Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Dissent
Egyptian Military Junta Jumps the Shark, Interrogates Islamist Muppet

Egyptian Military Junta Jumps the Shark, Interrogates Islamist Muppet

Juan Cole 01/02/2014

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

(By Juan Cole)

When the venerable al-Ahram newspaper, then under the control of the government of Hosni Mubarak, published the allegation during the 2011 revolution that the crowds were just coming down to Tahrir Square for KFC chicken, it was the beginning of the end of the Mubarak establishment. It might have survived being repressive, brutal and incompetent. It could not survive being viewed as ridiculous.

The military regime that came to power in a coup on July 3 has put January 25 revolutionaries in jail for protesting and has used brutal methods to clear sit-ins by the Muslim Brotherhood. But it is demonstrating a bizarre paranoia in its latest moves.

Vodafone had produced a commercial for the Egyptian market featuring muppet characters Abla Fahita and her daughter Karkura. Ms. Fahita speaks to an off-screen character, Mama Tutu, whom one television pundit, Ahmad Spider, accused of being symbolic of the now-proscribed Muslim Brotherhood. Spider had earlier maintained that the 2011 revolutionaries were a conspiracy of Freemasons.

The Egyptian government prosecutor general then actually asked the state security office to investigate the commercials. A Vodafone executive said “I don’t know what to say, I’m sad that we have reached this level of thinking…” The state security prosecutor interrogated him on Wednesday, asking if the muppets were transmitting secret code for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian state has long been peopled by people obsessed with weird conspiracy theories. That kind of thinking is encouraged by dictatorship. It is transparency that cuts down on paranoia. Unfortunately, Egypt’s brief fling with democracy did little to dispel the conspiracy theory mindset on the part of high officials and television hosts.

In early fall, there was the case of the spy stork, when a tracking tag was mistaken for an espionage device on a stork. Although the bird was exonerated from treason charges, it was nevertheless eaten in captivity.

Then there had been in the last year of the Mubarak era the allegations that sharks attacking swimmers in the Red Sea might be Mossad agents of Israeli intelligence.

Mind you, the military government has jailed journalists for alleged incorrect reporting (three Aljazeera correspondents were recently detained) and spreading false information is one of the grounds given for the recent ban on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Charlie Chaplin and Mel Brooks demonstrated that there is no dictatorship so heinous that it cannot be successfully ridiculed.

As Human Rights Watch deplores the current interim government’s dreadful human rights record, the regime now has a new problem– that it is becoming a laughing stock in the eyes of the world.

—

Related Video:

here is an older episode of Abla Fahita

Filed Under: Dissent, Energy, Featured, Human Rights, Juan Cole, Popular Culture

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Regime Change: From Thomas Jefferson to Donald Trump
  • War Criminal Netanyahu nominates Felon Trump for the Nobel Prize
  • Why Faith Leaders are standing up to the Largest pro-Israel Christian Lobby
  • Albanese Sanctions: Marco Rubio now Acting just Like Putin, Charging Human Rights Officials
  • In Too Much of the US, Israel's Gaza Genocide Has Been Made Invisible

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved