Deconstructing a preacher

A TV soap opera about the late popular preacher Mohamed Metwalli El-Shaarawi has been making headlines -- for all the wrong reasons. Nesmahar Sayed investigates

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(l-r) El-Shaarawi; his son; and actor Youssef depicting the late preacher in Imam Al-Do'a

Viewers have been watching the late Sheikh Mohamed Metwalli El-Shaarawi's televised commentary on the Qur'an for years. This Ramadan they have been glued to their seats watching a dramatisation of his life story.

A parallel drama, meanwhile, has been taking place behind the scenes. Imam Al- Do'a (Leader of the Preachers) was a subject of intense anticipation and debate even before the series began airing at the start of Ramadan. The late El-Shaarawi's popularity made that inevitable; what was, perhaps, less expected was that a major dispute would arise between the show's writers and producers and the sheikh's next of kin.

El-Shaarawi (1911-1998) served as Egypt's minister of awqaf (Religious Endowments) from 1976-78, when he started hosting the famous Khawater Eimaniya Qur'anic commentary show that still airs every Friday on Egyptian TV. His popularity is linked to the simple way in which Shaarawi explains intricate Qur'anic concepts.

Critics have attacked Imam Al-Do'a for what they say is its simplistic portrayal of Shaarawi, almost to the point of sainthood. The sheikh's sons have filed a lawsuit against the state-owned TV Union to stop the show from being broadcast. At the heart of both disputes is control over the image of a preacher so many people revere.

One of the sheikh's sons, Abdel-Rehim El- Shaarawi, says that he signed a contract with one of the show's producers (actor Hassan Youssef, who plays Shaarawi), stipulating his right to revise the script as well as attend the shooting of the series, if necessary.

"None of this happened," El-Shaarawi said. "I was shocked to find out that they shot 15 episodes without asking me to attend any of them."

That's when he filed his first law suit demanding that the series should not be broadcast. It was rejected by a Cairo Emergency Court on the basis of both the court's non- jurisdiction, and respect for the scriptwriter's creative freedom.

"What does creativity have to do with omitting important facts from the sheikh's life?" El-Shaarawi asked. "He had three brothers and not one was mentioned. Where is Sheikh Mustafa El-Bayadi's role as the first person to discover his talents and teach him poetry?"

El-Shaarawi continued: "Our cousins are very upset about their fathers not being mentioned." His second lawsuit asks for compensation to be paid for damages resulting from the show's alleged mistakes and negative image of El-Shaarawi.

"I think the scriptwriter forgot that when you are writing about a famous and prominent sheikh's life, imagination should be less important than the facts," he said.

Bahaa Ibrahim, the scriptwriter, told the Weekly that El-Shaarawi's sons' reactions to the series are regrettable, especially because "I sat with Abdel-Rehim for 20 hours and remained committed to all the details he told me about his father's family. I then left the script with him for seven months, during which he could have changed whatever he wanted."

Ibrahim emphasised however that the author had the right to choose the sequence of events and the people who make appearances. "This is not a documentary. My role is to keep an audience, which wants to know more about the sheikh they love and admire, interested in the drama," Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim thinks El-Shaarawi's sons are trying to make money off the series's success. "Maybe they should sue the audience as well," he quipped.

El-Shaarawi rejected Ibrahim's claims, boasting that "our father's charitable donations total some LE13 million, and we are all living very comfortably".

Mustafa El-Shall, Imam Al-Do'a's director, says he's never met "the sheikh's sons. I only dealt with the script written by Bahaa Ibrahim. In any case, Hassan Youssef was very careful to present El-Shaarawi in a very positive light."

El-Shall says he refused to allow El- Sharawi's sons to watch the series after it was shot because "they are not drama specialists or a committee from the censorship office. Why then would I let them interfere in an artistic work?"

The artistry of the work is also being attacked. Rose El-Youssef's Wael El-Ibrashi recently criticised the series for portraying the sheikh as a saint. Shaarawi's closest friend, Mamdouh El-Mouqadem, told the Weekly that the series is also full of inaccuracies. "It shows, for example, the sheikh, while he was minister of awqaf, discussing ministry issues with his son. This is not true." El-Mouqadem said that the main problem was that the series was based neither on diaries written by Shaarawi himself or by his sons, "who were the best people to get details about their father's life from".

El-Mouqadem places the blame squarely on the shoulders of Hassan Youssef, who he says wanted to get the project moving so that no other actor would end up playing the part.

The real Sheikh El-Sharawi, in fact, had once told Abdullah Gheith, the late actor, that Gheith should play him after his death. Gheith, however, died in March 1993, five years before the sheikh. Rumors had also circulated about actor Ahmed Zaki wanting to play the role.

Youssef told the Weekly that he won the part as a result of his "great love and respect for the sheikh". He defended his portrayal, saying the audience definitely received a pro-Shaarawi image. Youssef refused to comment on the lawsuits or the contract that was signed with El-Shaarawi's son, saying these were "issues that now have to be discussed in courts and not in newspapers".

In any case, the series does seem to have made an impact amongst viewers of all ages. 36-year-old Dalia Helal told the Weekly that, prior to the series, El-Shaarawi was merely a sheikh adored by her father for his way of explaining the Qur'an. "But after watching Imam Al-Do'a, even if some of the details aren't right, like his sons claim, I see Sheikh El-Shaarawi as a role model. Now I try to watch his commentaries on Qur'an every Friday," Helal said.

District attorney Mohamed Ali said he thought the series was excellent because it showed a "man who lives a pious life for the sake of God, and was involved in community issues at the same time, but with his own perspective".

Ali's only criticism was that Youssef may have toned down Shaarawi's energy a bit in his portrayal of the great sheikh.

Youssef argued that this was intentional. "I wanted to show the sheikh's spirit more than just an exact copy of his style," he said, which some may have interpreted as mere caricature. "His great value is as a scholar and preacher, and this is what I wanted to show. It's also what people liked most about the series," Youssef told the Weekly.