Testing the boundaries of religious marriage (and divorce) in popular culture: Egyptian television drama reinforcing and challenging marriage taboos

The article uses the lens of popular culture to consider two aspects of religious marriage in Egypt that would otherwise be missed because they escape both state control and court enforcement. In engaging with some fringe aspects of religious marriage, Egyptian television drama tests the boundaries of their social acceptability, sometimes by challenging, sometimes by reinforcing the taboos of its conventional articulation. In the extremely popular serial Sābi Gār (‘Seventh Neighbour’, 2017‒2018), the authors re-frame the taboo of interfaith marriages within the broader hypocrisy of interfaith social relations, and the non-denominational rules of gendered morality in Egyptian society. But they also follow the social containment of the desire of motherhood of a young woman who has no desire to get married in order to become pregnant. In both cases, the conventional articulation could actually accommodate developments that are, however, socially resisted. Mobilisation against the serial’s perceived moral laxity prompted unscheduled suspensions of its airing — and its eventual cancellation.