Invading the West

A recent online magazine poll by Broadchannel voted Al-Jazeera the world’s fifth most influential brand, and the Qatar-based broadcaster’s expansion plans may place it even higher. A children’s channel has already joined the 24/7 Al-Jazeera News network, as have a sports channel and one that covers live events without a host or reporter.

Up next: the long-awaited (and oft-delayed) launch of Al-Jazeera’s English-language news service.

Al-Jazeera, which launched in 1996, quickly became more than a news channel. For many, it was seen as a powerful Arab voice which challenged the views of the dominant Western media. The channel’s many critics in the West, however, are only familiar with Al-Jazeera as the station with the exclusive clips and interviews with Al-Qaeda and other extremists, leading many to believe that it is little more than a mouthpiece for terrorists. It also leaves many wondering how Al-Jazeera plans to challenge Western media on its own turf — and in English.

The English-language programming is planned as part of a new 24-hour news and current affairs channel, roughly based on the format of CNN. If the level of journalistic talent Al-Jazeera International has been attracting so far is any indication, it will have no trouble luring viewers away from the more established programs.

Spokesmen for the channel have said their new Washington bureau alone has already received some 4,000 applications for editorial positions, that at an office that will employ a maximum of 40 people, including support staff. The applications are coming from current and ex-staffers at CNN, BBC, Fox, the CBC and Australian television.

Scene from Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ

Perhaps the best known of the new staff is Sir David Frost, the veteran BBC broadcaster, the only reporter to have interviewed all of the last seven presidents of the United States and the last six prime ministers of the United Kingdom; his interview with Richard Nixon was reported to have been the most watched news interview in history.

Another famous addition is former US Marine Capt. Josh Rushing, who was the only American prominently featured in the documentary Control Room about Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the US-led invasion of Iraq. After the show aired, Rushing was silenced by the US government for his candor and subsequently left the Marines.

The possible appeal of the new station in the large American market is a source of debate. The Middle East will remain Al-Jazeera’s specialty, including coverage of Israel from an Arab perspective. However, most of the new staffers are not Arab, many don’t even speak Arabic, and critics claim that the new programs’ message will have to be watered down for their new audiences.

Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al-Jazeera International, believes this is more of an opportunity than a challenge: “We are the first news channel based in the Middle East to bring news back to the West,” he says. “We want to set a different news agenda.”

As far as the famously contentious relationship with the current American government is concerned, Parsons is quick to point out that they have far worse relations with many Middle Eastern rulers. The station is banned in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Tunisia and is severely limited in others.

Al-Jazeera International has been slated to launch for more than a year now, but has blown successive deadlines. The most recent was in March; at press time, no signal was yet on air.

One satellite station that has managed to launch its English-language programming is Al-Risalah. The Kuwaiti-based broadcaster is focused on Islamic teachings and philosophy, aimed not only at converts, but also at non-Muslim English speakers with an interest in learning more about the faith. (CS)

NEARLY 1,000 LIBERAL judges gathered last month for an extraordinary general assembly meeting of the Judges’ Club to reiterate their demands, first made formal last year, that the nation’s Judiciary Act be amended to guarantee jurists full independence from the executive branch of government.

“We are fully determined to carry on until all our demands are fulfilled,” Mahmoud Mekki, vice president of the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest appellate court, told reporters on the sidelines of the meeting held on March 17.

Judges were protesting a draft law prepared by the Supreme Judicial Council, saying they fear the draft, which the Ministry of Justice is expected to refer to the People’s Assembly before the end of the current legislative season in June, will stop far short of granting the judiciary full financial and administrative autonomy from the Ministry of Justice.

Members also want to see the Judges’ Club, which was initially established as a social club, granted legal status as the official representative of the judiciary instead of the Supreme Judicial Council.

“We will not give up our demands,” added Mekki, who was recently stripped of his judicial immunity to allow him to be questioned by the State Security Prosecutor on suspicions he has slandered fellow judges. Three other vice presidents of the Court of Cassation face the same charges after the four men alleged that other members of the bench had turned a blind eye to vote-rigging during the parliamentary elections held late last year.

The defendants have so far refused to be questioned. “We said, and we are still saying, that the elections were marred by irregularities that should be investigated,” alleges Ahmed Mekki, another vice president of the Court of Cassation and head of the commission the Judges’ Club appointed to monitor the parliamentary polls outside official channels.

The commission claims to have recorded a number of violations by supporters of both the governing National Democratic Party and the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, including vote-rigging, intimidation of voters, violence against voters and monitoring judges.

During his electoral campaign, President Hosni Mubarak promised to amend the Judiciary Act to grant judges full autonomy.

