Rock the Casbah by Robin Wright

Author:Robin Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

8.

Satellite Sheikhs and YouTube Imams

Radicals learned long ago the power of trying to interpret the Koran in their favor. Moderates are now rushing to do the same. This battle gets down to the very essence of what it means to be Muslim.

—A ZZAM TAMINI, DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC POLITICAL THOUGHT. 1

In Saudi Arabia, Ahmad al Shugairi is the closest thing to Elvis. His personal appearances elicit teary adulation. The young cheer him in standing ovations. His first television show, a five-minute program filler, was so popular that it grew by five minutes every year. By 2010, a beefed-up version ranked among the top ten programs on the largest of five hundred Arab satellite channels.

Somewhat uncomfortably, al Shugairi acknowledged the comparison. In 2008, he had to be bundled out the back door of a packed concert hall to escape the adoring crowd.

“Elvis has left the building,” he joked with a New York Times reporter. 2

Al Shugairi is one of a new generation of satellite sheikhs and YouTube imams who have taken to the airwaves across the Islamic world. They are not real preachers; they are unschooled in theology and have not produced serious scholarship. They use unconventional media to spread their message. But their popularity has produced a gentler genre of Islamism. They sell feel-good Islam instead of suicide bombs. Among women, they encourage the “pink hejab”—being both observant and fashionably female. Many now have followings that rival—and deeply irritate—Islam’s traditional clergy, whose strict fatwas have long dominated Muslim life.

The young televangelists have energized the counter-jihad. They have set the tone for young Muslim activists.

Born in 1973, al Shugairi is the antithesis of the ponderous Muslim preacher. He is as comfortable in faux-bleached jeans and T-shirts as in a flowing white thobe and ghutra headdress. He has worn both on his shows. Instead of a beard, he sports a neat mustache and light stubble that makes him look more like a movie star than a scholar. He is tall and has the build of a soccer player or swimmer. His face is long and lean; his eyebrows are a bit bushy.

Al Shugairi actually uses Elvis in his sermonettes about happiness.

“Let’s have a look at someone who had all kinds of enjoyments,” he began one of his first shows, which is still available and widely viewed on YouTube. “A handsome guy who was pleasured by good health and a lively body! He was extremely rich, had as many women as he wanted and a wife from among the most beautiful women of the era. Elvis Presley, my sisters and brothers, owned the world and what’s in it!

“Even though he had all these enjoyments, do you know how he died?” he asked, then paused. “Elvis Presley died in the toilet of his house from an overdose of drugs! And everyone who reads his biography knows that he was sad and depressed. The problem of Elvis Presley, my brothers and sisters, and the problem of a lot of us is that we

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