Scape Goat is the new campaign of The Alliance of Egyptian Queer Organizations, In this campaign we try to focus on the political and social perspectives of the LGBTIQ+ cause in Egypt and the power dynamics that impact the frequent waves of arrests in Egypt. 

 

There is such an Egyptian saying: ‘If you couldn’t beat your ass, beat the rug’ this summarizes the relationship between the Egyptian government – conservative class and Islamists – and the LGBT community.

No one can deny that the conservative class in Egypt is a significant part and cannot be neglected by Politians and governments in case of losing its support for governments.
In the fifties of the last century and after the Manshia accident in Alexandria in particular and the signing of the evacuation agreement between Nasser and the British government. The islamists accused Naser of cooperation with the occupation… And The Egyptian government began an extensive campaign of arrests on all those who belonged to the Islamists groups in Egypt, such as Sayyid Qutb and Zainab AlGhazali … etc. But it is clear that the government at this time wanted to clean its hands from the accusation of being secularist or communist government … especially with the attack of many Islamic scholars on Abdel Nasser at this time, such as Mohammed al-Ghazali, which has been also arrested in 1965. The Anti-Prostitution Act of 1961 came in the midst of this war to improve the image of the government as the guardian of the traditions and morality of the conservative class in Egypt. And upon that, Egypt has entered a new phase of violating sexual and bodily rights.

The Egyptian law of immorality is very easy to use and contains any behavior that the conservative class can consider inappropriate … from dancing without pants on to sex out of marriage … And of course, being homosexual or Transgender. “Such actions may destroy the sacred temple of masculinity in the country”.

In 2000, the Muslim Brotherhood began to be visible again in the political scene by nominating their members to the parliament elections under the slogan “Islam is the solution”. It was one of the most popular Muslim Brotherhood campaigns under Mubarak regime … After the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood in the elections, The government needed another hand-cleansing campaign … It was the first major campaign of the LGBT community in Egypt known as Queen Boat or Cairo52. The case of Cairo 52 has actually lots of political complications however the hand-cleansing was a major one of them.

Since 2013 and the election of Sisi as President of Egypt, And of course after bloody clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian military forces… The Egyptian government needed another winning hand-cleansing campaign to improve its image in front of the conservative class, which resulted from many attacks on the LGBT community, especially, gay men and transgender women… Those frequent campaigns have resulted in now more than 300 members of the LGBT community have been arrested in different circumstances under accusations of immorality acts and sex work. The largest of them was the campaign that followed “Mashrou’ Laila” concert in New Cairo with arrests more than 80 individuals from the LGBT community which is known as “The Rainbow Flag case”.

 

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