Since the 25 January Revolution, the Islamic movements have steadily infiltrated Egyptian media outlets and come to dominate the political arena. Satellite channels and websites advocate the Salafi cause, and the Islamists are now making it into the printed media.
WATANI International
9 November 2011
Since the 25 January Revolution, the Islamic movements have steadily infiltrated Egyptian media outlets and come to dominate the political arena. Satellite channels and websites advocate the Salafi cause, and the Islamists are now making it into the printed media.
Too traditional
While the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) was already broadcasting their ideology on their satellite channel Masr 25, as well as through both official and non-official websites, the MB political department recently brought out a daily newspaper, al-Hurriya wal-Adala (Freedom and Justice), named after their political party, to compete with other national and privately owned dailies. In spite of the MB paper’s EGP10 million-capital, so far only an insignificant number of copies have been printed, indicating that the paper is too traditional to attract wide readership or to withstand the harsh competition on the newspaper market in Egypt.
The Salafis were the first group to enter the press game after the revolution. Abu-Islam Ahmed Abdallah, who owns the Sout al-Umma satellite channel, launched the paper Sout Baladi (The Sound of my Country), before even obtaining a licence. Sout Baladi has made it its business vociferously to assault Copts, their beliefs and their Church.
Now the Salafi al-Nour (The Light) party has brought out a weekly newspaper also named al-Nour, to advocate the Salafi cause, as well as to call for democracy and make a strong defence for the application of sharia, which is agreed upon by all Islamist streams.
Discrimination against mosques
The Salafis’ third paper was launched earlier this month. Al-Fateh (The Conquest) is published by the Arab Group for Publications and Media, which claim their new paper to be independent. Issued every Friday with Talaat Romeih at its editor-in-chief, its contributors include a huge number of prominent Salafis. In its first issue, al-Fateh printed articles against Copts, and emigrant Copts in particular. “Emigrant Copts pursue their mission against Egypt”; “Copts allege they are persecuted, and propagate false accounts of the Maspero incident” ran the headlines in the first issue. The paper quoted Sheikh Abu-Idris Abdel-Fatah, Head of the Salafi Call, to the effect that no unified law for building places of worship should be passed since, according to him, this would amount to discrimination against mosques. He claimed the church building allowance far exceeded the Christians’ needs, and rejected the anti-discrimination law on the grounds that it was too general.
On the other side, the new paper’s first issue fervently defended Usama Heikal, the media minister, for the State TV coverage of the Maspero massacre, which flagrantly instigated against Copts.
Owing to lack of funds, the Shi’a are stumbling over the first issue of their mouthpiece Aal al-Beit (The Household of the Prophet).
Liberal parties
Amid this flood of fundamentalist media, there has been no new publication to promote liberal parties following the revolution. The arena is entirely free for fundamentalists, their papers and their channels. At the same time, the State media and press are rapidly becoming pedestals for Islamists, the MB in particular.
For some, it is as though the MB are already in power. “I say to Copts, do not fear those who fear Allah”, was the headline of an interview with Mohamed Badie, the MB Supreme Guide, that recently appeared in the State-owned weekly Akhbar al-Youm. The widely read daily official State-owned newspaper Al-Ahram is no different. Al-Ahram puts the MB party’s news at the top of its news pages and prints articles that strongly advocate them and their agenda, which they say “derives from the Qur’an”.
Only the State-owned weekly Rose al-Youssef follows a different approach, exposing the Salafi and MB streams on its pages. In a recent issue, contributor Assem Hanafi wrote an article headlined “The Military Council pampers Islamic streams”. Other articles written by Judge Ahmed Abdu Maher expose the fanatic Wahabi and Salafi ideology. This, of course, is diametrically opposed to the applause that hails the Islamic stream elsewhere.