Singer Nancy Ajram is among those whose videos have been banned by Egypt’s censorship committee.
In a move that has sparked concern among Egyptian secularists, the country’s censorship committee this week banned 20 music videos allegedly containing “heavy sexual connotations” and featuring “scantily-dressed female singers and models.”
The decision to ban the video clips deemed “inappropriate” and “indecent” by members of the state censorship committee, comes two months after a new constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression and opinion was approved by 98 per cent of voters in a national referendum. The new charter replaced the 2012 constitution, widely criticized by rights organizations and revolutionary activists as an “Islamist-tinged” document.
The majority of Egypt’s secularists who celebrated the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square in July had feared that the Muslim Brotherhood –the Islamist group from which he hails –was seeking to alter Egypt’s ‘moderate’ identity. The Islamist group has since been outlawed and designated a terrorist organization by the military-backed authorities that replaced the toppled president.
The banning of the video clips comes amid heated debate on “raunchy” music videos broadcast on some of the Arab satellite channels. In recent years, an increasing number of popular Arab female singing-stars have challenged social norms and broken cultural taboos by revealing more flesh in their video clips. The trend has stirred controversy in Egypt’s deeply conservative Muslim society with many Egyptians rejecting what they describe as “the pornification of pop music”. They insist that the “graphic, semi-porn sexual scenes featured in some of the music videos are not in line with Islamic tradition and culture”.
“Some of these video clips are more porn than music. We can hardly understand the lyrics; They are an insult to Arabic music and culture,” said Amina Mansour , a Western educated 30 year- old Egyptian freelance photographer.
It is no surprise that some liberal, westernised Egyptians agree with ultra-conservative Muslims in their society that the videos should be banned. Egyptian society–once a melting pot of different cultures has grown more conservative in the last 30 years. In his book Whatever Happened to the Egyptians, Economist Galal Amin blames the growing conservatism in the country on the introduction of Wahhabism –a more rigid form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and adopted by the millions of Egyptian migrants who travelled to Gulf countries after the oil boom in the seventies, seeking higher-paid jobs. The gradual transformation from a diverse, open and tolerant society into today’s conservative and far less tolerant Egypt is evident in the style of dress, behaviour and speech of many Egyptians. An estimated 90 per cent of women wear the hijab-the head covering worn by Muslim women -while the niqab, a veil covering the face , has become more prevalent in recent years.
Some analysts believe the trend of conservatism, which had steadily grown in Egypt recent decades, now appears to be regressing. A growing number of women and girls are removing their Islamic headscarf —once adopted as a political statement against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak and against Western-style values imposed on the society. Leila el Shentenawy, a 31 year old lawyer told Index she removed her veil after Morsi’s ouster to express her disappointment with Islamist rule.
“Morsi failed to deliver on promised reforms,” she said, adding that she and other liberal Egyptians were alarmed by the calls made by some hardline Islamists to bring back female genital mutilation and lower the age of marriage for girls.
“We were becoming a backward society instead of moving forward,” she said.
Shentenawi however, supports the ban on the video clips, arguing that such videos are “commercialization of women’s bodies and a downright insult to women.”
Other Egyptians have meanwhile expressed disappointment over the banning of the video clips, perceiving the move as “a reversal of the democratic gains of the January 25, 2011 Revolution” that toppled autocratic president Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent uprising against Islamist rule in June 2013.
“We had two uprisings for freedom and a modern, democratic society,” lamented 26 year-old graphic designer Amr El Sherif. “The video clips are popular with young Egyptians and the latest ban can only be considered as a means of stifling free artistic expression.”
In January, Egyptian TV imposed a ban on several video clips reportedly containing “seductive scenes”, deciding they were”inappropriate for viewers”. The ban on the music videos featuring Middle Eastern pop idols Haifa Wahby, Alissa, Nancy Agram and Ruby among others, came in response to complaints by some viewers that the “hot scenes” depicted in the videos were “provocative” and “went against the morals of Muslim society.”
