“Stay here! If you walk away, I’ll call for you”, sings Hassan Shakosh to the neighbour’s daughter in his 2019 hit “Bent el-Geran” (The Neighbour’s Daughter). “You’re mine and I’m yours, we’re stuck together. If you leave me, I’ll hate my life. I’ll drown my sorrows in alcohol and smoke hashish.” While the song garnered more than a half-billion views on YouTube alone, its reference to alcohol and hashish became the lightning rod of a culture war that has been raging between Egypt’s self-proclaimed custodians…
