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sons and offices of importance in the Kingdom, or representative of its life such as religious dignitaries, ministers, magistrates, doctors, officers, etc. In regard to foreign politics, while the censors take care to exclude subjects and scenes likely to degrade, in the eyes of the spectator, the East and the life of the East ; they also very wisely prevent the exhibition of all that might offend the feelings of foreign residents in Egypt or that might arouse reciprocal ill feeling between orientals and westerners.
c) Moral and social Questions. — This is the category which offers the greatest number of instances and prohibitions in Egypt, as indeed it does under all other censorship systems.
The direct representation, even in silhouette, of nude bodies, scenes of orgy of an excessive kind, kisses and embraces that overstep the limits of affection and tenderness, indecorous dress, gesture and acting of a kind to provoke immorality, such as lewd and suggestive dancing, are taboo.
One section of prohibitions deals entirely with questions of sex. Scenes of prostitution, solicitation in public places, procuration and the white slave traffic are banned. It refers also to sexual acts that are prohibited by law and custom,, such as unnatural love, incest, and all scenes likely to fire the imagination and senses.
The prohibition includes subject and scenes in which women sacrifice their honour in a noble cause, in view of the fact that it is difficult or impossible for the spectator — who may be a person of sub-normal intelligence — to distinguish what is noble or exalted in the action from what is reprehensible and a potential cause of moral perversion.
Prohibition for moral reasons embraces scenes and subjects of a medical character, childbirth operations, venereal diseases, scenes of a strictly scientific character which are considered suitable for exhibition only to a specialized audience of medical men or students.
d) Crime. — So far as crime is concerned, the object of the Egyptian system of censorship is to prevent the encouragement or exaltation of crime, for fear that scenes and deeds reflected on the screen may excite or pervert the spectators whose mental capacities and education do not enable them to differentiate between the criminal acts exhibited to them and the moral necessities of actual life.
Thus scenes and subjects displaying the modus operandi of criminals, the use of drugs (opium,, morphine, hashish, etc.) scenes and actions directed to the commission of crimes, or dramas in which crime forms the centre of the plot ; scenes of hanging or flagellation, even under a religious guise or pretext, suicides, scenes in which the criminal is presented as a hero or a person deserving of admiration. In these cases the aim of the censorship is to avoid distorting the spectator's notions of morality and to assist the public authorities by preventing the exaltation of criminals from impairing the authority and prestige of the defenders of public order.
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