"Egyptian Iftaa" raises the ridicule of tweeters for praising the "Choice" series

Abdul Rahman Mohammed - Al Jazeera Net

The praise of the Egyptian Dar Al Iftaa for a Ramadan series that glorifies the thunderbolt forces of the Egyptian army has enjoyed wide interaction on social media, ridiculed and condemned.

The Dar Al-Iftaa commented on the "Choice" series through its Facebook page, saying "There is no objection to art that softens feelings and refines behavior, because religion aims to build a person, and every idea that flows in this direction is praised."

The years of the rule of the current president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, witnessed the entry of the Egyptian religious establishment on the line of support for power politics, to the point that the Ifta House was occupied about two months ago by attacking Turkish dramas, and considered it as weapons used by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to dominate the Middle East, and he wanted the return of the Ottoman Empire Again.

Against the background of this tribute, the "Dar Al Iftaa" tag tops the list of the most frequently viewed Twitter site in Egypt, through which the interaction witnessed widespread irony and strong condemnation of what the participants considered a departure from the house from its area of ​​competence, and its storming of a circle far from its required role.

The House was not satisfied with this general praise, as its Observatory of "Takfir Fatwas and Extremist Opinions" of its website published a long post on its Facebook page, in which it described what it considered the advantages of the series and its noble goals that were achieved.

In this context, the Observatory said that "the impressive success and widespread spread of the series of choice have frustrated years of malicious propaganda for takfiri groups and destroyed all false and malicious propaganda promoted by the organizations of atonement and violence over many years."

This praise by Dar Al-Ifta for the series sparked widespread controversy, especially as it came out in the form of a fatwa considered by many as part of the series promoting the house (as one of the state institutions) for what the regime wants and wants to deliver to the Egyptian street.

While others saw that the Dar and its Observatory of Takfiri Fatwas, through these publications, assumed the role of the art critic and the promotional advertising institutions for artistic works, stressing that this is outside the scope of the role assigned to the Fatwa House.

Irony and condemnation overcame the interactions of tweeters and bloggers, as some questioned the atonement of non-commitment to watching the series, while others showed their satisfaction for continuing to follow the series, but they questioned the extent to which it is necessary to follow the breaks in it.

While some expressed their surprise and disapproval of what the Fatwa House did, others asserted that they were not surprised by this, as they saw that it comes in a natural context of what the house is practicing in promoting the orders of the authorities of the existing regime in Egypt.

Others reacted in a more serious way, when they stressed that the home is expected to support religious programs that teach people the Qur’an and the hadith, and invite them to good deeds during Ramadan, noting that the money spent on these dramas if spent on what is beneficial changes much of reality.

The series "The Choice" represents features of the biography of the Commander of the Battalion 103 Thunderbolt in the Egyptian Armed Forces, Colonel Ahmed Saber Al-Mansi, presented by the Egyptian media as "the icon of the Thunderbolt Forces" after he was killed in an armed operation that targeted his battalion in the month of Ramadan in 2017.