Revolution for Dummies

by Bassem Youssef

  Tarek’s father organized the invite. Okay, remember Tarek? My friend who started the show with me on the Internet? Yeah, funny story, his father was a lifelong member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ironic, right? Even Tarek’s brother started working with them too because he believed their rhetoric. Tarek didn’t buy into all of that and frequently had problems with his family. They really didn’t like the fact that he was producing my show. Sound complicated? Well, imagine how their family dinners used to go.

  So I went to meet al-Shater and found out that the head of Google Egypt was also invited. I figured out that this was a PR move to make the Brotherhood look better.

  The meeting was held in their headquarters and lasted for two and a half hours, though the guy from Google and I got to talk only a total of fifteen minutes. That should give you some perspective on what the “conversation” was like.

  Al-Shater told us how happy he was to meet us, and I joked about how his media was not nearly as happy as he was with me. He then went on for half an hour explaining that the Brotherhood didn’t have the experience to work in an open media environment and that they needed all the help they could get, even if it was from outside the Brotherhood. Hmmm, the strongman needs my help?

  He went on and on about the Renaissance Project and how they’d developed it and how they’d adopted it from other success stories in the world, such as Brazil, Turkey, and Singapore.

  I doubt you’re surprised, but I didn’t give two shits about the project. Tyrants all over the world have amazing projects: it just depends which end of the project you’re on. I was worried about that tsunami of dogma taking over the country. I was worried about Egypt turning into Afghanistan and the government using Sharia law to curb civil liberties. So in the couple of minutes’ window I was allowed to speak, I told him, “What you have told me about your project could be considered a well-written essay full of lofty language that doesn’t really mean anything. I want to know why you insist on using religion as part of your rhetoric.”

  He answered with the same cunning method that I have seen Islamists use everywhere. “Well, since it is a democracy, I am free to choose my method and you are free to choose yours. If you are a liberal or a socialist you can put forward your ideology, so why can’t I put forth mine? We both lay our ideologies on the table and people can choose for themselves. Isn’t that democracy?”

  Sounds pretty smart, right? Well, that might work with some people. They can shut down television anchors with this argument. But seeing how they manipulated democracy with it, he wasn’t fooling me.

  When he tried to return to his useless explanation about the Renaissance Project, I stopped him.

  “Hold on one second,” I said. “What you have just said doesn’t really make much sense. Islam, socialism, liberalism, capitalism, and any other -ism out there could be marketed freely among the people as ideologies. But this can only apply if you have a fair playground. I can’t play a game of basketball with you when you don’t even need to defend your twenty-foot-tall hoop and mine is only five feet and you can dunk every time. This is what political-religious ideologies do. They make it unfair for other people who don’t share your ideology. Secularism, on the other hand, is a fair playground. Now, your -ism is a method of play, a plan of attack and defense, but it shouldn’t change the parameters of the court or the rules of the game. We are in a country where Sharia Law is the main source of legislation. It is already unfair to use religion for a political win because the law is on your side. When I disagree with a liberal or a socialist, I can knock his theories and policies out the window. I can simply tell him that they are wrong by logically arguing my position. But how can you accept it when I tell you that you are wrong when you claim to be speaking in the name of God? I can’t compete with God and I can’t tell you that God is wrong. And as far as the people go, you know that we have a very high illiteracy rate and they will follow religion over reason every time.”

  Then I told him something that I couldn’t have known would actually come true a year and a half later. “You are trying to present yourself as right-wing, and you think that in actuality you are only slightly right of center, but the truth is, you will be drawn further and further by the Salafis, which will lead to your radical downfall.”

  As I finished, the other men in the room were looking at each other, not used to seeing someone talking back to their feared leader. Another problem in our Arab world is that our old men are used to one-sided conversations, whether they are preaching at a sermon or in army camps. They love the sound of their own voices. That’s why, despite the apparent feud between religious and military powers in the Middle East, their tactics are much closer to each other than you would think.

  He chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, we know how to handle the Salafis.”

  You see, the Muslim Brotherhood were well organized and they recognized that if they got the Salafis on their side, the sheer volume of their supporters would allow them to win the elections.

  Al-Shater marveled at how he manipulated Salafis in the parliament. “They are very easy to deal with,” he said. “They try to put up a lot of obstacles about how the laws are not ‘Islamic enough.’ For example, we needed to approve a loan from abroad and they wouldn’t approve it because they think interest rates are haram, so we reapplied the law and called the rates ‘Islamic deeds’ and we were able to get it approved.”

  My god, I was sitting with a con artist! This is how they intended to control the country. Religion when needed, business when appropriate, and deception all the time.

  “Are you actually bragging about duping your Salafi colleagues in the parliament?”

  The others in the room grew restless.

  “I am trying to tell you that they are not as dangerous as you think. Now, let me continue with our vision of the Renaissance Project—”

  “You didn’t answer my question about using religion,” I interrupted. “What you have told me is not convincing, and I find it hard to trust you guys if you continue using the same tired technique.”

