Egypt's state circus joins growing unrest

• Performers among 1.5m workers to oppose reform
• Wave of action since 2004 'almost unprecedented'

-Taken from 'The Guardian'
-Cairo - April 2009
-Photo courtesy of Sara Sanad and El-Youm El-Sabea newspaper

A typical Sunday afternoon for Refat El-Grasy involves oiling a unicycle and unpacking some spinning plates in preparation for an evening's show at the Egyptian National Circus. Yet this weekend El-Grasy, the circus clown, will find himself out on the street, holding a placard and shouting slogans at passing cars.

"We can't live on our current wages and we don't want to see this place privatised," explains the 52-year-old. "We'll keep on walking out here for as long as it takes for our voices to be heard."

El-Grasy is the latest Egyptian to join a wave of strikes that has seen almost 1.5 million workers down tools in the last five years. Since the start of the government's tough economic reforms in 2004 almost every industrial sector has seen walkouts and protests as part of what Joel Beinin, director of Middle East studies at the American University in Cairo, calls "the largest social movement the Middle East has seen in half a century".

Industrial action has intensified as the global economic downturn has taken hold. Dissatisfaction with government policies and spiralling prices has resulted in walkouts by everybody from railway drivers to TV producers and pharmacists. Although Egypt is no stranger to strikes - the first recorded sit-in was held by Theban graveyard workers, protesting against a shortage of burying ointments during the reign of Ramses III - the latest dissent has few parallels. "It's almost unprecedented," says Beinin, "it's the most democratic thing happening in Egypt."

Although few of the striking workers are as colourful as El-Grasy, his concerns are shared by many who feel left behind by the regime of Hosni Mubarak, now in his 28th year as president. All the circus performers are employees of the state and have not seen salaries rise in 10 years.

Staff at the circus are only too aware of the fate of workers in other industries who have suddenly found themselves in the private sector. A well-known example is the Indorama Shebeen el-Kom spinning factory, which has witnessed 95 strikes since being privatised in 2006 after the new owners refused to pay up to 10m Egyptian pounds in bonuses to staff. "We're proud to work for the state," said El-Grasy, who has been with the circus since 1969. "We just want enough money to live on."

The government has responded to the strikes by trying to appease workers' calls for higher wages while suppressing any political demands, often brutally. A factory walkout in the textile town of Mahalla al-Kubra last year, which turned into a mass demonstration, was met with a violent response and left three dead.

One of the more successful strikes has been that of the government's property tax collectors. They broke off from the state-run general workers syndicate and formed their own private trade union, the first of its kind since the 1952 revolution - potentially a dramatic development in a country where going on strike without the authorisation of a recognised union is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Back at the faded circus tent by the Nile in Cairo, El-Grasy remains unsure about the future. "This is our circus and our art," he said. "Everyone here cares a lot about what happens to this place, and we'll be out again if our demands aren't met."

Muslim Brotherhood at a crossroads

As the leader of Egypt's opposition steps down, questions of the party's identity and purpose frame the debate over a successor

-Taken from the Guardian's 'Comment is Free'

-Cairo - April 2009

There are several recurring themes one becomes wearily familiar with when following the erratic world of Egyptian politics. Sensational revelations about Zionist/Iranian plots to destabilise the nation are a permanent fixture, as are empty policy statements parroted by government spokesmen and stoic silence from the regime on any issue that actually matters. One thing you don't often hear about, though, is resignation speeches – it takes a lifetime's work acquiring wasta (connections, or influence) to ascend to the top of any of the country's numerous greasy poles, and once politicians are up there they tend to be remarkably unenthusiastic about climbing back down.

Yet a resignation speech is exactly what the papers here have recently been chewing over – and it's all the more remarkable coming from the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahdi Akef, who at 80 years old is about to become the movement's first ever leader not to hang on to his position for life. Akef himself is not blind to the significance of this exotic event: "In Egypt there are no former officials ... there are only dead officials," he observed wryly when asked why the announcement that he would step down in January 2010 had created such a furore.

There are other reasons too why people are interested in Akef's resignation, but on these he is more reticent. That's because his removal, and the consequent succession battle within the party, will reveal much about the present character – and future direction – of Egypt's largest opposition force, one of the most influential Islamist political groupings in the region. The Muslim Brotherhood's 8th supreme guide will be chosen by its 100-strong shura council, which is itself 80% elected by the movement's rank and file membership. Analysts are therefore hoping the next few months will offer a unique insight into how strong the support bases are for each of the various factions jockeying for prominence within the movement.

