Aya Youssef, a young Egyptian teacher, found herself in spite of herself at the center of a controversy after the broadcast of a video filmed without her knowledge during a private outing with colleagues.
It’s an ordinary outing with friends that turns into a nightmare. On December 10, Aya Youssef, an Arabic teacher in a primary school, performed a belly dance during a boat trip on the Nile. The images are published a month later on social networks and go viral.
The young woman, mother of three children, is awakened in the middle of the night by one of her friends who alerts her. The comments are accusatory, the woman is judged “immodest”, “immoral”, and gossips cry foul. Aya Youssef does not understand what is happening to her. She has to explain herself to her superiors at the Ministry of Education, her husband asks for a divorce and her life changes.
In the video (below), posted on YouTube by the Egyptian site al-Joumhouriya on line, we see her simply dancing happily surrounded by her colleagues.
To be forgotten, when she knows full well that she has done nothing wrong, Aya Youssef desperately tries to tell her story in the Egyptian media. She explains that she was with her children, that she danced like everyone else and that she was filmed without her knowledge. She “recognize” that his behavior was “a mistake” and that it offended the sensibilities of some people.
Belly dancing is part of Egyptian culture but with the rise of conservatism in recent years, women no longer dare to dance in public so as not to be accused of indecency.
In this media storm, a few voices were raised to denounce the hypocrisy and injustice that reign in Egyptian society where you can do anything as long as it does not leave the private sphere or the bourgeois milieu.
Human rights defenders, intellectuals and artists have condemned “a witch hunt” against women. In a video posted on Facebook, lawyer Nihad Abou al-Qoumsan, director of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights, pledged to sue the person who posted the video on the internet.
Images of women online have already caused fake scandals, smear campaigns and dramas in Egypt. Last December, a 17-year-old girl committed suicide after the publication of a photomontage, as AFP recalls. Other women, including a university professor or influencers, have also been sentenced for “incitement to debauchery” Where “offense to good morals” for a dance.