  “We are not here to discuss Sharia, we are here to discuss the project and how we adopted it from other successful countries,” he responded sharply.

  “Well, since we are talking about successful countries,” I said, “none of those countries have Sharia Law and they are doing fine.”

  “You can’t draw similarities between Egypt and other countries. Every country is different,” he answered.

  “Well, you just did. By giving examples of other countries, you bring their whole experience to the table, you can’t just pick and choose,” I said.

  And then—bam!—he slammed his hand on the table. “Listen,” he said impatiently, “what is the percentage of the Islamic block in the parliament?”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” I asked.

  “Answer me, what is the percentage?”

  “Well, seventy-five percent,” I replied.

  “The people have chosen,” he said decisively. “We have the majority. The people want religion.”

  “So what are we doing here then?” I asked. “It is obvious that you don’t need the twenty-five percent minority. Good luck with your majority. History is full of others like you who got arrogant because of percentage points and statistics and masses cheering for them in the streets. Many of them wish they would have listened to much calmer voices who didn’t cheer their every move. But why would you be any different?”

  We left the building as the confused eyes of his subordinates followed us.

  Right in front of the Brotherhood headquarters I lost my cool.

  I barked at Tarek, “This is the guy your father wanted me to meet? He is a fucking asshole. You think Mubarak was a dictator? This guy is worse, much worse, he is going to fuck us all once they get to power.”

  Tarek wanted to remove me from there since we were still outside their building and he was scared someone would hear us.

  At that point I lost all hope that an
ything good could come out of the Brotherhood. Even Tarek, despite his family roots, was disappointed after that meeting.

  Those guys were on a next-level power trip and were happy with their majority in the parliament.

  As presidential elections approached, there was a final count of thirteen candidates. The only “Islamic” candidate was Mohamed Morsi, the one who had been used as a puppet by al-Shater. There were others with different backgrounds and even some with previously Islamic backgrounds, but Morsi was the true Islamic candidate.

  You would think that Morsi would have won from the first round, wouldn’t you? Well, he managed to get only 25 percent. This was a huge blow for the Islamists. After killing it in every election and referendum, they saw that their popularity was diminishing.

  All the same, Morsi still managed to be the top candidate, but only by three points. There was going to be a final run-off vote between the top two candidates. He was closely trailed by the previous prime minister under Mubarak, Ahmed Shafik (I know too many alien Arabic names). They would have a head-to-head final showdown.

  The shift of the Muslim Brotherhood’s behavior was truly interesting. After being so arrogant and pompous they went back to “apologize” to the “comrades of the square,” and went around begging for support. They called me and many others and asked us to support Morsi to beat the representative of the old regime. Many of the liberal camp, you know, the 20 to 25 percent who were previously unneeded, took the bait—not because they liked Morsi or believed the Muslim Brotherhood, but because many considered that the first freely elected president after the revolution should not be the prime minister who symbolically represented the old regime.

  Morsi won by 51 percent. He couldn’t have won without the “insignificant minority” they always belittled.

  Sure enough, after he and the Brotherhood won, they did what they do best: screwed everyone over. Let the games begin!

  MORSI WAS NOW THE REALITY THAT WE HAD TO DEAL WITH. STILL in a daze from my visit to The Daily Show, I realized I had to get my shit together as quickly as possible.

  We finally managed to sign the contract with CBC for the new season. Most of the media experts continued to laugh at us and count the days for us to flop. I decided to ignore the critics and march forward. The only thing that mattered was to make sure no one interfered with our content.

  It was time to think big: bigger team, bigger production, and bigger theater. We found a deserted theater in the middle of Cairo only a quarter of a mile from Tahrir Square. A beautiful prime location where we could smell the tear gas every time there were further clashes in the square. Everything needed to be renovated, as the building had lain vacant for fifteen years. This was a great way to start our project—by telling our investors that we had chosen a location that was in danger of vandalism and destruction from day one.

  People continued to make fun of us because we were putting all this effort into a weekly show, but I didn't care. I was too busy trying to build a completely new team. In Egypt we don’t have regular writers for news shows. Mostly what we have are part-time journalists who write summaries of the day’s events for the anchors to comment on. That’s Egyptian television. It was like trying to build a car in a country with no infrastructure for a decent industry.

  I picked writers from Facebook and Twitter. We hired young researchers, again none who had worked in media before. With so many amateurs on board, we had the same chance of succeeding as a nine-year-old at a Texas Hold’em tournament in Vegas.

  The technical front was a disaster. We had a problem with live editing and how to do it in the theater. The production team tried three different companies to make this work, but they all failed. We didn’t have a single company in the region who specialized in that kind of technology, so we had to train people who’d been in the industry for years on how to do the live edits.

  The time was approaching for our debut on television and everyone was anticipating it—either waiting for us to break out big or fail miserably.

