Islamists in Egyptian Cinema

Armbrust, Walter

doi:10.1525/aa.2002.104.3.922

Cited by 21 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Regarding the relationship of the Egyptian state with religious discourse, Armbrust (2002) pointed out that ‘its domestic political strategy employs a mixture of both appropriating and excluding religious discourse’, adding that cinema was ‘fairly consistent in not blurring the boundaries between religious and nonreligious discourses’. As far as national media was concerned, Abu-Lughod (2006: 15) noted that in the 1980s and mid-1990s, it was used as an effective platform to confront the political challenge of Islamist movements.…”

Section: Religious Programming In Egyptian Television Since the 1990smentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediating a Disney-style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons

Sayfo

2018

Animation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As early as the 1930s, Egypt was the first Arab country to establish an animation production. While the majority of productions in the eight-decade history of the industry have been aimed at a national audience and conveyed through locally relevant messages, a growing number of films and series on Islamic topics targeting a transnational Muslim audience have emerged since the 1990s. This article examines the growth and characteristics of Egyptian Islamic animated cartoons and the Islamization of animation. It explores how the Egyptian state's politics in the 1990s and its tightening affiliations with al-Azhar, the country's highest religious authority, paved the way for such a production. Through a close study of the case of Qisas al-Qur'an (Stories from the Qur'an), the country's most significant production to date in terms of budget, quality and distribution, this article provides an introduction to the characteristics of Egyptian Islamic animation.

show abstract

Section: Religious Programming In Egyptian Television Since the 1990smentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediating a Disney-style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons

Sayfo

2018

Animation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The film marked the end of so-called "neorealism" in Egyptian cinema and the first emergence of a narrative style that began moving away from the decaying "old Cairo" (the setting of neorealist films and their commercial imitators) toward exclusive new suburban developments that progressively absorbed more and more of both state and private resources throughout the 1990s and the first decade of the 2000s. On al-Irhab wal-Kabab and its contrast with the neoliberal aesthetic of the 1970s and 1980s see Walter Armbrust (2002) Islamists in Egyptian Cinema, American Anthropologist 104(3): 922-930.. 19 Or more precisely, conventions (generally, as there were always exceptions) of the Nasseri years (1950s and 1960s) and extending through roughly the mid-1980s. The exact moment of historical revision of ancien régime elites (beys and pashas below the level of such famous nationalist figures as Sa'd Zaghlul and Mustafa Kamil) is hard to pinpoint.…”

Section: New Sub-head Herementioning

confidence: 99%

A Massacre Foretold: National Excommunication and Al-Gama’a

Armbrust

2019

Middle East Critique

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Al-Gama'a [The Society], a 28-part television biopic of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, was broadcast in the fall of 2010, just before the January 25, 2011 Revolution. The writer of the series, Wahid Hamid, was an important screenwriter for both television and the cinema and a figure known for his affinity with the state's security apparatus. Al-Gama'a functioned as a rhetorical capstone for decades of anti-Brotherhood state discourse. It also powerfully anticipated the anti-Brotherhood apologetics used to rationalize the Rab'a Massacre of 2013, which effectively ended the revolution and cemented the coup by 'Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi against Muhammad Morsy. The series enacted a historical narrative that was almost completely absent from Egypt's formal educational curriculum, thereby furthering a political agenda of dehumanizing Islamists and effectively excommunicating them from the national community. Hence in 2013, a thousand Egyptians were slaughtered in a day, and yet many of their fellow citizens saw the event as destiny rather than as a crime against humanity.

show abstract

“…An early and famous example is the film The Terrorist (1994) which was funded by its protagonist and star, Adel Imam. This film, and others that were to follow, can be seen as (sections of) the film industry’s response to the Islamization of Egyptian society (Armbrust, 2002). In these films, the cultural ignorance of the young men who are being manipulated by elder, power-hungry sheikhs is a recurring feature, sometimes seemingly suggesting that a cultural education and cultural consumption would work as an anti-dote to extremism.…”

Section: Defending Culture Against Islamist Abusementioning

confidence: 99%

Media controversies and the cultural policies of the Morsi government

Skovgaard-Petersen

2017

Communication and the Public

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

When in June 2013 the cultural production environment mobilized against President Morsi and his minister of culture, this turned out to be a prelude to massive popular demonstrations and the removal of Morsi by the army. But what were the cultural policies of the Morsi government all about? The article traces the cultural policy agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party, and the major controversies they engendered when in power. It argues that Islamization of cultural life may have been a long-term goal, but not a priority in the Morsi government which, on the other hand, at the end of its reign clumsily pursued a policy of “ikhwanization.” Focusing on two controversial films about Egypt’s Jews and Copts, respectively, it discusses revisionist accounts of the minority issue that has emerged after the revolution, and the Morsi government’s position on it.

show abstract

Islamists in Egyptian Cinema

Cited by 21 publications

References 5 publications

Mediating a Disney-style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons

Mediating a Disney-style Islam: The Emergence of Egyptian Islamic Animated Cartoons

A Massacre Foretold: National Excommunication and Al-Gama’a

Media controversies and the cultural policies of the Morsi government

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About