The judges have called on the man on the street to join them in a protest slated for May 25, 2006. “The struggle for the independence of the judiciary is a national battle,” Zakariya Abdel-Aziz, president of the club, told those present for last month’s meeting. (NH)

Last month, a divorced Christian man filed a lawsuit against Pope Shenouda and the Coptic Synod pleading for permission to remarry. If the Coptic Church — which rarely permits divorce (allowing it only for occasional cases of bigamy, adultery or other “extreme circumstances”) and refuses divorcees permission to remarry — wasn’t interested in listening, a senior judge certainly was.

The Administrative Judicial Court, sitting under presiding judge Farouk Abdel Kader, decided in the man’s favor, saying the Church was required to allow divorced Copts to remarry provided they have won court rulings granting civil divorces.

In the ruling, Abdel Kader (who is also vice president of the powerful Maglis El-Dowla, which decides on issues of constitutional and administrative procedure) stressed that the Egyptian Constitution guarantees equality and basic human rights for all citizens regardless of religious background. “The right to start families is among those protected rights,” the court said, and since the Church allows its faithful to go to court to get a divorce in some circumstances, the divorced should have the right to remarry and thus enjoy the same access to the sacrament of marriage as any other Copt.

His Holiness Pope Shenouda III was not impressed, telling the Arabic-language daily Al-Akhbar in a recent interview that the court has to listen to the Church’s point of view, as well.

“Members of the bench may have the jurisdiction over divorce, but they have none over marriage, which falls under the Church’s umbrella,” he said, adding that the church allows divorce only in cases of adultery or when a spouse converts. “We’re better aware of our religious rituals and, court or no court, we won’t give permission after divorce as long as it’s not based on the instructions of the Bible.”

Justicia may have something to say about that when Shenouda’s appeal moves to the Supreme Constitutional Court. (AK)

If it’s any consolation to Mel Gibson, another movie about Jesus Christ has people seeing red, even if this one is unlikely to ever make it to movie theaters.

The complaints this time around are coming not from Jewish lobby groups (which claimed Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was anti-Semitic) or even the Coptic Church, but directly from Al-Azhar.

Last month, Al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Center spoke out against plans to produce a movie in Egypt portraying Jesus Christ. Abdel Moati Bayoumi, a leading IRC member, quoted a host of fatwas forbidding the portrayal of prophets and their companions, noting that Jesus Christ isn’t a prophet “reserved” for Christians alone, but is also a figure deeply important to Muslims, too.

The film’s producers, backed by Egyptian Copts, have promised to push ahead with the project and have vowed to hire unknown actors to fill the lead roles.

Not that the industry is suffering greatly from a dearth of religious projects: Having just wrapped up his role as renowned Sheikh Metwalli El-Shaarawi, former playboy actor Hassan Youssef is busy portraying another prominent religious figure, this time El-Imam El-Maraghy. He’s also planning to produce and star in the life story of Sheikh Mohamed Refaat, who was known for his heavenly voice, in a television serial tackling Refaat’s career as a Qur’an reciter in the earliest days of Egyptian Radio in the 1930s.

As if Youssef doesn’t have enough on his plate, he recently committed himself to play the lead in a biopic of Sheikh Mahmoud Khalil El-Hosary. Rumor has it the self-appointed Sheikh El-Mumathellen (Sheikh of the Actors) doesn’t leave home without his sebha and emma in case a director calls. (AK)

LAST MONTH, EGYPTIAN society was shocked after an independent newspaper ran a statement by a sheikh declaring incest permissible. Members of the People’s Assembly immediately called for an investigation, prompting PA Speaker Fathi Sorour to shut down debate as he announced that he was referring debate about the “immoral, not to mention insane” fatwa to the Religious Affairs Committee.

While Sorour added that he doubts a real sheikh would issue such a ludicrous opinion, a spate of odd fatwas in recent years saw parliamentarians associated with the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood jump on the bandwagon last month. MP Sayed Askar tried to comfort his colleagues, summing up the debate by declaring that the comment hadn’t come from a government-paid sheikh or member of the Islamic Research Center, but rather was made by a “regular government employee who happens to be mentally ill” and is essentially paid to stay home.

Perhaps he could be the next sheikh whose life Hassan Youssef brings to TV screens this coming Ramadan? (AK)

TWO EGYPTIAN BUSINESSMEN were kidnapped and held in Thailand for over six hours last month. The kidnappers were allegedly hired by a Thai businesswoman and a candidate close to Thailand’s ruling party as part of a bid to cover up a LE 9 million import scam.

The businessmen, Magdy El-Qaranshawi and Saad El-Hefnawi, had signed a contract with the businesswoman under which she was supposed to export 1,000 tok-toks (three-wheeled scooters) to Egypt. The contract was allegedly registered at the Thai embassy in Cairo and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The lady in question then reportedly went back to Thailand, but no vehicles appeared, so her Egyptian partners decided to go find out what was going on.

