A court in Egypt has sentenced a TV journalist to a year in prison for interviewing a gay man.
A jury slapped Mohammed al-Gheiti with the one-year prison term and, in addition, a $167 fine plus one year of court supervision after he interviewed an anonymous gay man on the Egyptian morning show Wake Up. The court also charged him with contempt of religion.
In an odd twist, al-Gheiti actually has a record of speaking out against homosexuality. Egypt does not forbid homosexual conduct by law, though queer people there are often the subject of police witch hunts which charge them of related crimes, including possession of pornography or debauchery.
As such, al-Gheiti interviewed a gay man about his experience in the nation, and he the man described having to conceal his sexuality working as a prostitute. The same episode featured another journalist speaking with men on Grindr–some as young as 14–about their secret lives.
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The court found that al-Gheiti’s interview violated a 2017 law “banning the appearance of homosexuals or promotion of their slogans.” The Egyptian government introduced the rule after members of the LGBTQ community tried to display a pride flag at a concert.
As part of the charges against al-Gheiti, the network that runs his show, LTC TV, also faced a two-week shutdown. Human rights watchdog group Amnesty International has criticized the sentence against al-Gheiti, saying “it represents yet another blow against freedom of expression, the LGBTI community and diversity in Egypt.”
Vince
I have a “contempt of religion” too. I’m a thinking person. What can I say.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
The world would be such a better place if a gigantic tsunami simply washed away the entire mid-East. (Sparing Israel)…..
gymmuscleboy
You’re not far off. The western world is a supreme paradise compared to many other parts of the world. But for some reason all we hear is how terrible the west is.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the most complaining liberals were banished to Egypt so they can gain some perspective? They will learn a real lesson about sexism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, and much more!
Bob LaBlah
Sounds like you didnt hear about the sanctimonious madman who TWICE pulled out a knife and started stabbing people at the Tel Aviv gay pride parade nor the three kids whom were killed standing out a gay center about ten years or so ago. Their killer to this day has not been brought to justice. I hope you get to read this before it vanishes.
Chrisk
@Bob LaBlah. The difference is anywhere else in the middle East the guy would’ve been let off. They probably would have called it an honor killing.
Kangol
Um, Queerty, a 14-year-old is not a “man,” she/they/he is a child. That said, Egypt’s homophobic laws are terrible and need to be struck from their books, though it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.
Hussain-TheCanadian
The Egyptian government is a joke, run by the generals of the Egyptian army who arrest journalists, students, clerics, activists, and anyone they don’t like.
Some of the comments above me are beyond cartoonish; a good place to start, if you really want to better the lot of the Egyptian people, is to ask your politicians why are they supporting military rule in Egypt with money, weapons, intelligence, and political cover.
Kangol
Well, it’s now run by one general, who is a pal of the President of the US. US taxpayers send him billions of dollars every year to do whatever he wants, so long as he’s not making war with Israel or helping the Palestinians too much, and is also aiding Saudi Arabia in whatever it wants in the region. Good times, good times.
Most of the conservatives above aren’t going to say anything about the US’s current lovey-dovey relationship with one of the most repressive, anti-gay governments in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia. The violent repression in that country is well known, and has been covered extensively in the press. Instead, we just get vague condemnations of the entire Middle East. Is Jordan a problem? Is Kuwait? Is the celebrities’ fave country UAE (i.e., Dubai)? Is Lebanon? Why not specific discussion of Saudi Arabia, which is waging a terrible war on Yemen right now, with US support? Do they agree with this?
Hussain-TheCanadian
You’re right on the money Kangol – I am amazed by the level of ignorance many Americans show regarding what their politicians are doing in their name, it boggles the mind that many people don’t know what the American government is doing.
Mohammed al-Gheiti, the above journalist, was one of the cheerleaders of the coup against the firstly elected Egyptian government, and was one of the biggest instigators against the Muslim Brotherhood; he’s a huge supporter of the Egyptian army and security services, to see him slapped on the ass like this just shows that military regimes like this have no friends.
As for his interview with the gay man on his show, I saw snippets of it, the reason why he was arrested is because he was very sympathetic to the gay man, and tried to understand “how” he became gay. Lets just say, the Salafis who instigated Al-Gheiti’s arrest did not like the answer: “Allah made me this way, I had no choice”.
gymmuscleboy
@Kangol What do you think would be the outcome if the US disengages with Saudi Arabia? Yes, Saudi Arabia is abhorrent, but the world is not black and white. How would the world benefit when Saudi Arabia is buying weapons from Russia or China instead? To what extent would those massive diversions away from the western economy actually weaken the west and strengthen our enemies? We can hardly point the finger at Trump for US-Saudi relations – they have been ongoing for decades. But perhaps we should applaud him for trying keep the more harmful aspects of their culture (some of which you have identified below) out of the western world.