While modest by Western standards, “the gyrations and revealing costumes featured in the videos were too sexy for Arab audiences”, the censors decided. The ban is a continuation of the ultra-conservative trend started by Islamists during their one year rule when some of their lawmakers had complained to Parliament (then dominated by Islamists) that “Egyptian performer Ruby’s pelvic thrust dance moves and bare midriff were too much,” warning that the “obscene scenes” depicted in the music videos would “trash the taste of Egyptians.”
The ban of the videos meanwhile, coincided with the sexual assault of a female student by a mob on Cairo University’s main campus on Monday–the first violence of its kind on an Egyptian university campus. While condemning the assault incident in a telephone interview broadcast on the private ONTV channel later that evening, University President Gaber Nassar implied the victim was to blame, saying her “immodest attire” had invited the assault. He urged students to dress modestly, adding that those who do not follow the university’s regulation would be barred from entering the university campus by security guards.
Some Egyptians believe that the “suggestive” and “explicit” music videos are partly to blame for a surge in incidents of sexual harassment and violence against women in the country since the January 2011 uprising.
“Sexual frustrations of youth –many of whom are unemployed and unable to afford the cost of marriage– are being fuelled in part by sexy music videos and other pornograhic material on the internet, causing unruly behaviour by some youth,” Said Sadek, a Cairo-based Political Sociologist and activist, told Index.
The recent ban on the video clips also comes hot on the heels of an International Women’s Day protest-rally staged by nude Arab and Iranian women in the Louvre Art Museum’s Square in Paris, calling for “equal rights” and “secularism” in their respective countries. Egyptian internet activist Alia Al Mahdi was among the participants in the Paris nudist rally which organizers said, was held to “highlight the many legal and cultural restrictions imposed on women in the Arab World”. El Mahdi had also protested naked outside the Egyptian Embassy in the Swedish capital Stockholm in December 2012 to express her opposition to what she called Morsi’s “Sharia Constitution.” Raising the Egyptian flag, she had the words ” No to Sharia” written in bold print on her naked body.
Many of the revolutionary youth-activists who led the uprisings in Tahrir Square in January 2011 and June 2013 had hoped the downfall of two authoritarian regimes would usher in a new era of greater freedoms including freedom of expression and opinion.But their hopes are fading fast amid increased restrictions and a climate of growing repression.Despite the challenges, they vow to continue to push for “reforms” and “a more liberal Egypt”. While many of the revolutionaries say they oppose Alia Al Mahdi’s method of protest, perceiving it as ” extreme”, they insist ” there is no going back to repression and censorship by the authorities.”
“We’ve had our first taste of freedom with the revolution three years ago and once you’ve had that, you can only move forward and never look back, ” said Mohamed Fawaz, an activist and member of the April 6 Movement, one of the two main groups that mobilized protesters for the January 11 mass uprising. Meanwhile, the battle between secularists and conservatives for the soul of the “new Egypt” continues.
Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines song has been banned in at least 20 student unions after it was released in March 2013. (Image: George Weinstein/Demotix)
I consider myself to be privileged to have the job that I have-I am a university lecturer who teaches Popular Music Culture to undergraduates and post-graduates. This is a subject that is popular among students because the majority of them like music and have an opinion on it. What I love most about my job is the range of interesting conversations my students and I have around popular music and its impact on culture, politics and society.
Music is ubiquitous and it touches people of all cultures, classes and creeds in a multitude of ways. What comes out of the discussions I have highlights both the joy and the anger it can evoke. Some of those discussions can bring forward some sensitive, awkward and challenging opinions and issues but what they do succeed in doing is highlighting issues that we as adults can explore, discuss, argue, rationalise and at time agree to differ on-but in a mature and accepting way, appreciating that we are all different.