Such an insight, if it materialises, couldn't be timelier. The Brotherhood has just emerged from a bruising few months, in which it mobilised 200,000 on to the streets of Alexandria in protest at the Egyptian government's closure of the Rafah border crossing during the Gaza war; the following day a Muslim Brotherhood MP threw his shoe at a rival from the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) during a heated parliamentary session (to the delight of nearby photographers). Events across the border in Gaza exposed both the Brotherhood's strengths and weaknesses; it has an unparalleled capacity to turn out demonstrators in large numbers, yet regime oppression of the group is increasing – the Brotherhood believes that 1,700 of its members were arrested for Gaza-related activities.

Moreover, the leadership seems out of touch with the relatively decentralised industrial actions sweeping the country, and even more confused over how to align itself in relation to both the US – where President Obama is reportedly considering opening new lines of dialogue with the organisation – and the NDP, which is itself thinking about a replacement for President Hosni Mubarak, a fellow octogenarian. Akef may be popular within the Brotherhood but he leaves behind a movement fundamentally unsure of itself. The succession battle could relieve some of this uncertainty and breathe some much-needed coherence into the organisation.

So what does the succession battle look like? That all depends on your perspective, and how you frame the faultlines running through the organisation. It's been popular to characterise the Brotherhood in recent years as a group balanced between an authoritarian conservative clique at the top and a youthful, tech-savvy cadre below who are agitating for more engagement with non-Islamist forces and undermining the more reactionary impulses of the leadership (such as the 2007 policy platform which denied both women and Coptic Christians the chance to become president and proposed a new religious council that would ensure the compliance of all legislation with sharia law).

Much has been made of these "Brotherhood bloggers", but although they are an important element in the organisation their influence has been exaggerated by a media infatuated by modern buzzwords like Facebook and Twitter. As one young Brother, Abd al-Mun'im Mahmoud, remarked, there are those within the Brotherhood "that use technology and are open-minded about the world. I am with [this] group, but we are a minority. The problem with those analysts attracted to our language is that they fell in love and started running behind us. That is not the Brothers."

What is the Brothers is a far deeper, more potent and cross-generational divide between those who see the primary reason for the group's existence as one of political participation, and those who want to disengage with politics, and concentrate on da'wa (evangelism). Recent events have strengthened the hand of the latter, religiously conservative group, who argue that the organisation's flirtation with the formal electoral process (the Brotherhood won 20% of contested parliamentary seats in 2005, despite being officially outlawed) has brought them nothing but grief. Government-led security crackdowns and legal assaults have left many leading pragmatists and reformers in the other camp languishing in jail, most notably Khayrat al-Shatir, a millionaire businessmen and staunch proponent of engagement with western governments, further reinforcing the credibility of those who want to "retreat back into the bunker" and focus on core values, activism in the social sector and ultimately the survival of the group.

Electing a reformist leader like Essam al-Arian or the imprisoned al-Shatir would be a clear statement of intent for the movement, but such an outcome is highly improbable. The momentum now is with the da'wa-orientated tendency, led by figures such as Mohammed Morsi and the party's general secretary, Mahmoud Ezzat. The sort of tentative engagement with groups and processes beyond the Brotherhood's own sphere that has characterised Akef's tenure at the top would likely wane if either of these two triumph, and the result would be not only a more inward-looking society, but also a blow to those who defend the Muslim Brotherhood using the "firewall" theory – arguing that a strong, legitimate and well-engaged moderate Islamist group integrated into formal politics can only be a good thing in the battle to stop radical Salafist jihadism spreading in countries like Egypt.

There are alternatives – such as the pragmatic conservative Mohammed Habib, the current deputy supreme guide, who can talk the language of secularism and remains committed to political engagement. His chances of success remain to be seen. What we do know is that despite the Brotherhood's supreme guide being, in Joshua Stacher's words, more of a bureaucratic CEO than an eminence grise dominating policy from above, this succession battle will play an important part in shaping the Brotherhood's future, and consequently the fortunes of political Islam in the Middle East.

Alexandria's Jews: Bearers of a dimming torch

-Taken from 'The National'
-Alexandria - April 2009
-Original photography by Jason Larkin


Sweating in the mid-morning heat, Abdul Salaam gently brushes the dirt off a grave to reveal a faded Star of David. Mr Salaam, a committed Muslim, has lived as a resident guard within the high walls of this Alexandrian Jewish cemetery for 41 years, just as his father did for five decades.

