The Nile River has been a source of pride for the Egyptian people since civilization began. Not to mention the fact that a majority of Egypt’s drinking water is sourced from the Nile River. When an Egyptian publicly insults the Nile, other Egyptians take that personally, because of the national pride connected to the Nile.<\/p>\n
Sherine Abdel-Wahab, a famous Egyptian singer, publicly joked about the river during one of her concerts. Her joke targeted the cleanliness of the drinking water that comes from the Nile River.<\/p>\n
Why does this anger Egyptian people? Last year, the Egyptian government launched a multimillion dollar product to eliminate schistosomiasis, an infection in the water of the Nile. Schistosomiasis is an infection existing because of parasitic worms living in the water. As before mentioned, the Nile River is Egypt’s main source of drinking water. The government has a lot invested in this problem, and on of their own citizens publicly berating their project has angered other citizens.<\/p>\n
Hany Gad, the lawyer filing the lawsuit against her, has said that her sarcastic comment was an attacking insult towards the Egyptian government. There are claims that she is “inciting propaganda.” \u00a0 He says her claims could negatively affect the tourism revenue of Egypt.<\/p>\n
Something that stood out to me in this story is the date of the incident. August 2016 is when her concert took place, and the clip of her just recently resurfaced. My question is why now? The singer even said that she had forgotten about the incident and was surprised to see the clip.<\/p>\n
I think that Hany Gad’s accusations are not accurate, seeing that it took place over a year ago. The government’s expensive attempt to clean the water also began last year.<\/p>\n
Another reason I may feel that Gad is incorrect is because of my American understanding of freedom of speech. In the Egyptian constitution, freedom of speech and press are there, however they are much more limited.<\/p>\n
The case could go either way and I am interested to see the results.<\/p>\n
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The Nile River has been a source of pride for the Egyptian people since civilization began. Not to mention the fact that a majority of Egypt’s drinking water is sourced from the Nile River. When an Egyptian publicly insults the Nile, other Egyptians take that personally, because of the national pride connected to the Nile. Sherine Abdel-Wahab, a famous Egyptian… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1055,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}