Bassem Youssef: "To us, you aren't sheikhs or 'ulama."

I know that some people are sick of the more serious serious segments of Bassem Youssef’s “Bernameg al-Bernameg” (literally, “The Show Show”), but I thought this one, from his December 21 episode, was useful.

If you’ve watched the second season of his show, you’ve seen that he’s really been going in on the Brotherhood and Islamists in power, but also on a certain kind of religious figure — mostly satellite televangelists and the sort of audience they attract.  The sort of crushing, video archive-aided takedowns he’s been offering week after week have a political dimension, but they also amount to a sort of broader social criticism.  He’s challenging a certain popular kind of Egyptian religiosity and being really deeply, cuttingly sarcastic about a class of religious figures who might otherwise assume that they’re above this kind of criticism.

Apologies for not choosing something funnier, but this soliloquy (rant?) does a lot to explain both the underlying logic of his recent episodes and his harsher, sometimes angry tone.

(Click “CC” to turn on English subtitles!  I tried to make them come on automatically, but I obviously failed. )

[Update, 1 February 2021: YouTube subsequently removed this video in response to a rights claim.]

(Sorry if I muffed anything up — let me know, and I’ll retool the caption file in YouTube!)