The cracked headstones and marble tombs around him bear witness to people who first made this Egyptian city their home more than 2,300 years ago, and in their heyday numbered almost 80,000. Last summer, the final remnants of that vibrant community gathered here to bury their leader. So few of them were left that the Kaddish, a Jewish funeral blessing, could not be recited. The significance of that was obvious to all who attended; this once-cosmopolitan corner of the Arab world will soon entomb its final Jewish resident, and Mr Salaam will be left alone with the graves.

The death of Max Salama, 92, an Egyptian Jew who once served as King Farouk’s personal dentist, leaves 18 surviving Jews in what was once one of the religion’s greatest cultural capitals. The majority of those remaining are in their 70s or 80s and reside in old people’s homes, no longer interacting with the city they have always called home. At the tender age of 53, the new leader, Youssef Gaon, is now the youngest Jew in Alexandria by a considerable margin, and he is childless.

"What can I say?" he shrugs, as he gives a tour of a beautifully decorated but deserted synagogue in the old city centre.


Jews have been an integral part of Alexandria’s history ever since the port city was founded by Alexander the Great in 332BC. Their numbers have ebbed and flowed over the years but reached a zenith in the early 1900s, when Jews from across Europe and North Africa flocked there to escape persecution.

"It was an immigrant community drawn from all corners of the world, especially the remnants of the old Ottoman Empire," said Yves Fedida, an Egyptian Jew now living in France, whose grandparents emigrated to Egypt from Palestine at the turn of the century in search of work.
These were the rekindled glory days of Alexandria, an urbane melting pot of nationalities where poets, scientists and intellectuals mingled freely on the Corniche.

Egyptian Jews lay at the heart of the city’s revival, with individuals such as the anti-colonial Egyptian nationalist Yaqub Sana and the prominent psychologist Jacques Hassoun becoming household names in the region. But after revolutionary fervour swept Gamal Abdel Nasser to power in 1952, the ancient city’s worldly reputation began to fade and subsequent hostilities with the newly founded state of Israel gradually eroded Alexandria’s Jewish population.

Mr Fedida’s parents were forced out in the first wave of expulsions, prompted by the outbreak of the Suez conflict. As Israeli tanks advanced on the Suez Canal, his father, previously the financial director of the national Egyptian Petroleum Company, was given 10 days to leave the country.

"He had to take us away and start again in England with just 20 Egyptian pounds in his pocket," remembers Mr Fedida, who now works for the Nebi Daniel Association, a French group that brings together Egyptian Jews from around the world.

The exodus of Alexandria’s Jews continued following wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973, and many of those who clung to their homeland were imprisoned by the Egyptian state, suspected of being Zionist spies. Today, the remaining Jews at the magnificent Italianate synagogue of Eliahou Hanabi are vastly outnumbered by policemen and officials from the Egyptian ministry of the interior, who pay for the site’s security.

"We are in very good hands," said Mr Gaon, anxious not to upset the fragile working relationship the surviving community has established with the Egyptian government. "Even after we have gone I know they will look after this place."

But as the final echoes of Alexandria’s Jewish ancestry die out, a new battle is raging over their heritage. At stake is the set of religious and civil registers maintained by Egyptian Jewry under the Ottoman Empire, which devolved such record-keeping to its non-Muslim communities.

Mr Gaon and his elderly compatriots are the final custodians of these logbooks, which run to 60,000 pages detailing all the births, deaths and weddings of the community stretching back to the 1830s.


These documents are of vital importance to descendants of Alexandrian Jews such as Mr Fedida, as the Jewish faith requires individuals to prove their maternal Jewish bloodline in order to get married. The problem is that issuing such certification from Alexandria is increasingly burdensome for the small number of Jewish pensioners left and the process is often hampered by local bureaucracy. The Nebi Daniel Association is lobbying the Egyptian government to allow copies of the archives to be placed in a European institution where they could be more easily accessed, but so far their efforts have met with failure.

The reluctance of the current Egyptian regime to enable easy access to the documents springs from fears that the offspring of Alexandria’s Jews will use them to make financial compensation claims against the government for Jewish property confiscated under Nasser’s nationalisation programmes.

The issue is a sensitive one; last year an unspecified amount was paid by the state to the Jewish family who originally owned The Cecil, a luxury Alexandrian hotel immortalised in Lawrence Durrell’s novels The Alexandria Quartet and seized by the government in 1957. Earlier this summer, a planned Cairo conference of Jews hailing from Egypt was cancelled after local media questioned the intentions behind the event.

According to Mr Fedida, however, fears of compensation demands are misguided.

