An Egyptian pop star has been arrested for “incitement of debauchery” for her music video featuring a belly dancer and sexually suggestive hand movements.
Seriously. She got jail time for that.
Leila Amer has spent four days in incarceration after she was caught appearing in an online video called "Boss Oumek" or "Look at Your Mother," which the Telegraph reports included a “sensual oriental dance” and “provocative gestures.”
The Telegraph adds that a lawyer filed the case against Amer, accusing her of basically trying to ruin the entire country by moving her hips.
Ahmed Mahran, the lawyer who filed a complaint, told local newspaper Youm7 that the video was a “great risk” to Egypt.
“These works represent an attack on society and the destruction of the state, it being an Islamic country,” he said, explaining his decision to pursue legal action.
Another Egyptian pop singer, 21-year-old Shaima Ahmed, was recently sentenced to two years in jail – later reduced to one year – for appearing in a racy music video that showed her licking a banana. Of course, Egypt's far from the only country in which women are threatened with jail for not towing the Muslim line. A woman in Saudi Arabia was recently arrested for wearing a mini-skirt in a photo posted on social media. Six Iranians, including three women, were jailed and sentenced to 91 lashes back in 2014 for filming themselves dancing to Pharell's "Happy."
This latest in the string of attacks on women in ultra-Islamic nations comes as women in Iran are protesting their own oppressive Islamic regime. Amid larger calls by protesters over Iran’s stuttering economy, powerful images emerged this week showing women taking off their hijabs in public squares, challenging local police and demanding equal rights under the law.
So far, there's been exactly zero outcry from U.S. feminists regarding the continued Islamic oppression of Egyptian singers or Iranian women.