Arab Journalism and Egypt’s Claimed Control over UK’s Mosques

Anyone who reads the alarming title quoting the President of Al-Azhar University saying ‘We have put an end to the practices of some preachers in the Islamic centres of Britain’, published by Asharq Alawsat newspaper, Tuesday 21 Sept 2010 would think that UK is one of Egypt’s provinces.

I was intrigued to find out how Egypt or its AlAzhar University officials have been able to fix something inside UK and in what capacity.

The first question that comes to mind is has UK and its politicians became bankrupt of ideas that they resorted to the expertise of the Middle Eastern officials to solve their alleged internal problems? Does Egypt really have a say when it comes to local policies in UK? And why would UK officials take advice from a source that proved not to be able to handle its own internal affairs? And most of all, was what Asharq alAwsat newspaper reported accurate? If UK needs advice or help from a Muslim source, why has it resorted to Egypt? Why not request the advice from Indonesia for example since Indonesia is the largest Muslim country by population, and home for 15.6% of the world's Muslims, or why not ask the advice of any other Asian country since around 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia.

The second line of the title for the same article came with smaller font and humbler calmer rhetoric: ‘Dr. Abdullah Al-Husseini told "Asharq Alawsat": Al-Azhar University is to open dialogue with the West’.

We are left confused by the two different tones of the headlines, and which one of them to consider. We wonder, whether the Asharq Alawsat newspaper is adopting sensationalism, or there has been really a formal request by UK seeking an Egyptian rescue mission on this matter.

Reading down the article, the content says: during the interview with the President of Al-Azhar University, Dr. Abdallah Al-Husseini said that "his University has ‘put an end’ to the ‘wrong behaviour’ of some preachers in Islamic centres and some of the mosques in Britain".

Wow, ‘put an end’?...This seems strong, I was eager to know how a Middle Eastern University has helped UK to ‘put an end’ to what seems to be a huge problem. The report claims that Dr. Husseini said that the Sheikh of Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb, headed a delegation to visit the mosques in London, and the outcome was that Al-Azhar university has implemented a ‘rehabilitation’ course for ‘those Imams’ to correct their methods of preaching Islam. The butter of the long article can be simply be squeezed into a line of information that says 20 imams from UK, mostly Afghan, attended a course supervised by Al-Azhar University. That’s all.

One wonders, why amongst the millions of courses implemented in different fields and organized annually in UK between mutually interested parties none of them use such rhetoric to insinuate control or an upper hand but this one.

For those who are not familiar with the Arab Press, and who might not understand this example of language masculinity that insinuates being in charge, one should bear in mind that, everyone in the Arab world wants to be in charge or be the leader, no one wants to be led. Arabs like to be in the position of telling others what to do, being in charge and leading others make them somehow feel good about themselves for playing the role of the shepherd and not one of the sheep. This attitude can be noticed through Arab journalism practices.

Asharaq AlAwsat is a Saudi newspaper, and Saudi media has always done its best to reflect Saudi Arabia as the leader and the guardian of Arabs especially when it comes to subjects related to Islam. It is a well known fact that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia stroke each others’ ego, since Egypt as well considers itself the leader of the Arab world politically, and has a record of media stunts to prove that. Such as its latest manipulation of the photo of the world leaders’ summit held in USA which was published by the leading national Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, that doctored the photoshopped front page picture, to bring the Egyptian President Hosni Mubark from the back in the original photo, positioning him right at the front. This manipulation of facts contradicts the ethics of journalism and basic common sense, since the host usually leads the way ahead of his guests in his own home not the other way round. Besides, Mubarak, at the age of 82 is the eldest of all the leaders present at that summit and it is natural that his steps might be slower than Obama's and could not race him to the front position.

Having to shift Obama’s figure, the host, and all the other leaders, and placing them all behind Mubarak, who was the last in the original photo, became a source of media ridiculing carnival around media circles in a way that might have even embarrassed President Mubarak himself.

The Editor-in-chief of the Al-Ahram newspaper, Osama Saraya, has not apologised for his professional failure, nor did he have the gut to resign from his post and take responsibility for embarrassing all Egyptian journalists. His action was even more shocking when he resorted to the attack policy as a defence mechanism, saying in his official response: ‘The picture has been published in that manner to express and portray the exact important political position of President Mubarak and his unique and leading role regarding the Palestinian issue’.

Surely this reply reflects professional immaturity by insinuating that all the other leaders present at the event including the American host himself do not match Mubark’s importance. Saraya’s naïve reply reflects as well an ethical gap between the media in Egypt and any other progressive free transparent media in the world.

It seems that those who are in charge of Arabic press have the illusion that they are addressing an ignorant oppressed herd and that no one from outside their borders has access to their fabricated stories. They presume that there are no monitoring bodies over their amusing news, and the bloggers are as frightened as the journalists employed and paid by their governments.

Some Arab editors-in-Chief think that they can treat the readers around the world with the same contempt they treat their own readers at home by forcing them to swallow their fabricated news and their manipulated content. For those ‘churnalists’ I would say, wake up. You are living in the globalisation era, where a reader in a remote area of India can read the same news article at the same time a reader at the outskirts of the Arabian Desert when they both strike their computer keyboards, besides, the Western world does not suffer a shortage of translators, nor your fellow citizens are as naive or ignorant as you might hope they will be.

Iqbal Tamimi is Director for Arab Women Media Watch Centre in the UK.