"We are absolutely not interested in financial claims," he said. "Our generation are the children of those who really suffered from expulsion and imprisonment. Although our parents tried to reconstruct their lives elsewhere, we saw their grief and we need to do them justice by giving them back the identity that led to them being uprooted in the first place."

Regardless of the outcome of this tussle over the logbooks, the human element of this once grand community will soon be extinguished and there will be no more burials at Abdul Salaam’s overgrown cemetery.

For Mr Fedida though, who was born in Alexandria, optimism prevails that Jews might one day make a return to the city.

"You never know; we lost it once before when the Byzantines kicked us out in 400AD," he said. "I think it’s a wonderful city, and I long for it on a daily basis. But deep down I know I’m longing for a world that no longer exists."

So much for Egypt's 'day of rage'

Facebook-organised protests against a corrupt elite mean little in a country where only 10% of the population are internet users

-Taken from the Guardian's 'Comment is Free'
-Photo by Per Bjorklund
-Cairo - April 2009

It was billed as a "day of rage", 24 hours of co-ordinated protests across the country in which Egypt's 80 million citizens would send a powerful message of defiance to their unloved government. In reality, at best it proved to be a day of mild dissatisfaction; at worst the events of 6 April 2009 may have dealt a serious blow to the country's fragmented opposition movement.

Despite a frenzied build-up – which included exhorting residents to throw subversive leaflets from their rooftops (echoing tactics used in the struggle against British colonialism), a national campaign to wear black on the big day (mourning the death of modern Egypt at the hands of President Hosni Mubarak), and polls suggesting that up to 90% of Cairo was planning to join a general strike – yesterday's events passed with an underwhelming whimper. Shops stayed open, protests were tiny and isolated, and the only people decked out in black were the countless lines of riot police.

None of this is to denigrate the efforts of those who have worked hard over the past year to give public expression to the anger felt by Egyptians towards the corrupt, self-serving elite. And in the context of an overwhelming security presence – and the huge legal and economic risks faced by poor workers who might have wanted to take the day off work – protest organisers are arguing that yesterday was still a success. They are right to point out that if international journalists had bothered to venture beyond downtown Cairo (where the highlight was a demonstration at the Journalists' Syndicate which mustered barely a hundred supporters) they would have seen more action, not least at the
universities where police ignored a recent judicial order barring them from entering campuses, and fought running battles with dissident students.

But positive spin cannot change the fact that yesterday was a sad day for those trying to challenge the hypocrisy of Mubarak and his cronies, who preach the language of democratisation and human rights while plundering the nation's riches and cracking down brutally on any who stand in their way. Yesterday's date was chosen as a focus for popular discontent because it was the anniversary of an uprising last year which saw three people killed by police. In the following 12 months a dramatic strike wave has continued to sweep the country, the Gaza crisis has exposed Mubarak's subservience to Israel and the US, and the global credit crunch has laid bare the crippling inequalities entrenched in Egypt's IMF-sponsored rush into neoliberal economic reform. In other words, the time seemed ripe for a sustained confrontation with the government. Why then did such a confrontation fail?

The answer lies with the approach of Egypt's so-called army of "Facebook activists", a much-hyped broth of technological innovation, media sensation and 21st century buzzwords. "Shabab 6 April" ("6 April Youth") boasted 75,000 online supporters on the eve of the action. The problem was that like most media sensations, there was a lack of substance at the movement's core. Facebook groups might grab the attention of social-networking-hungry global news outlets, but they mean a lot less in a country where only about 10% of the population are internet users. That's not to say the web doesn't have a vital role to play in providing a much-needed space for political expression, but it does mean that those seeking mass mobilisations against the regime must find ways to reach out and co-ordinate with those beyond their own middle-class circles.

And this is where it all went wrong for Shabab 6 April. Last year the real dynamism behind the protests stemmed not from Cairo but from the industrial town of Mahalla – where workers from the main textiles factory walked out of the front gates and whose residents paid a bitter price for their courageous stand. This year the industrial working-class were not involved in the organisation of protests. Some trade union factions lent their support to the "day of rage" but there was no linked-up collective action. Nor did the young activists I spoke to on the day seem to think this was much of a problem. The idea of meaningful grassroots activism is notable by its absence in the Facebook manifestoes, a point which has improbably united critics of Shabab 6 April from both the left and the right. Instead grand calls for a general strike are merely issued from on high, handing an effortless propaganda victory to the government when the mass walkouts inevitably fail to materialise.

