Lebanon’s strongest woman is redefining power

She has pulled a six-ton airplane across the tarmac in Kyrgyzstan. She has trained bodyguards across the region, from Riyadh to Bangkok. And for ten years running, she has held the title of the strongest woman in Lebanon and the Arab world. The Beiruter spoke with Siham El Kassir, and it became clear that the physical feats are almost beside the point. What she is really building is something closer to a movement, one aimed at convincing an entire region that strength and femininity were never opposites to begin with.

Redefining strength

El Kassir's origin story as an athlete is, by her account, an act of rebellion. "Every girl is strong," she said. "But in our society, a patriarchal society, a girl is only considered strong if she acts like a man. If she doesn't, that makes her someone who can be hit, controlled, dismissed." She set out, deliberately, to dismantle that equation. "I wanted to change that image, that strength isn't just for men. You can be a woman and still be strong."

That philosophy sharpened, she said, as she watched a wave of violence against women unfold across Lebanon. "If the very person who's supposed to protect you becomes the one who attacks you, who protects you now? You work with your own mind." It became the guiding line of her career, Be your own protector.

A childhood spent proving a point

Long before podiums and titles, El Kassir was the youngest of three sisters constantly told she was the odd one out. "I was always the one carrying the groceries," she recalled. " And they'd tease me, tomorrow you won't be able to do it." Every night, she said, she prayed for one thing, "One day they'll believe I have strength, that I'm not weak."

Her parents pushed her toward law, following the path carved out for her sisters, pharmacy, psychology. She enrolled, dutifully, for a year. Then she switched to a double major and pursued physical education instead. "I told them, okay, I did the first year your way. Then I followed my passion."

From the gym floor to the runway of a six-ton plane

After opening her own personal training studio, eventually expanding to three locations in Lebanon, largely without family support, El Kassir turned to strength sport seriously, eventually pursuing a formal degree in sports education so she could train safely. "I couldn't find anyone in Lebanon who could help me, so I decided I'd be the first," she said. That resolve carried her to Kyrgyzstan, where she pulled a plane weighing six tons and 300 kilograms, later surpassing it by pulling a pickup truck weighing seven tons.

Building Lebanon's first all-female security team

Her pivot into close protection work came, she said, from a simple question, who protects Lebanon's women? Trained at the American Bodyguard Academy and LCP, she finished top of a class of thirty, the only woman in the room. "I placed first over all of them," she said. The achievement opened doors to missions outside Lebanon and training assignments across the region, including in Saudi Arabia, where she coached an eighteen-woman team that placed third nationally in its very first competition.

She has since founded Lebanon's first all-female security and protection company, along with the Siham El Kassir Academy, which teaches close protection courses and public safety awareness. The turning point, she said, was personal grief, the deaths of Lebanese women who were powerless against their perpetrators, "I kept thinking, if she could have defended herself, maybe she wouldn't have died. What can I actually do for society with what I've learned?"

That question now drives an Instagram platform that has grown to roughly 100,000 followers in under a year, with individual videos reaching three to four million views. "I look for stories nobody else is telling," she said. "I want to shed light on the crimes happening around us."

What comes next

El Kassir's ambitions extend beyond content. She has designed a full self-defense and "security awareness" curriculum for schools, tailored by age group starting at four years old, which she hopes to bring to Lebanon's Ministry of Education. She also runs travel-safety courses for young Lebanese heading abroad, covering everything from luggage scams to digital theft via public USB ports, and self-defense sessions in more than ten schools so far.

Her closing message is less about individual toughness than about self-reliance in a country she says can no longer guarantee protection. "There's no state that protects you anymore. It all comes down to self-security, but the right way," she said. "I'm not afraid of anyone who tries to get close. Whoever tries their luck will find out what that means."