Rehab for Egypt’s ‘Britney’ stirs talk on women’s rights

Cairo, Nov 3 (AFP/APP):In past weeks, the story of an Egyptian pop star admitted into a rehabilitation facility has spilled beyond celebrity gossip, and sparked new debate on women’s rights in the conservative country.

Sherine Abdel Wahab has long been a darling of Arab pop, but recent events have earned her the title of Egypt’s Britney Spears — not for her musical talent but because of her family’s efforts to portray her as unfit to manage her own affairs.

Her fanbase was shocked when she appeared sporting a dramatic new buzzcut, but when she was admitted into a rehabilitation facility last month for an unspecified addiction it sparked a groundswell of debate.

“I never would have expected that I would call Sherine Abdel Wahab Egypt’s Britney Spears, but this is what is happening,” former influential blogger Mahmoud Salem wrote on Facebook.

“A rich and successful star and based on her choices and her haircut, people decided that she is not OK — her parents placed her in a facility against her will and say she is incompetent and in need of guardianship.”

Questions of consent and coercion were raised in a country where, in 2021, the government proposed — without success — a draft bill aimed at restricting the rights of nearly 50 million Egyptian women by, for example, allowing their fathers or their brothers to annul their marriages.

Nearly eight million women out of Egypt’s 104 million people were victims of violence committed by their partners or relatives, or by strangers in public spaces, according to a United Nations survey conducted in 2015.

In the midst of the heated online discussion, conflicting versions of events have emerged from her family and her ex-husband, singer Hossam Habib.

The Abdel Wahab family has accused her ex-husband of being violent and wanting to take advantage of the singer’s fame and money, which Habib denies.

Abdel Wahab’s brother and Habib both spoke by phone on different days to tell their side of the story on the programme “al-Hekaya” anchored by Amr Adib, one of Egypt’s most watched talk show hosts.

“My mother was begging me to save her from her addiction,” Mohammed Abdel Wahab said, accusing Habib of beating her and saying he had been forced to admit her into rehab.

“I have never been violent towards a woman, and I never took a pound from Sherine,” her ex-husband replied.