The irony of all this is that Egypt's workers are in fact engaged in a wave of political militancy, which in recent months has seen strikes break out across every corner of the country, bringing everyone from doctors to train drivers on to the streets. On top of this, some public sector employees are for the first time escaping the trappings of the state-controlled union syndicates and instead forming their own private trade unions. A recent report suggested that Egypt will be particularly hit by the economic downturn, with half a million more jobs likely to be lost in 2009. Alongside the already fierce bubbling of social discontent, this will weaken the beleaguered Mubarak regime even further. But as yesterday made clear, it will take more than a few social networking groups to effectively capitalise on the government's problems – something which those 75,000 Facebook group members will be soberly pondering today.

Newspaper newcomer hits the headlines

El-Shorouk, a daily newspaper launched two months ago in Egypt, has been making international headlines over the past days following what might be a major scoop about a possible US/Israeli air strike on Sudan in January. The newspaper is the latest addition to a newspaper market that has thrived over the past years, and where the independent press seems to have come to stay despite regular attacks from the government in the form of legal threats and security crackdowns. However, there are those who doubt whether El-Shorouk will make a difference to the Egyptian newspaper in terms of editorial quality and innovation.


-Cairo - March 2009
-Taken from the 'Arab Press Network'

Like any group of rowdy teenagers who are young, excitable and just getting their first taste of freedom, Egypt's independent press has been throwing a party in recent years. Flush with their success at breaking a series of major government scandals and gleeful at having carved out a fresh readership base with which to tackle the state-owned monoliths head on, the mood has been exuberant - at least it was until earlier this year, when a new kid came along to gatecrash festivities.

Enter El-Shorouk, the country's latest daily paper to hit the newsstands. This week the publication scored what could prove to be one of the biggest scoops of the year, breaking a story about alleged secret airstrikes on arms smuggling operations in Sudan. As well-funded as it is ambitious, the arrival of El-Shorouk is making headlines of its own accord, but the outlet is also having to face down skeptics who doubt it has the hunger, style or business model to succeed.

Launched by the Dar El Shorouk publishing house, a forty year old institution venerated for being one of the founding pillars of modern Egyptian publishing, the new paper is throwing itself into a crowded and sensitive market. Not only are the independent dailies encountering fierce competition for sales in an industry which is globally contracting, but they are also pulling off a tricky balancing act by trying to challenge the boundaries of the government's often-blurry red lines when it comes to press censorship, without going far enough to provoke a backlash from the regime.

The trials and tribulations of the independent media in Egypt have been well documented by APN since the sector began to really take off with the launch of Al-Masry Al-Youm in 2004 and the return of previously-banned Al-Dustour the following year. The question is why El-Shorouk would want to jump on a bandwagon that seems to offer little outlet for healthy profits and yet is regularly assailed by legal threats and security crackdowns.

One answer could lie in its relatively highbrow approach, which borrows more from the state-controlled media giant Al-Ahram than it does from its independent rivals. Not only is the paper's character less sensational than that of Al-Masry Al-Youm and Al-Dustour - helped in part by the recruitment of big name stars from Al-Ahram like Fahmy Howeidy and Salama Ahmad Salama - it also takes a less confrontational political stance on controversial topics.

Although this has attracted criticism from opposition activists, some commentators see it as an important step towards the independent media in Egypt gaining the maturity, and thus credibility, it requires to thrive. "Ibrahim El-Moalem [El-Shorouk's publisher], is not known as an opposition figure, or as someone who takes courageous stands against the government like Ibrahim Eissa [editor of Al-Dustour]" observed the Arabist, a prominent Egyptian blogger who has written extensively on the Egyptian media scene. "He's going at it with a more professional point of view and a less lurid tone and I think that's what's needed in this market, where the tendency is to provide relentlessly negative coverage of the government."

If El-Shorouk's target readership is those still clinging to Al-Ahram, it couldn't have entered the fray at a better time. Three-quarters of Egyptian media remain under government control, but state newspapers are a sinking ship: publications are believed to be collectively in debt to the tune of LE 5-6 billion ($887m to $1.06bn), and morale is at rock bottom in the underpaid, overstaffed newsrooms (Al-Ahram alone employs 1400 journalists) where the standard of stories is often low. El-Shorouk has the money behind it to snap up the best columnists and has even struck syndication deals with international papers like the New York Times enabling it translate and publish some of their content, a move which some believe could transform it into a genuine challenger to the pan-Arab dailies like Al-Quds Al-Arabi and Asharq al-Awsat, both currently published from London.

