Hats off to state television for refusing to run a TV series on the life of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser this coming Ramadan.
Indeed there is no room for Nasser among us on any month. There certainly is room for a series on King Farouk, which we all enjoyed watching last Ramadan, but as everyone knows, Nasser is not as important a figure in modern Egyptian history as King Farouk.
Acclaimed scriptwriter Youssry El Guindy told me that most other Arab channels are competing to show the series, including Saudi Arabian TV which aired “King Farouk last year and has no objections to showing Nasser this year.
I suppose the wise decision by state-owned TV not to air the Nasser series is based on an undeniable truth: that Nasser did nothing during his time in power except change the face of life altogether, not only in Egypt, but also in the entire Arab world. In fact his bad influence reached the rest of the Third World. Fidel Castro for instance is known to have publicly claimed that Nasser’s decision to nationalize the Suez Canal had inspired many of his policies in Cuba.
Nasser had put an end to the long-standing monarchy, a residue of the Dark Ages, and set up a republican system which evolved into Western democracies in the 20th century – of course it is not praiseworthy. Today, years after he left us, we’ve gone back to a time before the Dark Ages with our great Salafi ideas that have nothing at all to do with the Islam we know.
The emancipating ideas of the 60s today seem so out of reach that our own national television which refused to air the Nasser series is forced to subject out classic movies to stringent censorship to cut out any ideas that go against our new and enlightened Salafism.
Some publishing houses have also started following the same path when it comes to 60s literary masterpieces, such as the novels of Ihsan Abdel Qoddous. They used to run in newspapers and magazines exactly the way he wrote them, while today publishers axe entire scenes from these novels, which should have actually been the case back then, had it not been for Nasser’s futile cultural revolution.
It was also Nasser who spearheaded the construction of that huge and ugly edifice they call the High Dam, which saved Egypt from drought three times since he passed away, when it afflicted neighboring countries like Africa and Ethiopia.
Most people probably don’t know that all the problems we suffer from as a result of the national personal ID cards are because of Nasser. He was the one who introduced ID cards to start with in a ridiculous attempt to imitate developed countries, while during the monarchy when Egypt was a beautiful idyllic society full of livestock and those who keep it, who naturally had no use for an ID card.
It wasn’t enough for Nasser to turn everything upside down in his own country, so he headed overseas to become an icon of nationalist movements in the Third World, from Asia to Africa to Latin America, to the extent that leaders of anti-colonialist movements used to visit Egypt for support for their national struggle despite that fact that they had nothing to do with us.
Nasser was also big on Pan Arabism, the Palestinian and many such causes which have nothing to do with us. We certainly would have been better off if we’d just decided to look no further than the end of our noses, to become a small and insignificant country bearing no impact on its surrounding region.
Besides, who says we like this idea of non-alignment? In fact, we prefer complete alignment, especially with the US, which is exactly what we’ve been blessed with since he left us – Thank God.
After all that, do we still really think we should air a series on Nasser? And is it reasonable to dedicate a TV series on every Tom, Dick or Harry who rules Egypt? Wouldn’t it be better to let our youth wallow in their extremist thoughts about terrorism and the after-life instead of wasting their time getting better acquainted with their own country’s unimpressive history?
Truth be told, national television authorities were not quite so stringent in refusing to air the series, suggesting that it may be shown on encrypted channels such as the popular Nile Drama which competes for viewership with Arab channels. That’s the most national TV can do in light of the people’s love for King Farouk and their hatred of Nasser.
Mohamed Salmawy is President of the Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
