Mashrou’ Leila’s Musical Affective Politics: Queer Resistance in the Egyptian Social and Political Uprising

On June 14, 2020, queer Egyptian Sarah Hegazy died by suicide in Canada, where she was exiled shortly after her release from prison in Egypt for raising a rainbow flag during a Mashrou’ Leila (ML) concert on September 22, 2017. Following the concert night, Egypt saw widespread arrests of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) individuals amidst an imposed media block-out on the queer community. Soon after, a transnational response came from queer groups around the world as they mobilized in solidarity with the Egyptian queer community. Inspired by this concert and its aftermath, this article offers an analysis of ML’s music (lyrics), videos, images, interviews, fan base, and other opinions and perspectives of them. Within this analysis, to assess ML’s sociopolitical significance, I posit the concert as a distinctively unique culmination event generative of queer affective politics of resistance for the Egyptian queer community since the 2011 uprising. In doing so, this article contextualizes state-sponsored homophobic violence as an intrinsic component of the new regime’s political transition using a musical queer analysis that is entangled in Egypt’s body politics, international diplomatic relations, and domestic legal and sociocultural perceptions on morality.