Not even a homophobic TV host is safe from Egypt's populist lurch towards cultural piety

The courts have created a legal cocktail that allows for the persecution of the LGBTQ community, and the criminalisation of a journalist who had the gall to interview a gay man

An Egyptian TV host, Mohamed al-Ghiety, has been sentenced to a year’s hard labour and 3,000 Egyptian pounds fine for interviewing a gay man on prime time. It is a depressing reminder of the Egyptian state’s hard-line position LGBTQ issues – and its contempt for journalism.

Charged under outdated blasphemy and debauchery laws, the TV presenter has been accused of “inciting homosexuality” after questioning a man, whose face was not visible, about his sexuality, his life as a sex worker, his fears and regrets.

Mohamed al-Ghiety is an unusual victim of Egypt’s outdated and inconclusive legal framework for making homosexuality a crime. Bizarrely, al-Ghiety has received these sentences even though this interview was by no means a defence of LGBTQ rights and even though he has reportedly expressed homophobic views on several occasions. What makes the case even more complicated is the fact that the Egyptian penal code does not specify that same-sex conduct is illegal: strictly speaking, homosexuality is not a crime.

However, Egyptian courts have reverted to blasphemy laws, blended these with the prohibition of prostitution and debauchery as well as vaguely defined proscriptions against “the manufacture, possession, and distribution of any kind of material which violates public morality”. This has created a legal cocktail that allows for the persecution of the LGBTQ community and criminalisation of a journalist who had the gall to interview a gay man.

This ruling has made clear the illiberal leanings of the Egyptian state under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. There is little concern for the rights of journalists, there is malice towards activists calling for civic and human rights and there is outright hatred for political opposition regardless of whether these are Islamists, socialists or liberals. And of course, there has been a crackdown on the LGBTQ community.

While the regime tries to polish up a secular veneer for the Western world, it uses religious populism to exploit conservative and right-wing nationalist trends.

This aspect of Egypt’s society finds its expression in the denunciation of “scandalous” behaviour. The regime taps into a seemingly obsessive public outcry over profane issues. That has been the case for Egyptian actress Rania Youssef who had to apologise for pushing the boundaries of hard-line Egyptian taste by wearing a translucent skirt, and for Egyptian singer Sherine Abdel Wahab who received a prison sentence for sarcastically remarking that she abstains from drinking water from the Nile for health reason (perhaps unwittingly touching on the Egyptian metaphor that relates imbibing Nile water with being truly Egyptian). The singer was at least acquitted on appeal.

Gone are the days when an upper-class elite and Arab celebrities were protected by the “anything goes” attitude. Implicitly or explicitly overstepping unwritten cultural, social and religious norms can quickly land you in prison. Self-styled enforcers of public norms such as the conservative, nationalist lawyer Samir Sabry make sure that “the will of the Egyptians is heard” in court; what makes the situation more frightening is that the Egyptian regime buys into this popular demand for public humiliation and punishment.

In a sick way, the regime uses the conservative social and religious attitudes of many Egyptians to portray itself as the defender of public will and morality. Western liberal attitudes are no longer the maxim that the ordinary citizens should strive for (perhaps rightly so), but they have increasingly been replaced by conservative trends shaped by the influence of Islamism.

This means that religious norms have become perceived as clear behavioural guidelines as well as expressions of cultural identity. And the consequence is that traditional attitudes find resonance in a population that has been exposed to the social and political stimuli of Islamists for decades – previously by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and now by a regime-sanctified Islam that leans towards Saudi-style “reformed” Wahhabism. The Egyptian state under al-Sisi intends to snatch the support of ordinary citizens, while it extends its authoritarian rule, quashes civic freedom, restricts personal liberties and censors journalistic freedom.

Welcome to Egypt!

Barbara Zollner is a senior lecturer in Middle East politics at Birkbeck, University of London