So during my lecture on popular music and gender back in November 2013 I opened up a discussion around Robin Thicke’s summer release “Blurred Lines”. I feel no real need to go into any great detail about the fastest selling digital song in history and biggest single hit of 2013. Why? Because the controversy surrounding this song, such as misogynistic positioning with “rapey” lyrics that excuse rape and promote non-consensual sex and, among many other accusations, the promotion of “lad culture”, is abundant on the internet.
My students’ views on this song, and accompanying video mixed with both females and males defending the song and Thicke’s counter argument of it – promoting feminism, it being tongue in cheek and a disposable pop song – to those who, again both male and female, just wanted to castrate him for putting women’s rights and equality back into the dark ages.
Now the scene in the lecture theatre had been set I wanted to garner from them views on what I considered to be equally, if not more important – the issue that over 20 university student unions in the UK had banned the song from being played in their student union bars and union promoted events. This includes the prevention of in-house and visiting DJs playing it on student union premises and ,in some cases, the song not being aired on student union radio and TV stations’ playlists. In their defence the majority of these universities decided to ban after complaints from some of their students, but I am yet to determine whether all these universities reached this decision after an open and democratic process of consensus through voting or otherwise.
What I did find interesting among the many statements from presidents and vice-presidents of the student unions was one given to the New Musical Express, in November 2013, by Kirsty Haigh, the vice president of Edinburgh University Student Association.
The decision to ban ‘Blurred Lines’ from our venues has been taken as it promotes an unhealthy attitude towards sex and consent. EUSA has a policy on zero tolerance towards sexual harassment, a policy to end lad culture on campus and a safe space policy-all of which this song violates”.
However what Haigh does not go on to explain is exactly how this song does that. I am also intrigued by the comment about a policy to end ”lad culture” as Haigh does not allude to a clearly defined set of parameters specifying what counts as ”lad culture/banter”. One might ask if identifying a specific gender (lad) is this not targeting and discriminating against that gender?
I am struggling to find what constitutes ”lad culture” as opinions differ, however the National Union of Students’ That’s What She Said report published in March 2013 defines it as: “a group or ‘pack’ mentality residing in activities such as sport and heavy alcohol consumption and ‘banter’ which was often sexist, misogynistic, or homophobic”. But does lad culture equate to sexual harassment-is there a connection or is this creating guilt by association? Some critics claim that ”lad culture” was a postmodern transformation of masculinity, an ironic response to ”girl power” that had developed during the noughties.
Allie Renison’s article Blurred lines: Why can’t women dance provocatively and still be empowered?, published in The Telegraph in July 2013, states that “Teenage girls and grown women spend countless hours confiding in each other about the finer details of physical intimacy, and I can safely say that even without a sex-obsessed pop culture this would still be the case.”
This has to some degree been confirmed by one of my students who is a member of the university girls’ hockey team and girls’ football team. She says that they go out as a group, taking part in activities such as sport and heavy alcohol consumption and banter which is often sexist and misandry and involves intimate commentary on the male anatomy and men’s sexual prowess.
So would that then constitute “ladette” culture or “girl power” culture? Do EUSA have a policy to end ladette culture on their campus?
But this isn’t really the core issue here; the issue is around censorship on campus, what constitutes a fair and balanced approach to these issues and where you draw the lines. Thirty years ago student unions were complaining about, and rallying against, censorship-now they are the ones doing the censoring. So where does this leave the issue of censorship?
Starting with music, has Blurred Lines been singled out or do those twenty university student unions have a clear policy on banning songs that might include Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up, Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe (condoning the shooting of women who cheat on their men), Robert Palmer’s Addicted To Love (the lyrics could be seen to suggest date rape), Rolling Stones’ Under My Thumb, or Britney Spear’s Hit Me Baby One More Time? The list could go on and on, including songs that incite violence, racism or revolution. Do student unions around the country have concise and definitive lists of songs that should be banned or censored or is it a matter for a small group of elected people? And when you leave a group of people to act as moral arbiters then how do you control their decision making power?
