LGBT activism in North Africa, a region taken here to include the five states of the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia), along with Egypt, was extremely limited in the early 2000s, though a high profile trial in Egypt of men accused of offending public morality had brought the question of same‐sex intimate relations into the public sphere in 2001. Nevertheless, in Morocco, civil society activists have brought the non‐judgmental Arabic term
mithliya
into media usage as a substitute for
shudhudh jinsiy
(“sexual deviation”) to refer to homosexual relations. Whether there will be a major push for the reform of current national legislation criminalizing same‐sex intimacy seems unlikely, despite hopes of greater individual freedoms raised by the so‐called Arab Spring. In Egypt, notably, government panders to religious rigorists and makes political capital out of persecuting men with same‐sex preferences.