pure interpretation of Islam,” he said. “But he is the best of all the Islamist candidates, and politics pushes you to make concessions.”

For their part, the Brotherhood is trying to thwart criticism as it seeks to control post-revolution politics.

Ahmed Al Nahhas, a Muslim Brotherhood activist and member of the Freedom and Justice Party’s Supreme Committee in Alexandria, says if they in fact lose the presidential race, there will be some political soul-searching to do.

“The Muslim Brotherhood [as a social organization] will not be affected,” he said. “But the [Freedom and Justice] party will be definitely lose some of its popularity.”

Heba Habib contributed reporting from Cairo, Egypt.

So, it’s not a real thing. There’s no such law or even any evidence that anyone proposed said law, and even if someone had proposed such a law, there is not even a remote possibility that the Egyptian Parliament would consider it. It’s total bullshit. It’s the Daily Mail overhyping a story Al-Arabiya took from a newspaper opinion column written by a dedicated Hosni Mubarak supporter.

The Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy explained as much yesterday, but the people who highlight specious stories like this don’t actually care about “accuracy”; they are just engaged in a propaganda campaign designed to tar all Muslims as violent radical pervert monsters who are slowly taking over the West.

That is actually not the case, and anyone who’s ever met a Muslim could probably tell you!

It’s important to remember that the structure of the Muslim clergy is, by and large, like that of a number of Protestant Christian sects. Anyone can put out a shingle and declare themselves a preacher. The ones to pay attention to are the ones with large followings, or attachment to major institutions of Islamic learning. The preacher in Morocco is like the preacher in Florida who spent so much time and energy publicizing the burning of Qurans.

This seems like a really staggeringly obvious point — there are mainstream Muslim clerics and nutty fringe ones, just like in Mormonism and Judaism and all forms of Christianity! — but the Islamophobia industry has spent years trying to make sure that Americans by and large don’t understand this.

Number 2: That Obama EPA person said they were going to “crucify” the oil industry. This is a much bigger story (though it is still limited almost entirely to the conservative press) because it was first spread by an actual senator: James Inhofe, the Senate’s worst pilot and best friend of oil and gas. And then it was on Fox, obviously.

And it has now become a regular talking point, that Obama’s EPA is “crucifying” oil companies. (Which is bad because oil companies give us our precious life-giving oil!)

Of course the guy, an administrator named Al Armendariz, was specifically talking about going after companies that broke the law. The idea is that the EPA would punish companies that violated the law, because that is the EPA’s whole deal. (Some people think there shouldn’t be any environmental laws and no EPA, but instead of making that argument, they are instead making the untrue claim, based on words taken out of context, that Obama’s EPA is unfairly punishing all oil companies for no reason.)

It is also sort of weird that everyone thinks it’s a political winner to say Obama is being too tough on oil companies when no one likes oil companies, but what do I know.

It’s a dangerous situation many fear could lead to renewed political strife.

“People are scared of going hungry. They’ll give up anything but bread,” said 32-year-old Mohamed Maysara Hassan, an employee at one of the many bakeries that sell Egypt’s subsidized bread — a staple — in the heart of Cairo.

If the ailing government was forced to lift its hefty bread subsidy, which keeps one saucer-sized loaf at just $0.008, “There will be another revolution,” Hassan said.

Egypt, with its long history, is no stranger to food-based unrest.

As far back as the pharaohs, who presided over one of human civilization’s first recorded droughts, food shortages brought on by water scarcity led to a political breakdown, war and depopulation.

More recently, the “bread riots” of 1977 and 2008 — where rising prices or rumors of impending subsidy cuts led to deadly protests in the streets — exposed the dangers Egyptian leaders face when the country’s poor can’t afford food.

“Bread can be the fire-starter or the fire extinguisher of a revolution,” said Noor Ayman Nour, a prominent pro-democracy activist and son of Egyptian presidential candidate.

As much of 80 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people rely on subsidized bread.

“The regime [of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak] was very successful in keeping prices high enough so that people were on just the brink,” Nour said. “They were just insecure enough to remain subdued but not uncomfortable enough to revolt.”

But more than a year after Egypt’s revolution, food prices and the cost of basic commodities, like cooking gas, have hit some of their highest levels.

Egypt imports about 60 percent of its total food supply, because just 6 percent of the country is agricultural land — some of which is used to grow luxury cash crops for export. The rest is hyper-arid desert. The Nile is almost the only source of freshwater.

With rising inflation, a large and swelling population, and the threat of increased use of the Nile by upstream neighbors, Egypt’s capacity to feed itself is under threat. That makes Egypt’s vulnerability to global food shocks more acute than ever.

“After Jan. 25, [the current military rulers] have gone back to the Mubarak tactic of allowing prices to rise,” Nour said. “But blaming those who protest [against them].”

While bread is arguably the most crucial staple of the Egyptian diet, it remains somewhat shielded by the government’s $2.45 billion in annual bread subsidies.

But according to Magda Kandil, director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, other important parts of the Egyptian diet are also being threatened.

“[M]any of the food items in the consumption basket of Egyptians — fruit, vegetables — have gone up over the years,” she said. If the price of importing food continues to rise, “it would make the cost of living unbearable.”

Already the price of tomatoes — widely used in Egypt — has risen nearly 150 percent since Mubarak stepped down in February 2011, according to the government-run Central Agency for Mobilization and Statistics.

Food accounts for 44 percent of the Egyptian consumer price index, an economic indicator used to measure household expenditures on things like food, electricity and transportation — and as much as 40 percent of Egyptians live on less than $2 per day, according to the World Bank.

In contrast, food accounted for an average of 3.9 percent of the US urban consumer price index from February 2011 to February 2012, according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

Sayed Radwan goes to the subsidized bakery in his working class Cairo neighborhood every day to buy cheap bread for his family of four, spending just $1.15 to $1.30 per week. But that still gives him cause for concern.

When the prices of other food items or commodities go up, he said he has to buy less food.

“It is a constant worry,” he said. “We can barely sleep at night. We buy less fresh food. You can’t have a decent life.”

Egypt’s foreign currency reserves, which it uses to purchase imported wheat for its government-supported bakeries, fell to $15 billion in March 2012, down from $35 billion in the month before Mubarak resigned.

If Egypt’s post-uprising economy continues to falter, the issue of food security will be pushed to the forefront, analysts said.

“Food has proven a force for revolutionary change in the past,” wrote Christine Anderson, a former associate professor of international water law at the American University in Cairo, in her book, “Climate Change, Water Governance, Law and State Survival in the Arab World.”

And in Egypt, she wrote, “there are no remedies put in place to prevent a future food crisis.”

Heba Habib contributed reporting from Cairo, Egypt.