It remains to be seen though whether this attempt to expand the independent media market in a fresh direction will be enough to bring El-Shorouk long-term stability. For Hamdy Hassan, a media expert at the Al-Ahram institute, the problem with the new paper is not what it has done, but rather what it has failed to do. "At a time when the average newspaper reader is getting older, what we needed was a really new outlook, a new language for editing that would bring more young people to the medium," argues Dr Hassan. "I expected El-Shorouk to provide all of that and prove competitive, but I'm afraid it hasn't. In other parts of the world the newspaper industry is innovating - audience research projects in America, new tabloid and hybrid formats in Britain - but El-Shorouk has proved to be essentially a copy of what is already on offer, and as a business model that will never be successful."

With a relative dearth of objective research into readership habits, it's hard to pinpoint how and why Egypt's newspaper readers make their daily purchasing choices. The Arabist believes that the ultimate triumph or failure of El-Shorouk will depend on its ability to pull out the big scoops. "No one thought Al-Masry Al-Yom would last when it first launched, but it made its name by breaking stories no-one else had, especially around the time of parliamentary elections," he says. "We're not in an election period now but we do now have a 24 hour news cycle, where unlike before the independent press can break scandals and force the government to respond the same day. If El-Shorouk can become a part of that process then it will flourish; consistent, solid reporting will always create its own market."

Whilst the debates over the fate of Egypt's newest daily rage on, others are more animated by the fact it exists at all. To the surprise of many who have witnessed the Mubarak regime's thorny relationship with the independent press, El-Shorouk received a license to publish along with four other newspapers last June. "I think it's emblematic of the government's schizophrenic approach to the media that El-Shorouk have been allowed to come out at all," says Lawrence Pintak, director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism at the American University of Cairo and editor of Arab Media and Society. "The paper itself is clearly still trying to figure out its identity. But the fact that it's out there is a good sign for the future of Egypt's independent press."

Rapping for Allah: the new channel for the Muslim MTV generation

Egyptian channel 4Shbab aims to provide an Islamic take on music video culture for the world

-Taken from 'The Guardian'
-Cairo - March 2009

The thumping beat, baggy football tops and slick production values bear all the trademarks of a typical hip-hop music video. But instead of scantily-clad women dancing around a swimming pool, the main character in this song is a schoolmistress draped in an Islamic headscarf; in place of guns, drugs and money, the rappers talk of prayer, healing and Allah. Welcome to 4Shbab, (‘For Youth’) Egypt’s newest entry into the lucrative music TV market and a channel dedicated to bringing Muslim values to the MTV generation.

Swaying precariously on a boat moored off by the Nile, 4Shbab’s founder, Ahmed Abu Haiba, explained why the current set of music video networks dominating satellite television in the Arab world constitute a threat to Muslim identity. “These channels are strange to our culture,” he said. “There are young Muslim men today who’d like to have girlfriends, be part of a dating culture, and yet when they want to get married they look for a devout, religious wife. This is cultural schizophrenia ... and it’s these channels which are giving our young generation such misunderstandings and smashing their identities.”

To reverse the corruption of an entire generation through “lewd imagery” and “contradictory values” Abu Haiba travelled around Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries raising funds for a brand new TV channel – one which would appeal to the same audience as MTV and its Arab competitors, but be fully consistent with the teachings of Islam. Two years on and 4Shbab has finally arrived on TV sets throughout the Middle East and Europe, with plans to extend coverage to Asia and North America later this year.

But staying upright on the Nile waves is not the only balancing act Abu Haiba is having to pull off as he seeks to take 4Shbab global. Despite promising to ‘Encourage dialogue, deconstruct stereotypes and deepen understanding’, the channel – which boasts the tagline ‘Listen to the tune of Islam’ – is already being criticised on multiple fronts. On the one hand Abu Haiba has been accused of demeaning Islam by those who believe that all music is haram ( religiously forbidden). “We are already being attacked by fundamentalist Islamists on the net,” admits Abu Haiba, who says he’s “not a sheikh, but rather a media man on a mission.”

On the other side, his station has taken flak for the absence of women on the airwaves, who rarely feature either in its music videos or its game shows such as ‘Who wants to be an Islamic pop star?’. The entire network’s content is vetted by a committee of five men who decide whether videos conform to 4Shbab’s Muslim philosophy. “We don’t have a problem showing women, as long as it is according to Islamic standards,” insisted Abu Haiba, who previously worked with Amr Khaled, a blockbuster preacher who has revolutionised Islamic sermonising on TV. “But we must be careful in dealing with the issue of women on TV, and it’s not wise to smash all the walls straight away.”

