All you need to know about reasons behind the cancellation of Saad Lamjarred’s concert in Egypt

CAIRO - 13 October 2020: The Cairo Show theatre announced the cancellation  of Moroccan megastar Saad Lamjarred’s concert which was planned to take place in December.

Few hours after the concert’s tickets were made unavailable on Ticketsmarche, the theater deleted all of the Moroccan singer’s concert posters and marketing campaigns that were on their official social media accounts.

Cairo Show theater decision came on the aftermath of a strong social media campaign that was launched against Lamjarred over rape allegations.

The massive campaign on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter was tailor made by numerous social media users to cancel Lamjarred concert because he is involved in multiple rape lawsuits in different countries such as France and the US.

Egyptian social media users  were strongly against Lamjarred’s concert, writing Arabic hashtags such as : #Saad_Lamjarred_Rapist”, and “#We_don’t_want_Lamjarred _in_Egypt”, which are trending in Egypt.

Social media activists claim that Egypt  has suffered recently from incidents of sexual harassment and rape, so it is not logic to host a concert of a serial rapist like Lamjarred.

Other social media users wondered why out of all the singers out there they chose a long accused serial rapist to perform in Egypt.

Some Egyptian celebrities were keen to support the social media campaign against Lamjarred such as Egyptian actresses Mayan El Sayed and Aida El Kashef.

The Moroccan megastar is currently on bail over an alleged rape case and was arrested in 2010 on suspicion of beating and raping a woman in New York.

In 2016, he was accused of physically assaulting and raping a young French woman in a hotel in Paris. In April, 2016 he was released on bail with an electronic tag awaiting trial.

The Moroccan king intervened to pay the singer’s legal fees.

 Before his release, Le Parisien French newspaper wrote that two years earlier a French-Moroccan woman had been physically assaulted by the young Moroccan singer in Casablanca.

The French newspaper reported that the French-Moroccan woman under pressure from her family was forced to withdrew the complaint she presented to the police.

His highly successful song “Lmaallem” is the most-viewed song by an Arab artist on YouTube.

“ Lmaallem” has garnered more than 650 million views on YouTube.

Many of Lamjarred’s fans strongly believe that the famed singer was the victim of a “plot” by Algeria, which has strained relations with Morocco.

Moroccan media even showed that small protests took place “in solidarity” with the singer during his detention.

Lamjarred dedicated the first song he released one year after the alleged incident to the Moroccan king.

The song gained over 140 M views and showed just how popular he remained despite all what happened.