Did we not collectively settle this matter in the 90s? Didn’t we conclude that outrage over pop music is a music marketer’s dream and inevitably increases sales for the artist? Aren’t popular music lyrics supposed to be challenging, full of danger and ambiguity? And do we only stop at popular music?
It could be argued that Mozart’s Don Giovanni revels in the actions of a rapist as does Britten’s Rape of Lucretia, and what of literature, do we ban Nabokov’s Lolita, Oscar Wilde’s Salome? Shouldn’t student unions be picketing concert halls, storming the libraries and art collections of universities and start demanding the removal of offensive material or at worst the burning of books and paintings in homage to a misguided Ray Bradbury envisioned cultural pogrom? If you are going to start banning or censoring cultural artefacts then please at least have some sort of consistency otherwise you leave yourself open to criticism.
So is this censorship? I would argue it is. If policy prevents a visiting DJ from playing a particular song at a student union bar, because some people do not approve of it, then that is censorship. I myself do not disagree with the criticism of the lyrical content of Blurred Lines, or condone them, though one could argue about their potential polysemic interpretation. What this highlights is perhaps an inconsistency in the processes of censorship by the student union.
Working in a university, I strongly believe that one of the core purposes of the academy is to create a space to allow young adults, on their journey of personal development, to explore their own opinions and prejudices, while considering those of others. A space where they can hear a multitude of views and draw their own conclusions from them; engage in constructive debate, work these issues through. Universities, of all places, should foster a culture of free speech and free expression wherever reasonably expected. Yes, there are always going to be challenges to what is appropriate and acceptable, whatever those challenges are the banning or censoring of material always has to be done within the law. That is how we develop as individuals and a society.
On 21 March, a Tunisian court sentenced rapper Ala Yacoubi (aka Weld El15) to two years in prison in absentia, over an anti-police song and video, Boulicia Kleb published on YouTube. In the song, Weld El15 describes police officers as “dogs” and says “he would like to slaughter a police officer instead of sheep at Eid al-Adha”. Four other rappers, to whom Weld El15 dedicated the song, were also sentenced to two years in prison in absentia. Actress Sabrine Klibi, who appears in the video, and cameraman Mohamed Hedi Belgueyed, were arrested on 10 March. They each received a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Yacoubi, who is in hiding, told award-winning blog Nawaat:
There are those who accuse me of inciting violence against police. I was only using their language…I was subject to all forms of police violence: physical and verbal. As an artist, I can only answer them through my art: aggressive art…I expressed myself in a country, where I thought freedom of expression exists. It turned out that I was wrong.
To bring charges against Weld El15 and his associates, prosecutors applied anti-free speech laws inherited from the dictatorship era. Among these laws are articles 128 and 226 of the Penal Code. The latter carries a penalty of a six-month jail term for “affronting public decency”; while article 128 states that anyone found guilty of “accusing without proof a public official” could face a two-year jail term.
Weld El15 is not the only victim of these liberticidal laws. Blogger Olfa Rihai could face imprisonment over criminal defamation charges [articles 128 and 245 of the Tunisian Penal Code. Last December, Riahi posted on her blog an article alleging that the then foreign minister Rafik Abdessalem “misused public money” by spending several nights at the luxurious Sheraton hotel in Tunis. She went on to claime that the minister might have been involved in an extra-marital affair. Riahi is also accused of “harming others or disrupting their lives through public communication networks,” under article 86 of the Telecommunication code (Law no.1-2001 of 15 January 2001). If convicted under this article, she could spend up to two years in prison and pay a fine of up to 1,000 Tunisian dinars.
Article 86 of the Telecommunication Code highlights Tunisia’s vulnerable internet freedom. Despite, positive steps taken by the Tunisian authorities in favour of free speech online, freedom of the internet remains under threat due to Ben Ali’s ICT laws. Last September, Mongi Marzoug minister of Information and Communications Technology, officially announced “the death of Ammar404” [slang for Tunisian internet censorship]. In January, the ICT ministry cancelled a number of regulatory provisions in the licenses previously awarded to privately-owned telecom operators Tunisiana and Orange Tunisie.