The launch of 4Shbab is part of a wider trend in Egypt which has seen the traditionally liberal cultural landscape being bought up by Saudi investors promoting a more conservative ‘Salafist’ discourse, which advocates a literalist interpretation of the Quran. Flagging film studios have been revitalised by Saudi money but many now refuse to show even an empty bed for fear of it being suggestive, and some of Egypt’s most famous belly-dancers are now covering up as a result of investment from rich Arabs in the Gulf.

It’s a development which worries analysts like Khalil Al-Anani, an expert in Islamist movements at the Al Ahram Foundation. “They are trying to make society more cautious when it comes to dealing with ‘the other’, and that’s a dangerous path,” he says.

But Al-Anani also acknowledges that with music video stations currently securing 14% of the Arab television market, the launch of 4Shbab is a savvy business step. “There is a huge group of high-class, westernised youth who are looking to be more religious and it’s a very smart move to try and attract this customer base,” he argues. “Religion today in Egypt is like a supermarket, you can go and pick what you want, and there is competition for customers between the different discourses ... quite frankly, I think this venture will succeed.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Joshua Salaam, one of the baggy-shirted rappers featured in the video. Salaam is part of Native Deen, a three-man American Muslim hip hop outfit who are one of the first bands to be promoted on the new channel. “I think the launch of this channel is massively important, probably more so than a lot of scholars and parents realise because they haven’t been raised with music video in their lives,” explained the 35 year old. “But music and video set the tone of what culture is, what identity is, and for a Muslim to be able to watch this channel and see that they are also part of something bigger and they don’t have to separate their religion from their culture, that’s huge.”

Caught in the crossfire between his liberal and Islamist detractors, Abu Haiba remains confident that his new channel can take on not just the Middle East, but the world. Salaam is equally optimistic: “I think there is a demand for this sort of network in the West. The majority of American Muslim youth and their parents are pretty much fully assimilated into American culture and are not currently coming to the message,” he said. “If you want to reach them you have to go through the regular avenues that are out there in mainstream culture, and that’s what 4Shbab is doing.”

Dr Fadl rears his head

-Taken from 'The National' (extended version)
- Cairo - March 2009


As news of last Sunday’s deadly bomb blast in Cairo filtered down through local TV networks, one of the city’s 16 million residents had more reason than most to sit up and take notice. Over a year since he unleashed a stunning attack on the global jihadist leaders who once counted him amongst their number, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif – locked away in a prison cell just south of the Egyptian capital – was about to be propelled back into the limelight. In a week where the spectre of Islamic extremism returned to haunt Egypt, Imam’s status as the country’s most divisive former militant has thrust him once again into the heart of public debate.

Imam – better known by the nom de guerre ‘Dr Fadl’ – is not the first jihadist to turn on his former comrades, but he is one of the more colourful. Previously head of Islamic Jihad (EIJ), one of Egypt’s most notorious terror groups, Imam is also the author of two theoretical books on the concept of jihad which have been used by Al Qaeda’s top brass to justify violent tactics. “Imam is the ideological reference point for Islamic jihadists,” says Kamal Habib, one of the founding members of EIJ and now an expert on Islamist movements. “His words carry a lot of weight and his influence extends well beyond Egypt.” In the early 1990s Imam was a close associate of Ayman Zawahiri, now Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, and as late as 2001 he still maintained that terrorising the United States was a Muslim’s “duty”. As Nathan Field, a journalist who specialises in Islamic movements, observes, Imam is “a man with impeccable jihadist credentials”.

Imam’s revered place amongst the ideological titans of the jihadist movement in the 1980s and 1990s ensured that his surprise verbal assault on Al Qaeda in 2007 made headlines worldwide. Penned from Tora Prison, Imam’s home since 2004, Imam’s Revisions text subjected every aspect of Al Qaeda’s organisation and policy to withering criticism and pounded figures such as Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden with a series of personal insults. In it he argued that most forms of terrorism are illegal under Islamic Law and slammed those promoting violent jihad in the modern age. “Oh, you young people, do not be deceived by the heroes of the Internet, the leaders of the microphones, who are launching statements inciting the youth whilst living ... in a distant cave or under political asylum in an infidel country,” implored Imam in one passage. “They have thrown many others before you into the infernos, graves, and prisons.”

