Egypt’s Soap-Opera Islamists
The scene opens in a Cairo mosque, where men have gathered for Friday prayers. “They ask you about music. Say it’s the tool of the devil,” a voice intones. “It’s haram, haram, haram.” The worshippers call out in agreement; they open their palms upward. There are shouts: “God is great!” “God help you gain more knowledge, our sheikh!” The camera focuses on a handsome young preacher with serious brown eyes. “Singing plants hypocrisy in the heart,” he tells his congregation. “And whoever sees a musical instrument should break it.” After the sermon, he takes a silver BMW to a television studio to tape an episode of his hit show, on the topic of sex before marriage (haram, haram, haram, naturally).
“My God, he’s as beautiful as the moon!” says a veiled camerawoman. “Too bad about his extremist views.”
The most talked-about television serial in Egypt this Ramadan season may be “Al-Da’iea” (“The Preacher”), the story of a conservative Islamist sheikh whose views draw him closer to the fundamentalist camp even as they alienate his family. Its popularity may seem strange, since millions of Egyptians recently took to the streets to depose their conservative Islamist President. But the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that was underground for almost sixty years and governed the country for just one, still fascinates people, even those who despise it.
“I like this show because it tells you a lot about the thinking of the Islamists,” Remon Amin, a stockbroker who hates the Brotherhood and hasn’t followed any other TV series in years, told me. Like the Egyptian electorate—which voted Mohamed Morsi into office a year ago but offered broad support when the military removed him from power—he does not have unlimited patience. “I’ll watch the first ten episodes,” he said, “then decide if I’ll continue.”
Moltaheen—“people with beards”—are all over TV this Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, which Egyptians mark by staying up through the night and watching multi-episode soap operas. “Bedoun Zekr Asmaa” (“Without Mentioning Names”) tells the story of Islamist groups recruiting members in poor neighborhoods during the nineteen-eighties. Conservative sheikhs are popping up in supernatural thrillers (“Neeran Sadeeqa,” or “Friendly Fire”) and police procedurals (“Moget Harra,” or “Heat Wave”). These programs were filmed when Morsi still held power, and they appear to be the cultural establishment’s collective protests against extremism. “This year it seems that TV producers have decided to gang up on not just the Brotherhood but all forms of political Islam,” Joseph Fahim, a Cairo-based film critic, told me. “It feels like this was the only chance for artists and creators and dramatists to voice their opinions.”
“The Preacher” centers on Yusef, an ambitious sheikh whose television preaching has brought him wealth, fame, and a tastefully decorated villa that he shares with his extended family. But mutinies are brewing amid the muted lighting and sectional sofas. In the series première, his brother-in-law Hassan, who is also a preacher, begins to question Yusef’s strict interpretation of the Koran; at a family dinner, Yusef lashes out at his younger sister Marwa for bringing home a birthday cake (Muslims should celebrate only religious holidays, he tells her). In episode three, Yusef rejects the young man Marwa wants to marry because he’s an actor (haram); in episode five, he discovers that another younger sister is secretly playing the violin (haram, again), and smashes the instrument to pieces.
Television preachers started appearing in Egypt a decade ago, helped by a rising conservatism and the proliferation of private satellite channels. Clerics have traditionally gained followers through their knowledge of the Koran, but the new televangelists attracted people with their accessibility, charisma, or religious fervor. One Salafi sheikh has called for the destruction of Egyptian antiquities; several have accused famous actresses of promoting immorality. The clash between art and extremism culminated in the spring with a sit-in against the appointment of an Islamist culture minister. People accused the Muslim Brotherhood of hijacking the country—and destroying their vision of a cosmopolitan, tolerant Egypt.
“I started feeling that this was a very important time for our country: we will either advance, or we will go backward five hundred years,” Medhat el-Adl, who wrote the script for “The Preacher,” told me. “We felt this was the right time to speak.”
It was a gamble. Events in Egypt are progressing so rapidly these days that dramas with political themes fall quickly out of date. Most of the films about the 2011 revolution have not done well commercially. Their celebratory tone now feels simple and naïve.
But el-Adl’s timing, it turns out, couldn’t have been better. He wrote the script last summer, soon after Morsi took office, and filmed the episodes this past spring. The Ministry of Information initially banned the program from state television; the minister had been Morsi’s media campaign manager. But a new minister took his place after Morsi’s removal. On the first night of Ramadan, officials visited el-Adl’s office and watched all thirty-one episodes of “The Preacher” in one sitting—a heroic feat of television viewing in the service of state censorship. The serial was approved and is airing on government and private channels.
“I think people are attracted to a show like ‘The Preacher’ to have some sort of catharsis for the dramas of the past year,” Fahim, the film critic, told me. “It’s cathartic to see this villain being tortured, whether by external or internal conflicts.”
The character of Yusef, who is rigid but also pious and generous, may be the most nuanced depiction of political Islam on the screen to date. Three years ago, state television broadcast a series called “Al-Gama’a” (“The Group”), a history of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, was initially portrayed as a complex figure but later became a straight-up villain. “After the fifteenth episode, that was it, it was just propaganda,” Fahim said. Yusef develops in a different direction. In episode fourteen, he will fall in love with Nesma, a beautiful violinist and revolutionary (who is played by the wife of a prominent liberal politician). He rediscovers his love for music and finds that—as in the musical rhythms of Koran verses—art and faith can coexist. “What I call for is a moderate, tolerant Islam,” el-Adl said. “You can love music and pray at the same time.” In a politically polarized climate, that may be the most radical view of all.
“The Preacher” now looks prophetic. In episode thirteen, Nesma encourages her fellow anti-Brotherhood protesters to push on. “The squares of Egypt are everywhere,” she says. “A time will come when we will fill all the squares and show them our true size.” Production of the series wrapped up on June 29th; the next day, an estimated fourteen million people filled the squares of Egypt and brought down the regime. “While we were filming, we believed that the government would fall, that these people would never be able to rule Egypt,” el-Adl told me. “We were all betting that not one year would pass before they were gone.”
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