After telling them she would not be able to honor the contract, the two men asked her to return their $200,000 down-payment. She refused and allegedly had them kidnapped.

The businessmen were rescued by Thai authorities after they managed to contact the Egyptian embassy. (MJ)

MOHAMED ABUL-ENEIN, the MP, philanthropist and renowned founder of Ceramica Cleopatra, was at the center of a Viagra smuggling scandal last month after customs inspectors at Cairo International Airport allegedly discovered 17 barrels of Indian-made Viagra amounting to 1.8 million pills packed in boxes of ceramic powder and addressed to Ceramica Cleopatra.

The shipment, which entered the country from Dubai, would have gone unnoticed had an inspector not discovered a blatant discrepancy between the actual weight of the shipment and the weight recorded in the papers.

Abul-Enein quickly declared he had nothing to do with the smuggled goods, and police busted a few days later a seven-member Viagra smuggling gang that used the names of several leading Egyptian companies to bring the drug into the country.

Although four of the seven have been arrested, the alleged leader, Khaled Asfour, remains at large. (MJ)

It’s not just people taking to the streets in demonstrations these days. Last month, traffic came to a complete standstill when protestors — accompanied by 400 camels and horses — closed off the roads leading to the Pyramids in protest of their removal from the tourist area by Tourism Police.

Police claim to be cleaning up the Pyramids district to give a better image of Egypt and have announced that only permit holders would be allowed to offer camel and horse rides around the Pyramids.

The protesters claim that each and every one of them has been denied a permit. (NM)

Renowned scientist Farouk El-Baz, head of Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing, has discovered what he believes is the world’s largest crater.

The huge chasm, thought to have been formed by the impact of a meteorite tens of millions of years ago, lies in the Western Desert near relatively uncharted Gilf Kebir of The English Patient fame.

El-Baz christened the find Kebira, both because of its size and proximity to Gilf Kebir.

“Kebira may have escaped recognition because it is so large — equivalent to the total expanse of the Cairo urban region from its airport in the northeast to the Pyramids of Giza in the southwest,” El-Baz speculated in a statement. (NM)

Early last month, the American University in Cairo inaugurated the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement. AUC President David Arnold said the facility was launched with a dual focus: to consolidate university activities aimed at encouraging engaged citizenship and service, and to promote philanthropic giving in the Arab region.

Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned, wife of Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of the Qatar, gave the keynote speech at the opening ceremony held in Ewart Hall.

The activist sheikha is currently serving as UNESCO’s Special Envoy for Basic and Higher Education. (NM)

Newsreel is written by Azza Khattab, Noha El-Hennawy, Cache Seel, Manal el-Jesri and Noha Mohammed

A law on birth control? I don’t think so. The choice differs from one family to another and is totally personal.

I was appointed to [the governing NDP’s Policies Secretariat] and I thought it would be the country’s locomotive for reform, but this proved to be incorrect. Between the two extremes of the NDP and the Muslim Brotherhood, we are left with a huge gap.

When we look at the history of the Muslim Brotherhood itself, they’re not pro-democracy. They say today that they are, but their history doesn’t say that. Having said that, we do acknowledge their presence in Egypt; we have given them leeway. We’re allowing them to run candidates independently in the election. We have them as members of Parliament in Egypt. That will allow them to prove their point. Let them sweat for it.

My heart is heavy from witnessing the never-ending death and destruction. The recent ghastly strife and anger over the Danish cartoons shows the danger that comes of our failure to listen and to respect what is precious and sacred to others.

by the NUMBERS

4 confirmed human cases of infection with the H5N1 ‘avian flu’ in Egypt at press time. One proved fatal after a 30-year-old woman who kept sick chickens under her bed in Qalyoubeya was hospitalized but did not report she had been in contact with diseased poultry until it was too late. Three other cases have been treated with Tamiflu and have reportedly responded well to the treatment.

9,000the number of people killed in traffic accidents on Egyptian roads during 2005, a 20 percent increase over the casualty rate for 2004, according to figures released by the National Organization for Roads, Bridges and Land Transport.

1 dead and 35 injured, the final toll of last month’s Nile cruise-ship accident. The one fatality was an Egyptian crew member who was killed when the King Tut apparently hit a bridge, destroying the dais, near the town of Qena. The 35 injured included eight Egyptian crew members and 27 German tourists.

15,000 the number of teachers and administrators hired to plug gaps at Al-Azhar University’s educational institutions in the nation’s governorates, according to Al-Azhar’s Omar El-Deeb.

13 the number of Islamic monuments slated for restoration this year, as announced by Minister of CultureFarouk Hosni at a meeting of the PA’s Culture and Media Committee.

LE 300 million, the total annual value of Egypt’s export of ornamental plants to Europe and Gulf countries, according to Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Amin Abaza. et