Ibrahim was born in Long Beach, California to Egyptian parents although she soon moved to Egypt, where she lived until she was 14. Her family subsequently returned to California, where she began attending a local Catholic high school. She graduated from high school in 2005, attending Orange Coast College at first before transferring to The American University in Cairo in 2008. She became involved with the Revolutionary Socialists organization and graduated in 2010 with a degree in political science.
Ibrahim became an organizer of the protests in 2011 and used Twitter to document events that took place during the revolution. Her tweets additionally helped human rights groups to document arrests and state violence during the revolution. Western news media treated her as a face of the revolution. After the 2013 coup d'état, Ibrahim chose to stay in Egypt and continue her involvement in activism and protests. She later co-founded a shoe manufacturing company in Cairo.
Ibrahim was born in Long Beach, California to Egyptian parents[1] in 1986 or 1987.[2] When she was a year old, the family moved back to Egypt. After her mother died, she went back to California[1] with her father and sister in 2001;[3] she was 14 at the time.[1] She enrolled in a local Catholic school as a freshman.[3]
While Ibrahim was in her second week of classes at the school, the September 11 attacks occurred. The next day, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents searched the Ibrahims' home, explaining that a neighbor had called a tipline to report the family. The neighbor's concerns were the fact that Ibrahim's uncle sometimes walked outside at night while speaking Arabiconphone calls, and a U-Haul truck had recently been parked outside their house. As the only Muslim in her class, Ibrahim was also asked to give a presentation about Islam at her school despite the fact that her family was not very religious. The experience led Ibrahim to realize that her life was going to be different because she was Muslim and Egyptian.[3]
Over the years that followed, Ibrahim gained an increasing level of interest in politics.[3] She became involved in a group that advocated for the rights of illegal immigrants to the United States in response to what she saw as discriminatory enforcement of immigration law by local police officers, and was also involved in pro-Palestinian activism. However, she was largely unaware of political events in Egypt at the time, and visited Egypt only rarely.[4]
We coordinated the timing, place and the content of the demands ... We started with 100 people, then we became thousands and thousands of people chanting against the regime
In October 2011, Ibrahim reported that she had been briefly arrested while filming a strike actionbypublic transport workers in Cairo, and was released after agreeing to delete her footage.[17]
Ibrahim became a face of the events in Egypt for much of the media.[19] She regularly appeared on CNN,[3] sometimes live from the 2011 protests, and additionally reported live from the protests on Al Jazeera.[20] Her political views were rarely mentioned in Western media.[19]
Judy Woodruff described Ibrahim as "a symbol of the uprising" on PBS NewsHour.[21]OnThe Daily Show, Ibrahim told Jon Stewart that she initially joined the protests because of a class she took at the American University in Cairo called "Social Mobilization under Authoritarian Regimes."[22]The New York Times conducted an interview with her using Skype,[23] and a February 2011 Frontline episode titled "Gigi's Revolution" examined her relationship with her elite Egyptian family and "her attempts to convince her family of the righteousness of her cause."[24] On February 14, 2011, she appeared on an Al Jazeera English talk show alongside Alaa Abd El-Fattah and Mohamad Waked to discuss the events in Egypt after the fall of Hosni Mubarak.[25] She was also featured on the cover of the February 28, 2011 issue of Time magazine, later criticizing the related article in that issue by saying that the West "needs to believe that we could not have [made revolution possible] without their digital toys."[26]
After the 2013 coup, Ibrahim's husband went into exile because he wanted to remain a journalist, while she founded a shoe manufacturing company in Cairo.[27] In January 2021, she told Jeune Afrique that it was dangerous to protest and to be a journalist who didn't work on behalf of the regime, explaining that "We now live under a dictator worse than Mubarak [...] Any protest is punishable by sanctions. The protest is now being done underground."[27]
After the 2013 coup in Egypt, Ibrahim founded a shoe manufacturing company in Cairo.[27] A September 2021 article in The National identified Ibrahim as the co-owner of Cairo shoe manufacturing company Bulga, founded in 2016, along with artisan Mona Sorour. Ibrahim manages advertising, public relations and sales for the company, which is named after the traditional balgha. The shoes are designed through collaboration with indigenous groups in various regions of Egypt and manufactured in multiple workshops across the country, using exclusively Egyptian materials and labor; Ibrahim cited the decline of traditional craftsmanship resulting from the increase in mass-produced items as a major factor in the creation of Bulga.[30]
Ibrahim has a United States passport and could leave Egypt. In October 2021, she explained her decision to remain in the country to The New Yorker, saying that "Maybe here I’m a second-class citizen as an Egyptian woman, but [in the U.S.] I’m a second-class terrorist."[3]
^Hidalgo, Alonso. "Redes sociales, política y activismo" [Social media, politics and activism] (PDF). Quehacer (in Spanish). Centro de Estudios y Promocion del Desarrollo: 99. Archived(PDF) from the original on April 7, 2021. Retrieved May 22, 2021.