The two ISPs are now able to bypass the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), for incoming and outgoing international Internet traffic. The former regime obliged ISPs to route their internet traffic via the ATI to facilitate internet filtering and surveillance.
Yet these guarantees remain insufficient, as long as repressive ICT and internet laws remain on the books. For instance, article 9 of Internet Regulations (dated 22 March, 1997) obliges ISPs to monitor and take down content contrary to public order and “good morals”. No one can stand in the way of prosecutors and judges who wish to apply these laws.
The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is scheduled to adopt a new constitution by next summer. A second draft of the constitution, released last December, enshrines the right to free expression and prohibits “prior censorship”. However, unless anti free speech laws are revised or abolished, the future constitution will in no way be enough to guarantee free expression.
On 21 March, a Tunisian court sentenced rapper Ala Yacoubi (aka Weld El15) to two years in prison in absentia, over an anti-police song and video, Boulicia Kleb published on YouTube. In the song, Weld El15 describes police officers as “dogs” and says “he would like to slaughter a police officer instead of sheep at Eid al-Adha”. Four other rappers, to whom Weld El15 dedicated the song, were also sentenced to two years in prison in absentia. Actress Sabrine Klibi, who appears in the video, and cameraman Mohamed Hedi Belgueyed, were arrested on 10 March. They each received a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Yacoubi, who is in hiding, told award-winning blog Nawaat:
There are those who accuse me of inciting violence against police. I was only using their language…I was subject to all forms of police violence: physical and verbal. As an artist, I can only answer them through my art: aggressive art…I expressed myself in a country, where I thought freedom of expression exists. It turned out that I was wrong.
To bring charges against Weld El15 and his associates, prosecutors applied anti-free speech laws inherited from the dictatorship era. Among these laws are articles 128 and 226 of the Penal Code. The latter carries a penalty of a six-month jail term for “affronting public decency”; while article 128 states that anyone found guilty of “accusing without proof a public official” could face a two-year jail term.
Weld El15 is not the only victim of these liberticidal laws. Blogger Olfa Rihai could face imprisonment over criminal defamation charges [articles 128 and 245 of the Tunisian Penal Code. Last December, Riahi posted on her blog an article alleging that the then foreign minister Rafik Abdessalem “misused public money” by spending several nights at the luxurious Sheraton hotel in Tunis. She went on to claime that the minister might have been involved in an extra-marital affair. Riahi is also accused of “harming others or disrupting their lives through public communication networks,” under article 86 of the Telecommunication code (Law no.1-2001 of 15 January 2001). If convicted under this article, she could spend up to two years in prison and pay a fine of up to 1,000 Tunisian dinars.
Article 86 of the Telecommunication Code highlights Tunisia’s vulnerable internet freedom. Despite, positive steps taken by the Tunisian authorities in favour of free speech online, freedom of the internet remains under threat due to Ben Ali’s ICT laws. Last September, Mongi Marzoug minister of Information and Communications Technology, officially announced “the death of Ammar404” [slang for Tunisian internet censorship]. In January, the ICT ministry cancelled a number of regulatory provisions in the licenses previously awarded to privately-owned telecom operators Tunisiana and Orange Tunisie.
The two ISPs are now able to bypass the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), for incoming and outgoing international Internet traffic. The former regime obliged ISPs to route their internet traffic via the ATI to facilitate internet filtering and surveillance.
Yet these guarantees remain insufficient, as long as repressive ICT and internet laws remain on the books. For instance, article 9 of Internet Regulations (dated 22 March, 1997) obliges ISPs to monitor and take down content contrary to public order and “good morals”. No one can stand in the way of prosecutors and judges who wish to apply these laws.
The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is scheduled to adopt a new constitution by next summer. A second draft of the constitution, released last December, enshrines the right to free expression and prohibits “prior censorship”. However, unless anti free speech laws are revised or abolished, the future constitution will in no way be enough to guarantee free expression.
