Egypt University expels female student for hugging male student

An Egypt University, Al-Azhar University on Sunday announced that it has expelled a female student for hugging a male student who is said to be her boyfriend.

This came after a video of the young man carrying a bouquet of flowers kneeling before the young woman and then hugging her in what appeared to be a marriage proposal, went viral.

Though the marriage proposal was not filmed at Al-Azhar — a branch of Egypt’s highest Sunni Muslim authority— but at another establishment, Mansoura University in the country’s north, the disciplinary council of the Al-Azhar University campus in Mansoura went ahead to “expel the young girl definitively”,

The Egypt University spokesperson Ahmed Zarie who spoke to AFP, said the expelled female student presented a “bad image” of Al-Azhar University, which strictly segregates the genders.

According to him, hugging between unmarried men and women violates “the values and principles of society”.

It was further learnt that though the woman can appeal the expulsion decision, the young man who appeared in the video could also face sanctions.

Egypt's al-Azhar University just permanently expelled a student for giving her boyfriend a "hug" after he proposed to her. Yes, we are talking about the same country that has one of the worst records of sexual harassment. Deep societal hypocrisy + government's pathetic policies pic.twitter.com/jYZX6i58vF

— Amr Magdi (@ganobi) January 12, 2019