Women won’t be conscripted, five-year plan for sermons
Talk show hosts had religion on the brain last night. Lamees El Hadidy started off last night’s episode of Hona Al Assema with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s announcement last Friday that the new Administrative Capital will be home to the largest church and mosque in the country around this time next year. Members of the House of Representatives launched a campaign to collect funds for the project after the announcement, according to El Hadidy. “But this isn’t only about building churches and mosques. We have a much larger issue here… we have to pay special attention to education, culture, and religious rhetoric,” she said (watch, runtime 4:02), setting up a discussion with Culture Minister Helmy El Namnam about his ministry’s role in eliminating extremism (watch, runtime 7:19).
El Hadidy also dove into the controversy surrounding the new Egyptian film Mawlana (title used to address sheikhs and clerics), which surveys the lives of Muslim preachers in Egypt. MP Shoukry El Gendy, a member of the House of Representatives’ religious affairs committee, told El Hadidy that the film should have been approved by Al Azhar prior to its release. Director Magdy Ahmed Ali told the host during a phone-in though that the movie did in fact obtain all the necessary approvals from all relevant entities (watch, runtime 14:13).
The Endowments Ministry has a five-year plan for Friday sermons? Over on ONTV, Amr Adib lambasted the Endowments Ministry for saying it would be presenting the presidency with a list containing the topics and themes for Friday prayer sermons for the next five years. “That’s excessive… We don’t have five-year visibility on anything at all in this country,” he scoffed. “And do they really think the president is going to sit down and read five years’ worth of sermons?” (watch, runtime 2:22).
Women won’t be conscripted: Social Solidarity Minister Ghada Wali told Lamees last night that there are no plans to conscript female university graduates. Wali explained that the rumors arose from a misunderstanding over a procedural announcement calling on graduates looking for government jobs to apply. “It’s a standard procedure that happens every year,” Wali said.
Child abuse at orphanage? El Hadidy also spoke to Wali about an alleged child abuse case at a Dar Al Orman orphanage in New Cairo, after a video emerged of a screaming child being forced into a freezing cold bath circulated the internet on Saturday. Wali said that the woman seemingly responsible was being investigated and that some of the children were transferred to other facilities (watch, runtime 9:33).
Reconciliation for building on agricultural land gets nod: Amr Adib commended the House of Representatives for giving the initial nod to a bill that would allow reconciliation in cases in which agricultural land had been illegally built-on (watch, runtime 3:09).
The vast number of unclaimed junked cars littering Cairo’s streets seems set to become Adib’s new hobbyhorse. He suggested that “someone should start a company, rally a few young people, give them a winch and tell them that their job is to collect all of the junked cars in Egypt and sell them and make a few pounds.” He said that many factories would be happy to buy the hulls and recycle them (watch, runtime 2:07).
The host also aired a report on the Egyptian pension system (watch, runtime 2:40) and then spoke to MP Mohamed Abu Hamed about a new law proposal the government is preparing to amend the social security and pensions systems. The law will oblige the private sector to cover employees’ social security and “will also impose sanctions on companies that fail to comply,” Abu Hamed said (watch, runtime 1:03).
Sherif Amer was off last night.