Followup on Egyptian preacher

Al Arabiya finally translated the article I mentioned last week about Egyptian preacher Amr Khaled's Ramadan TV show about the life of Moses and the criticism it came under for being too sympathetic to Jews.

While I was pretty accurate, one important subtlety was lost in the autotranslation.

Khaled's website asked general questions about the life of Moses to get his viewers to think out of the box:

"Think about these questions," he wrote on the website. "You will not find their answers in any book. They just need brains and imagination."

Among the questions posted were those asking: Why did the Pharaoh order male Jews to be killed? What do you think was Moses’ political goal? Was it saving the Israelites or talking the Pharaoh into believing in God? Why didn't Moses call upon Egyptians to join his faith?

The responses were remarkable because the majority linked the story of Moses to the current political situation in Egypt and viewed it as an incentive to rebel against repressive leaders.

So while the criticisms of the program were slanted as to make Khaled appear to be pro-Jewish, the real reasons that the Egyptian government is against this series is because the Koranic story of evil Pharaoh reminds a lot of Egyptians of Mubarak.

They just knew that they could use the accusation of Khaled being a "Jew sympathizer" to help discredit him in among Egyptians.

Khaled's website is here and the page about the current story of Moses is here.