CAIRO — As a new Constitution engraves Islam ever more firmly into Egyptian law, a young comic’s escalating battle with a group of ultraconservative television sheiks has become an early skirmish over the application of Islamic law, or Shariah.
In the weeks leading up to the referendum over the Islamist-backed charter, sheiks hosting Islamist variations on “The 700 Club” have spent weeks attacking the protesters who clogged Cairo’s streets, calling them perverts, drug users, paid thugs and Christians. When a 38-year-old television comedian, Bassem Youssef, began mocking the sheiks for their outlandish allegations, they turned on him, too, accusing him of sexual immorality and even poor hygiene.
“Bassem Zipper,” one called him, “the varmint.” Mr. Youssef “doesn’t know how to wash after he uses the bathroom,” another one said.
Far from offended, Mr. Youssef replayed clips of their attacks. “To those who tell me, ‘You insult the sheiks and scholars,’ I say, ‘The equation is very simple,’ ” he told his audience. “ ‘Just like you don’t consider us Muslims, to us, you’re not sheiks or scholars.’ ”
Mr. Youssef, who takes “The Daily Show” and Jon Stewart as models, has used parody to argue that the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, are distorting Islam, and for the moment, his satire appears to have trumped their sanctimony. Mr. Youssef is winning not only the laughs of young audiences but also the endorsements of respected Muslim scholars. He even won a grudging apology from one of his critics.
“They outdo each over Shariah in a way that demeans Shariah and has no basis in Shariah,” said Sheik Ahmed Kerima of Al Azhar mosque-university, defending Mr. Youssef.
Habib Ali al-Jifri, an internationally known Islamic scholar based in Yemen, proclaimed that “if the enemies of Islam used all their resources to abuse it, they wouldn’t have been able to do what the sheiks did.” They had passed off their own “low morals,” he wrote, as divine teachings.
No one pretends that a late-night comedy show can erase the popular support of the Salafis or the more mainstream Muslim Brotherhood, another target of Mr. Youssef’s humor. But during his war of words with the sheiks, young men at street cafes in poor neighborhoods far from Cairo could be seen watching his show and shaking with laughter.
Egyptian liberals, delighted, say they have found a new champion.
“He makes a point of saying, ‘We are reclaiming Islam. Islam belongs to us and not you. As Muslims we are offended by what you are saying, so we are defending our religion by ridiculing you,’ ” said Hossam Bahgat, the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. At the same time, Mr. Bahgat said, “he is very good with the sexual innuendos as well.”
“You could write a Ph.D. dissertation on the contradictions in Salafi discourse, or I could write a human rights report about its bigoted rhetoric,” Mr. Bahgat added, “but none of this is half as effective as one of Bassem’s weekly shows.”
Mr. Youssef stumbled into satire. A heart surgeon trained in the United States, he decided to take advantage of the media freedom after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak by making his own online parody of a news program, ridiculing liberals and revolutionaries just as much as conservatives and reactionaries. Appearing first only on YouTube, the show was soon picked up by private satellite networks and is now known as “Al Bernameg,” or “The Program.” This spring, Mr. Youssef even appeared as a guest alongside Mr. Stewart on “The Daily Show.”
During the sometimes violent struggle over the Islamist-backed Constitution, though, Mr. Youssef turned with special attention to what he called the “merchants of religion,” the pious Islamist television shows also newly emboldened after Mr. Mubarak.
After a night of deadly street fighting between the Islamists and their opponents, Mr. Youssef played clips in which one sheik after another demonized the protesters in much the same way that Mr. Mubarak’s state-run news media once portrayed the demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Mr. Youssef noted. But the Islamists were more vulgar.
