RECOMMENDED READING “Ramadan TV Vs The Muslim Brotherhood”

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Th UK-based Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-awsat has published a review of Egyptian television coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood during this year’s Ramadan and titled “Ramadan TV vs. the Muslim Brotherhood.” The report begins:

3543827_370July 27, 2014 As Ramadan draws to a close, anyone who watched the slew of Egyptian television dramas will have noticed the increasingly critical manner in which the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as other extremist groups, are being dealt with.

This year’s Ramadan TV dramas have featured intense attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood and its members, criticism of its hierarchical structure and secret mechanisms, as well as its controversial discourse and maneuvering.

This was only to be expected given the state of public anger in Egypt towards the Muslim Brotherhood. This anger towards the Brotherhood burns even fiercer among Egypt’s artists and entertainers, given the Islamists’ attempts to clamp down on the entertainment industry during the Mursi administration. This period witnessed a marked rise in censorship, and we can all recall the attempts made by the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters to slander a number of celebrated Egyptian actresses, such as Elham Shahin.

The majority of Egyptian Ramadan TV dealt with the Muslim Brotherhood in one way or another, whether explicitly or implicitly. The series Tufahet Adam (‘Adam’s Apple’) included a plot-line about a dangerous professional conman who is able to trick a number of people by posing as a Muslim Brotherhood ideologue. This character is able to trick media figures and revolutionary youth alike and can be viewed as a comment on Muslim Brotherhood policies during the previous period. The show also features, naturally, a cadre of corrupt state security officers affiliated to the former regime. However, what is even stranger is that this television series also included room for albeit limited criticism of the revolutionaries.

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For more coverage of Egyptian TV and the Muslim Brotherhood, see this MEMRI report.

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