An Egyptian belly dancer named Reda el-Fouly was arrested earlier this year and charged with “inciting debauchery” — which is a thing in Egypt, apparently — over this relatively tame YouTube video. The music video, titled “Hands Off,” roughly translated to English, was intended to be a spoof about a woman getting groped on the bus but who enjoys the attention.
El-Fouly told courts that her music video was a social experiment to see how long an explicit video takes to catch fire on the internet (clearly she doesn’t know “the internet” very well) and that the goal was to mock over-exposed Egyptian celebrities. However after her video accumulated more than 1 million views prosecutors claimed that it “disrupted morality” and el-Fouly has now been sentenced to a year in prison.
El-Fouly’s boyfriend who directed the video, Wael Elsedeki, was also sentenced to a year in prison but has since fled the country. Egyptian authorities are also seeking one additional man involved with the video. The Daily Mail points out that as an Islamic country, Egypt has very strict indecency laws, and women are not permitted to bare their chests and upper arms in public.
(Via The Daily Mail)