Muslim Brotherhood vs. Beyonce? Or, MB Poses No Threat to Arts

 Pop-star Beyonce will hold a concert at Port Ghalib on the Red Sea cost on November 6th.

The concert, which will cost about $400 for a ticket (about 2200 LE), has been faced by strict objections from Member of Parliament Hamdy Hassan.

Hassan, who refused to hold the concert in Egypt, accused the government of “corrupting” the Egyptian people through permitting the American dancer to hold her concert in Egypt.

This attitude from the Muslim Brotherhood member, and one of the prominent and active members in Parliament, opened the door for questions about the main cases which MB MPs concern themselves with.

The observer of the MB MPs performance in the Egyptian Parliament will notice two things:

The first is that the majority of MB MPs interpolations focused on opposing corruption, dictatorship and injustice in Egypt. They are also concerned with the simple demands of the Egyptian citizen including social, political, health care and education issues.

The second is that all of the MB MPs are expressing their own point of views, without any interference to the MB’s formal opinion in matters. So, we can’t take every action or statement from one in the MB bloc in the Parliament as an official stance of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I think that it’s very important to see the picture from another perspective, especially after the many reports that talked about the “Muslim Brotherhood vs. Beyonce,” or the Muslim Brotherhood’s battles against the pop-star.

In a brief report published on the MB Bloc’s website, we can clearly observe the variance of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc’s activities in Parliament. Most of these activities discuss critical issues within Egyptian life, such as corruption, the Egyptian ferry catastrophe, adopting judicial demands, refusing the Emergency Laws, the strong opposition to the imprisonment of journalists because of their writing, stances against the Military Tribunals for civilians and arbitrary detentions, and many issues of concern to the Egyptian citizen.

It’s important to say that I criticize the Muslim Brotherhood bloc on many occasions, however, I may say that the MB MPs – included MP Hamdy Hassan – have already offered so-called “effective Parliamentary performance.” For sure, this performance should have been more effective, but I mainly blame the Egyptian regime and the National Democratic Party’s MPs for that. We also can’t ignore the fact that there are no previous political or Parliamentary experience for the majority of the MB MPs, because of the lack of democracy and the political atmosphere, which is not allowing any Egyptian citizen to practice his political rights in a normal way.

“Muslim Brotherhood Poses No Threat to Arts.” This is not of the general guide’s statements. These words uttered by the famous Egyptian actor Omar Sharif – he played the role of Doctor Zhivago in the famous movie – so we can’t say that MB may oppose arts for just opposing it, because they believe in the art’s role in building nations and civilizations.

Abdurrahman, the brother of Hassan Albanna – the founder of Muslim Brotherhood – was the first director who led the theater of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1930s and 1940s; we can say that there are no aggressive attitudes in the ideas of Muslim Brotherhood against arts in general. So, I can’t accept headlines such as “Muslim Brotherhood vs. Beyonce.”

There is also a very important point that we must address. Hassan showed his opposition to hold the concert very late. In my opinion, it’s because of the concert is not high on his priorities, especially in the time of international, Egyptian and even Muslim Brotherhood crises. The last thing I want to say that I oppose holding any concert in Egypt where ticket prices will be about 2200 Egyptian pounds, coming at a time when governmental reports said that the income of the average Egyptian citizen is about 7000 LE (about $1250) per year.

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