A new Egyptian bank note has prompted outrage and calls for a boycott after apparently featuring the colours of the rainbow flag associated with LGBT pride.
The Egyptian central bank has indicated that it will change the design of the plastic £20 note, which appeared to show a rainbow spectrum on its watermark in a sample photograph, leading to consternation on social media in the conservative society.
Despite attempts to point out that the colours were probably a reflection of a holographic watermark included as a security measure, Arabic hashtags including “rainbow flag” and “gays’ flag” attracted more than 22,000 retweets and comments on Monday after the images were released.
“This is a great scandal and a sin!” one user on Twitter said. “The government [is] responsible for this shameful act of placing an image of the gay flag on a mosque on our national currency note! They must correct it and issue an apology!”
A £10 note sample was also criticised for featuring the Al-Fattah Al-Aleem mosque, inaugurated in 2019 as a prominent project of President Sisi, rather than other historical monuments.
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One Twitter user said: “£20 with the gay flag on it and £10 notes with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s mosque on it, when we have hundreds of other prominent mosques and historical monuments!”
A central bank official told the Middle East News Agency that the bank note designs were preliminary and subject to change before they come into circulation in November.
Although homosexuality is not criminalised in Egypt, its conservative Islamic society deems homosexual acts, ideas and symbols as “immoral”.
Human Rights Watch has said that Egyptian security forces “arbitrarily arrest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and detain them in inhuman conditions [and] systematically subject them to ill-treatment”.
The rainbow flag itself has previously caused controversy in the country. In 2017 several Egyptians were arrested for raising it during a concert in Cairo by the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila, whose singer is openly gay.
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At least 84 people were arrested in an ensuing crackdown by police and many were subjected to humiliating forced anal examinations, according to rights groups.
The Egyptian activist Sarah Hegazi, who had been among those arrested at the concert, committed suicide last year after claiming to have been tortured in an Egyptian prison before moving to Canada.
Despite the backlash, some Egyptians welcomed the new polymer money designs as an improvement over traditional paper notes, which have long been criticised for their dirty and easily worn appearance.