The American comedian Jon Stewart’s criticism of the Egyptian government briefly escalated into a diplomatic incident on Tuesday, as the United States Embassy in Cairo shared a link to the “Daily Show†segment on Twitter and the office of Egypt’s president reacted with anger.
Mr. Stewart devoted the first 11 minutes of his program on Monday to mocking Egypt’s ongoing investigation of Bassem Youssef, the Arab world’s most popular television comedian, for the supposedly criminal use of satire in jokes about President Mohamed Morsi and his Islamist political party.
Mr. Youssef, whose satirical review of the news “Al Bernameg†or “The Program,†is closely modeled on “The Daily Show,†is being investigated by Egyptian prosecutors in response to complaints filed by citizens, including supporters of the president who claimed that they were “psychologically affected by this nonsense, ridicule and slander addressed to the head of state.†Despite the investigation, Mr. Youssef has continued to make light of the complaints on his weekly show.
As he explained in an interview with CNN, prosecutors questioned the satirist for hours about episodes of his program on Sunday, forcing him to explain joke after joke and finally releasing him only after he had posted bail.
Late Tuesday, the Egyptian president’s office said in a statement posted on Facebook that the interrogation of Mr. Youssef had been carried out by a fully independent prosecutor (albeit one appointed by Mr. Morsi) investigating complaints “initiated by citizens rather than the Presidency.†Under Mr. Morsi’s rule, the statement added, “All citizens are free to express themselves without the restrictions that prevailed in the era of the previous regime.â€
Writing on Twitter on Tuesday Mr. Youssef reported that yet another legal complaint had been filed against him, this time for the previously unknown crime of “insulting Pakistan,†as part of what he described as a concerted campaign of harassment.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Morsi’s political party had condemned the United States for “blatant interference in Egypt’s internal affairs,†following remarks on the case by Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman.
Asked about Mr. Youssef at a news conference on Monday, Ms. Nuland said that the comedian’s arrest, “coupled with recent arrest warrants issued for other political activists, is evidence of a disturbing trend of growing restrictions on the freedom of expression.†The government of Egypt, she added, “seems to be investigating these cases while it has been slow or inadequate in investigating attacks on demonstrators outside the presidential palace in December 2012, other cases of extreme police brutality and illegally blocked entry of journalists to media cities.â€
That prompted a series of critical tweets from @Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official, English-language Twitter feed, and an indignant statement from the Islamst movement’s Freedom and Justice Party, which nominated Mr. Morsi for the presidency last year. In both forums, the Islamists claimed that the main charge against Mr. Youssef was not mocking the president but insulting his religion.
Unsurprisingly, the Brotherhood’s Twitter comments defending the criminal investigation of such a popular comedian inspired a wave of critical comments from Egypt’s activist bloggers.
Although the Brotherhood maintains that Mr. Morsi operates with independence from the movement, its Twitter feed harshly criticized the American Embassy for sharing the link to “The Daily Show†shortly before a similar message was posted on the official feed of the Egyptian presidency.
According to the Egyptian journalist and blogger Mohamed Abdelfattah, the online reaction to Mr. Stewart’s commentary was far more virulent from Islamist supporters of the president on unofficial fan pages, which sought to discredit the comedian by tapping into Egypt’s rich vein of anti-Semitism.
Late Tuesday the Brotherhood Twitter feed even posted a link to an Al Jazeera report on comments by Rick Sanchez, who was fired by CNN in 2010 after he called Mr. Stewart “a bigot,†and suggested that the comedian had made fun of him for being bad at his job because he was Latino and not Jewish.
The first words of the report lined to by @Ikhwanweb are Mr. Sanchez saying, “everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority Yeah.â€
Perhaps not coincidentally, the wave of complaints against Mr. Youssef intensified after the comedian discovered and broadcast earlier this year video of Mr. Morsi making anti-Semitic comments at a rally in 2010, in which the Brotherhood leader said: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.â€
Robert Mackey also remixes the news on Twitter @robertmackey.
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