Egypt: Comedy king convicted of "insulting Islam"

The Egyptian comic convicted of "insulting Islam"

Ursula Lindsey

May 5, 2012 

 

Many in Egypt were shocked when last month a court convicted Adel Imam, the country's ageing, rubber-faced comedy king, to a three-month jail sentence for "insulting Islam", marking the latest twist in a continuing drama.

Censorship through legal harassment has long been a feature of Egypt's culture wars, but the prominence of the victim, the severity of the punishment and the innocuousness of the crime combined in this case to set a worrisome precedent. Is this the shape of things to come?
Adel Imam has been one of the stars of Egyptian and Arab cinema for four decades. He made his name in the 1960s and has since appeared in close to 100 films. These have alternated between forgettable comedies and films that tackled - albeit not necessarily with particular subtlety - the social and political issues of the day, such as relations with Israel in the 2005 movie El Sifara Fi El Amara (The Embassy in the Building) and sectarian tensions in the 2008 film Hassan and Morcos. He portrayed an unspecified Arab dictator in his extremely popular 1998 play El Zaeem (The Strongman). One of his latest successes include the role of the likeable old rouée Zaki El Dessouki in the 2006 block-buster movie version of Alaa Al Aswani's novel The Yacoubian Building.

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