Although analysts were divided over the impact of Imam’s remarkable about-face on the subject of jihad, Zawahiri himself was sufficiently riled by Imam’s attacks to launch a 200-page riposte four months later. This in itself caused a stir; according to Diaa Rashwan, an analyst for the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, it marked the first time the Al Qaeda leadership had responded in such a public way to internal dissent. Several commentators even went as far as to predict an imminent implosion within the global jihadist community. According to Habib, the rhetorical tussling between Imam and Zawahiri, “was not an event only for Egypt, it was something that all Islamists and men of thought in the Arab and Muslim world had an interest in. Naturally it had great authority, and I think most members in the major terror networks were influenced by it.”

Amidst all the excitement over the Revisions, however, there were quiet voices of scepticism. Some offered a negative appraisal of Imam’s actual writings, most of which criticised violent jihad in tactical terms but not on principle. According to Field: “The Revisions simply represent a more conservative interpretation of what constitutes legitimate jihadist tactics: progress, to be sure, but hardly a radical turn.” Others took issue with the credibility of Imam himself, pointing out that he had much to gain by writing a text which would appease his jailers. And those voices rose in volume when Imam produced his long-awaited reply to Zawahiri last November, a hate-filled and intensely personal diatribe which laid the responsibility for “every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq” at the door of the Al Qaeda leadership. Far from being the serious work of Islamic scholarship that critics of violent jihad had been hoping for, Imam’s latest set of writings (known as The Exposure) was seen as a sloppy re-hashing of his previous text. Habib dismissed it as “embarrassing” for Imam, adding “I don’t think he realises what this does for his image.”

Of more concern than Imam’s image was the fear that his new work might delegitimize a campaign already long underway in Egypt aimed at getting former jihadists to renounce terror. That process of ‘revising’ jihadist views has seen another of the country’s largest terrorist networks, al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, formally reject violent jihad in 2003 and led to the release of more than 1,000 of its members from Egyptian jails. According to Montazer al-Zayat, a lawyer who has worked as a middleman between jihadist groups and the Egyptian government, one of the aims of the process was to provide genuine and intellectual alternative sources for potential militants to turn to when trying to explore the question of whether violent jihad can be justified. As the author of works which originally provided the ideological basis for violent jihad, Imam appeared to be in an ideal position to provide such new sources; instead, however, The Exposure was viewed by many to be a disgrace, one which al-Zayat believes had “tainted” the entire ‘Revisions’ operation.

It was in this context that Imam’s name began cropping up in the aftermath of this week’s explosions in Cairo’s Midan Husayn, which is flanked by the bustling Khan el-Khalili tourist bazaar. The attack left a French teenager dead and injured 24 others, and was the first time foreigners had been successfully targeted in Egypt in almost three years. Unsurprisingly it prompted domestic soul searching over whether the ‘Revisions’ process has floundered. Most commentators interpreted the amateur nature of the bombing as evidence that the dismantling of Egypt’s major terrorist networks had succeeded, as it appeared to have been planned by individuals with little organisational support. But the role Imam has played in this process remains contentious.

“The Husayn bomb was a small, individual incident, which just shows how much the mainstream Islamist movement has been influenced both by Imam’s Revisions and the steps taken by al-Gama’a al-Islamiya,” says Habib. “Nobody should imagine that violence will ever cease to exist completely, but what’s left in Egypt only comes from isolated sources and the Revisions have played a part in this development.” Others, however, think the bombing indicates the limited nature of Imam’s appeal within the jihadist movement. “We must not exaggerate the impact of Imam on the new generation of young jihadists,” argues Khalil al-Anani, an expert on Islamist movements at the Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. “His message is targeted at those who believe in the path of violence, namely the Salafi jihadists, but the kind of people who carried out the Husayn attack are clearly still taking his earlier works to heart, not his ideas expressed in the Revisions.”

As Khan el-Khalili’s traders return back to work and Midan Husayn once again fills up with tourists, the one point of consensus amongst those following the saga of Sayyid Imam al-Sharif is that the Revisions on their own are not enough to stem the tide of violence. “Today Imam has very little credibility, importance or influence,” declared Abu el-Ela, who formed the breakaway party ‘Al Wasat’ out of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. His point is echoed by al-Anani, who believes that government repression of moderate Islamist movements is forming a vacuum which is being filled by a new generation of jihadists for whom Imam has little relevance. “I think the bombers were Egyptian Salafists and there have been warnings about the Salafists before,” says al-Anani. “Not all of them are extremists and some could be persuaded away from violence. Yet at the same time we have the government attacking the moderates; if it wants to fight the Salafist line of thinking it has to allow those moderates some legitimate space. They are not going to be able to fight terrorism without it.”