"Dress decently": What is the problem of nudity laws
Dmitry Kurkin
Last week in Egypt, actress Rania Yousef accused of "immorality": the reason was her appearance on the carpet of the Cairo Film Festival in a dress that exposes her legs. Later, the actress made a public apology to her compatriots, but she was still called to the prosecutor’s office for clarification and interrogated there for almost four hours. The court hearing on the case of Yousef is to be held on December 12, according to Egyptian law, she could face up to five years in prison.
Egypt, of course, is not the only country where criminal laws governing social morals still exist, whether it is indecent behavior in public places or an insult to religious feelings. And although these laws provide for serious fines and prison sentences as punishment, practice shows that their wording is often extremely blurred, and their application strongly depends on the opinions of interpreters.
Immorality according to Sharia
In February of 2018 in the same Egypt, Russian woman Ekaterina Andreeva received accusations of indecent behavior: a belly dancer was detained after performing in a nightclub in Cairo. The full namesake of the leading Channel One was first released on bail in the amount of five thousand Egyptian pounds (about 18.5 thousand rubles), and later deported from the country. In December 2017, the Egyptian singer Shima was sentenced to two years in prison - the same number was received by the director of her video, which the guardians of morality considered immoral.
It is characteristic that in all cases the prosecution used the same wording - “a call for immorality”. Experts note that in Egypt - as in other countries of the Middle East and Muslim Africa, where, along with a secular court, the Sharia court also operates, the definition of immorality is extremely vague and the degree of obscenity is established in each case by the judge. So, for example, the law 10/1961, adopted in Egypt half a century ago to fight brothels and containing the phrase "engaging in corruption and prostitution", is actively used by local religious groups to suppress LGBT communities - despite the direct prohibition of non-heterosexual relations in Egyptian law not.
Obscene confusion
The absence of specifics is the main problem of the laws on immorality not only in Egypt, but almost everywhere where such laws exist: they are either too general, or, conversely, are broken up into many small and very specific rules that sometimes fall into the collections of the strangest laws of the world - for example, Thai law prohibiting driving topless (regardless of gender).
This chaos can be traced at least by the example of prohibitions on public exposure (minus nudist zones, for which many countries make exceptions). Only in the USA they differ from state to state and, by virtue of case law, many different formulations have taken root in legal practice: “obscene exposure”, “obscene behavior”, “public dissolute behavior”, etc. Similar confusion can be observed in neighboring Canada, where There is still no common understanding of what is considered obscenity. The local criminal code specifies that a person exposed in public should have a “legitimate reason” to do this (therefore, the courts often justify bathing or sunbathing without any clothing and even striking), but there is no clear list of possible reasons.
The more specific the laws relating to clothing, the more stringent the dress code, they tend to establish. But when it comes to tourists, the wording begins to blur even in countries where it is prescribed for local residents to cover themselves almost completely with opaque clothing. Not wanting to reduce the tourist attractiveness, the sites of countries such as the UAE and Morocco, recommend to guests (especially women traveling unaccompanied by men) to dress modestly.
Cursed mouth
The laws on immorality are in many ways similar to the laws on the protection of the feelings of believers. Both historically grew out of the social treaties that are “decent” and “pleasing to God” - these concepts were once synonymous, therefore the remnants of the treaties survived even in those countries where religious institutions have long been separated from the state (in Denmark only last year, the law on publicly insulting a religion that had been in force for more than three centuries was abolished, while six years ago, two-thirds of the Danes called for its preservation; Ireland did not hold a referendum in October of this year and blasphemy was canceled).
Both those and others rely not so much on rigorous attitudes as on public resonance - since there is no other tool to assess the damage allegedly inflicted on morality and religion (that is, to an unidentified circle of persons). As in one case, two guaranteed freedoms — freedom of speech and freedom of religion — collide, so in the other, opinions about borders and ways of expression are in conflict.