Mr. Abdullah, a bearded 48-year-old, isn't a real sheik. But he plays one on a popular Egyptian religious satellite station, where he has blasted the secular-leaning opposition as homosexuals and atheists and decried legislation that would ban marital rape.
"Here in Egypt, anyone who has a beard can be called a sheik," said a smiling Mr. Abdullah, whose daily show on the Al Nas network is watched by millions.
May 8, 2013
"Secular youth used Facebook and Twitter two years ago to help topple President Hosni Mubarak from power..."
"... but now Salafi Islamists are gaining sway in Egypt because of TV sheiks like Khaled Abdullah."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
15 comments:
The sheik he drove a Cadillac
Those damned televangelists.
That sound you hear is the Egyptians getting exactly the government they deserve.
I estimate we forget the lessons learned here - that we can't push alien cultures to our political choices - within 3 years. The next schmo always thinks he can discern some random fact that will make it work this time.
Is he ribbed for your pleasure?
Well, there are those who said the Facebook/Twitter crowd have the attention span of a gnat.
Double edged scimitar.
Now that is right wing religion.
Count your blessings, fellow Americans.
Stupid kids.
In Cleveland if you tie up a woman and lock her in the basement, beat her and rape her over several years it is a horror, and demonstrates the moral depravity of American culture and a failure of the police state which needs more power to invade homes.
In Cairo, or in most places where Islam is the dominant religion, locking a woman up in the basement, beating her with a stick smaller than your thumb, raping her and mutilating her genitalia is called marriage.
That sound you hear is the Egyptians getting exactly the government they deserve.
That sound you hear is us getting exactly the Egyptian government we deserve.
Obamalamadingdong.
What, so he's the Egyptian Church Lady?
You're talking about a culture where for centuries one obtained power, security, employment, just about everything one needs through one's kinship network.
This is not a culture in which abstract ideas such as "rule of law" mean much of anything. You can't depend on contracts because the corrupt government won't enforce them anyway (and certainly not against someone who's well-connected).
In such a culture the idea that one can act as an individual, or form meaningful associations outside one's kinship network, is very, very weak.
It is what it is. It is not an open society. As an outsider you'll (usually) be treated very well- but without a local kinship network you'll never be a part of it.
This is not a liberal, Western-style democracy, let alone a culture that can and will support what we think of as civil society.
The so-called "secular" youth replaced a nationalist Islam with an imperial, Caliphate-style Islam. Obama seems to prefer this class of people. Perhaps another dream from his father inherited from the legacy of Luo division and betrayal.
Post a Comment