Al-Rayah Newspaper - Issue 590 - 11/03/2026

By: Ustadh Mahmoud El-Leithy*

It is no longer a secret that the Egyptian regime does not rule its people solely through security repression, but also shapes their awareness through a directed industry of television dramas. This industry produces an official narrative of events, reshapes concepts, and plants a distorted image of Islam and its adherents in people's minds. Drama is not a mere artistic indulgence, but a political tool par excellence, used to glorify despotism, justify the iron fist, and portray anyone who carries an Islamic project as an imminent danger to society.

The battle today is not just about livelihood, prices, and debt; it is a battle of concepts. The regime seeks to entrench the concepts of the nation-state, loyalty to artificial nationalistic borders drawn by colonialism, and presenting obedience to the tyrant ruler as an unalterable fate. Meanwhile, Islam is presented as a threat to stability if it interferes in governance, politics, people's affairs, relationships, and transactions. Herein lies the danger. Islam is being stripped of its comprehensive framework for life, reduced to individual rituals and practices divorced from governance, politics, and economics.

In every television season, the same image is repeated: the religious person is portrayed as either an ignorant extremist, a manipulative opportunist, or a tool in the hands of foreign powers. Meanwhile, the security apparatus appears as the savior, the guardian, sacrificing itself for the Ummah, even at the expense of rights and lives. This artificial dichotomy is used to reshape the awareness of generations; young men and women grow up associating adherence to Islam and working to establish it with chaos and destruction.

However, the people of Egypt are not a passive audience, detached from the events re-enacted on screens according to the regime's whims. They lived through these events moment by moment and paid the price with the blood of their sons, their dignity, and their livelihoods. They are eyewitnesses to what happened; they know the details and understand the difference between reality and the selective narratives presented in television series, that serve the regime's agenda. They do not need anyone to reinterpret their memories for them, nor to indoctrinate them regarding what they saw with their own eyes. Their awareness and direct experiences expose the falsity of the fabricated narrative, and reveal the extent of the manipulation intended to obscure the truth, and absolve politicians of responsibility.

However, the truth the regime is trying to conceal is that Islam is not clandestine groups or blind violence. Instead, Islam is a comprehensive civilizational project with its own vision for ruling governance, economics, society, and international relations. Portraying the advocates of Islam as agents or conspirators is an extension of the policy of criminalizing political Islam, drying up its intellectual resources, and subjecting society to a culture of submission to the corrupt reality. They are like someone trying to extinguish the sun with a breath! Allah (swt) will perfect His Light, even if Sisi and his cronies hate it.

While billions are spent on television series, the country is mortgaged to debt, strategic assets are sold off, and the doors are opened to Western hegemony. Economic dependence is no longer a secret; agreements with international financial institutions dictate austerity policies that burden the people and tie the local economy to serve Western interests. Thus, political decision-making becomes hostage, and the state's role is reduced to implementing Western dictates.

The most dangerous aspect of this is that this subservience is not presented to the people for what it truly is. Instead, subservience is disguised as "reform and salvation," while in reality, it is a consolidation of the hegemony of global capitalism, which views Egypt as a market, a transit route, and a sphere of influence, not as an independent state with a mission. Under this guise, Islamic identity is marginalized, and Islam is redefined to conform to the Western secular perspective.

O People of Egypt: What is being shown on television screens is not innocent; instead, it is an attempt to reshape your awareness and distract you from the root of the problem. The issue is not in outward displays of piety, nor in those who call for the implementation of Islamic Shariah, but rather in a regime that does not govern by Islam, has mortgaged the country to debt, sold off its assets, and submitted to Western dictates. Then it tries to convince you that the real danger lies in the identity of your Ummah. Do not be deceived by its empty rhetoric.

O Soldiers of Al-Kinanah, Egypt: We remind you that however high the regime rises, Allah (swt) is higher. However powerful it may be, Allah (swt) is the Almighty, the Possessor of All-Power. No matter how many prisons and detention centers the regime possesses, they will never be narrower than the grave to which you will ultimately return. And if the regime has a brutal machine of oppression that tortures those under its control, it will never be more severe than the torment of Hell. No matter how much wealth it possesses to give you and win you over, it is nothing compared to Paradise, as wide as the heavens and the earth, prepared for the righteous.

The angels are recording, and Allah (swt) will surely ask you: Where were you when Islam was distorted, its Risaalah message besieged, and the country held hostage? Where were you when it was your Shariah obligation to support its people, carry its Risaalah message, and establish the state that implements it? Standing with the Ummah is not a departure from stability; rather, it is a redefinition of stability based on justice and the sovereignty of Islamic Shariah, not on submission to the West and its policies.

The regime may control the media, but it cannot control hearts if they are aware. It may possess the tools of oppression, but it cannot control the future, if the Ummah embraces its vision with awareness and steadfastness. This moment demands exposing falsehood, revealing deception, and working to restore Islam to its rightful place: a leader of life, not a mere witness to it, under the rayah (banner) of Islam and its Khilafah Rashidah (Rightly-Guided Caliphate) on the Method of the Prophethood.

* Member of the Media Office of Hizb utTahrir in Wilayah Egypt