  On the political front, again many accused me of selling out. A year earlier I had been the dog that belonged to the Christian billionaire. Now I was the dog of a shady owner of a shady corporation who was hiring faces from old media. The only constant was the dog part. You can never win.

  Part of me was motivated by the fact that I wanted to impress Jon Stewart. The way he celebrated me and my team and my pledge to make a live-audience political satire show for the first time in the Arab world was my driving force. I dreamed that one day he would visit me in my theater and would be proud. Everyone laughed at me when I told them that, the same way they had laughed at me when I said I would take an abandoned theater and create a live show. I had a lot to prove, even to myself.

  A MOVIE THAT REALLY “BOMBED”

  It was September 2012 when a group of people discovered they were fans of the Prophet Muhammad and decided to show their admiration by depicting his life in a short movie. Only problem was, they depicted him in the most unflattering way, as a crazy rapist pedophile who preached violence. Of course, many Muslims reacted predictably: they burned stuff.

  A group of Christian Egyptian Americans who had been living in the States for decades basically duped a group of American actors into making this biopic. It was a D-grade movie, not even good enough for a DVD release. So they did the second-best thing and released it on YouTube instead. That way the whole world could appreciate its horrible quality . . . Multiple death threats later, the American actors claimed that they were wrongly briefed about the movie and participated in something different from what they were promised.

  If there was a sort of World Cup of lost opportunities, Muslims should have taken first, second, and last place because instead of using this as a way to reach out and change stereotypes, they went ballistic. Isn’t it a wonder that when people accuse Islam and its Prophet of being violent and extreme, the first reaction out of Muslims is violence and extremism? It’s like pointing a gun to someone’s head and shouting, “How dare you say I am not peaceful!”

  Egypt had its own noob cipher of a Fox News talking head in Khaled Abdullah, who dedicated hours to talking about this piece-of-shit movie. He would show parts of it while mourning the idea that Muslims had submitted to the evil powers of America.

  The movie on YouTube hardly had over a thousand views initially, but in two days, thanks to Khaled “Sean Hannity” Abdullah, the views jumped to 3 million. Anger erupted all over the Islamic world. Many American buildings were attacked, including those in Libya. This was the prequel of the Benghazi attack. You’ve heard it directly from a Middle Easterner now, so Republicans can find someone else other than Hillary Clinton to blame.

  America was demonized just because a few people carrying its passport made the movie. It kind of sucks when you are blamed for the action of the stupid few, right? Now you know how I feel when a terrorist attack occurs and the shooter is a Muslim. Further demonstrations and even attacks on American embassies occurred all over the region. Our brothers in Sudan were very creative: it seems they got confused and attacked the German embassy and burned its flag. I’m sure the pre-planning session went something like this: “Is that the American embassy?” “Yeah, the flag is colorful enough, it looks Western.” “Cool, burn it down.”

  In Egypt, riots erupted in downtown Cairo, outside the American embassy. The embassy was attacked and even had its walls breached by people carrying al-Qaeda flags. The spokesman of the Salafi Al Nour party didn’t denounce the attack and even justified the anger while he demonized America as an evil imperial power. Three years later he was finishing his MPA at Harvard. He wanted to get a degree from the same school as Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods.

  I was only a few weeks away from starting my live show, and then, I got an email. It was from the producers of The Daily Show. They wanted me to do a piece via Skype as a Middle Eastern correspondent commenting on what was happening.

  What???

  Jon wanted me to be on his show
again—not as a guest, but as a correspondent. I couldn’t believe it. Only a few weeks earlier I was a total unknown to the American audience and now I was being asked to be part of my dream show?

  This was too good to be true . . .

  Well, that’s exactly what it was!

  The script was hilarious. It was about me giving an explanation of what was happening with all these Muslims, reminding Jon that Islam was a younger religion than Christianity and Judaism and it was just going through puberty. Christianity and Judaism have already gone through their rebellious phases. Judaism with its ancient weird rules and destructive wars and Christianity with the Inquisition and the Crusades. Now it was Islam’s turn to become a man. There were a lot of references to adolescent problems ranging from acne to bad sex. The satire was great, and I was incredibly excited to do it. I agreed on a time to be on-air with them via Skype.

  I sent the script to my publicists, who fired back at me, “Are you out of your mind? Do you think you can make all of those insinuations in the middle of this terrifying riot? You think people will leave you alone?”

  They were right. There was a lot of anger. And as you know, angry people, especially religious ones, don’t have much of a sense of humor. But I was blinded by the amazing opportunity to be on Jon’s show.

  It was only two hours to airtime, and after too much contemplation I sent them a long email apologizing for not being able to make it. The stakes were too high and this could be a PR disaster. I was thinking Jon would hate me forever and never talk to me again. Then half an hour later, my phone rang. It was Jon. First thing he said was “Don’t do it, you should be safe.” I continued to apologize, but he was very understanding. This was one of many times that I saw his humanity; he wasn’t just some performer. Two years later he would again advise me to stop my own show for my safety. Apparently comedy does have some boundaries.