Egyptian singer Shyma
The racy YouTube video by Egyptian singer Shyma garnered over a million views within hours of its release Screengrab from Youtube

Egyptian police have arrested a pop singer for "inciting debauchery" in a racy music video. In the video titled "3andy Zoroof", which is translated as I Have Issues in English, Shyma Ahmad dances in underwear and lip-syncs to the song.

The video, since taken down from the internet, also shows Shyma eating a banana and an apple suggestively in front of a group of men. The entire song was shot in what appears to be a classroom set with a blackboard where the singer pretends to be a teacher and scribbles words like Class #69 and vag.

Read more

The video garnered almost a million views within 14 hours of its release. But conservative Egyptians reportedly considered the video "indecent", prompting them to lodge complaints with the police.

Middle Eastern news outlet Scoop Empire slammed the up-and-coming singer for selling "filth" in the name of music. "The word filth may not even be enough to describe her first offering to the world of music," it wrote.

"Singer Shyma presents a lesson in depravity to youths," Egyptian newspaper Youm7 observed. Soon after the massive backlash, the singer released a statement on Facebook saying she never imagined there would be such a harsh response to the video.

"I apologise to all the people who saw the clip and were upset by it and took it in an inappropriate way. I didn't imagine all this would happen and that I would be subjected to such a strong attack from everyone, as a young singer...who has dreamt from a young age of being a singer," she said.

Interestingly, her Facebook account is also unavailable now.

The African country is socially conservative where women are still subjected to female genital mutilation, honour killings, domestic violence and sexual harassment. Recently, an Egyptian lawyer set off a controversy saying that it is "national duty" to rape women who wear revealing clothes.

An Egyptian Salafist cleric sparked outrage after suggesting that men can have sex with their illegitimate daughters and marry them.