With Its Media Machinery in Disarray, Can El-Muslimani Revive El-Sisi’s Image?

From the moment he came to power in 2014, Egypt’s head of the regime Abdel Fattah el-Sisi dreamed of building a media machine that could shape the public in the same way Gamal Abdel Nasser’s did in the 1960s, a single-voiced press, entirely obedient to the authorities, allowing no narrative other than the official one.

But that dream quickly gave way to a chaotic media scene built on shouting, smears, and threats, fronted by figures such as Ahmed Moussa, Nashat al-Deehy and Youssef al-Husseini, a spectacle that deepened social division and public resentment of the regime more than it bolstered its image.

Over the years, this style of discourse proved woefully inadequate in the age of open digital space, as large segments of Egyptians, especially young people, turned instead to new media and independent platforms. 

These broke the state’s monopoly on information and exposed the fragility of the regime’s communications apparatus.

The failure pushed the authorities, particularly the General Intelligence Service, which oversees the media file, to look for an alternative strategy, one that could refresh the field and reconfigure the landscape.

It was in this context that presidential decree No. 520 of 2024 was issued on October 25, 2024, establishing the National Media Authority, to be chaired for four years by the broadcaster Ahmed Mohamed Mahmoud el Muslimani. 

El-Muslimani appeared to be a deliberate choice, a break with the strident rhetoric that had left state media stagnant and stale, and an attempt to inject new blood that might restore trust among audiences long turned away from the channels steered by the so-called “Samsung apparatus.”

His practical debut did not take long. On August 12, 2025, he hosted a special program on Channel One, outlining the contours of a plan to overhaul state media and revealing key details from a meeting between el-Sisi and the heads of media bodies.

El-Muslimani sent clear signals about the priorities for the next phase, centered on restructuring the channels under the National Media Authority, improving content and visual identity, and streamlining state television to deliver more specialized programming while raising broadcast standards.

With this appearance, el-Muslimani presented himself as the new face of an effort to pull the media machine out of crisis, at a time when the regime is betting that such a “calm dose” can ease public discontent and polish the image of a power whose already eroded popularity is fading further at home and abroad.

Demonization and Conflict

From the moment he took charge of the National Media Authority, it was clear that el-Muslimani was moving through a minefield, fraught with confrontation with what is known as the “old media guard,” figures who for a decade had grown accustomed to dominating the scene with a discourse of denunciation and conflict.

They sensed the ground was slipping from under their feet, and that el-Muslimani’s calm demeanor and desire to reshape the media landscape posed a direct threat to their standing and influence, prompting them to set traps and mount campaigns against him.

El-Muslimani is no ordinary newcomer to public life. He served as an adviser to the late Nobel laureate, the scientist Ahmed Zewail, and later as a temporary adviser to the interim president appointed after the military coup, Adly Mansour, in 2013–2014.

He then moved into the media sphere as a political analyst on DMC, the intelligence-run television channel, before hosting the program “The First Edition” on al-Hayat.

Yet the prominence he had once enjoyed with the authorities soon placed him in the crosshairs of other media arms.

When news broke of the appointment of Hossam Aakl, a professor of literary criticism at Ain Shams University, to committees overseeing radio drama, a fierce campaign was launched against el-Muslimani because Aakl was “an Islamist Brotherhood figure.” 

In reality, he had never belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, but was rather a conservative Islamic academic voice with a large following.

But this ready-made accusation is the very tool the regime’s media deploys to settle scores with anyone who voices a different view or steps outside the official script, and it was on this basis that el-Muslimani was asked to submit his resignation.

Even though el-Muslimani later issued a report denying that Hossam Aakl had been appointed to a committee that, in fact, had not yet even been formed, the campaign against him continued.

What intensified the confrontation was el-Muslimani’s decision to reopen the doors of Maspero to the broadcaster Mahmoud Saad after an absence of 14 years.

On August 18, 2025, he welcomed Saad into the headquarters of Egyptian state television and announced an agreement to bring back his program Bab al-Khalq on Channel One, to run in parallel with its broadcast on the privately owned al-Nahar network.

Although sources denied there was any deal for Saad to take part in a new evening talk show, his mere return to Maspero, after a long career that had included a clash with Hosni Mubarak’s information minister Anas el-Fiqqi and later support for the January 25 revolution, was enough to anger the old guard, who saw the move as breaking “the rules of the game.”

Saad’s popularity, built in recent years on a calm, socially oriented style far removed from confrontations, made him acceptable to wide segments of the public.

His personal YouTube channel alone had reached 1.7 million subscribers, with around 275,635,000 views by August 2025. 

El-Muslimani sought to harness this popularity for the regime, as part of his plan to burnish its image and give state media a veneer of “pluralism.”

But this move only deepened the rift between him and the traditional media arms, which saw Saad’s return as a direct threat to their long-standing monopoly over the airwaves.

Thus el-Muslimani now finds himself in open confrontation with a network of entrenched interests within the regime’s media, where his ambition to renew the landscape collides with the old guard’s determination to remain on screen without rivals.

On August 11, 2025, el-Muslimani outlined his next steps, stressing the need for what he called “scouts” to identify journalists, broadcasters, creatives and talented individuals across Egypt’s provinces.

He posed a striking question: “Could there be another Umm Kulthum? Could there be another Sheikh al-Shaarawi?” And he answered himself: yes, if the environment were properly cultivated.

He went on to cite the words of the late scientist Ahmed Zewail, “The problem with the East is that it is against the successful until they fail, and the West is with the failed until they succeed,” adding that changing this equation “is enough to create new figures on the scale of Umm Kulthum or Sheikh al-Shaarawi.”

But invoking the name of Sheikh al-Shaarawi was not merely a cultural or religious example; it carried a profound political significance.

The regime represented by el-Sisi had only two years earlier been embroiled in a ferocious campaign against al-Shaarawi, led by pro-government media figures and parliamentarians such as Farida el Choubachy in 2023, with public accusations and attacks against one of the most popular religious figures in Egypt and the Arab world.

That campaign backfired, damaging the regime’s image after wide segments of society rose in defense of al-Shaarawi. 

Al-Azhar, under Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, issued an official statement on January 5, 2023, condemning the attacks.

The statement said al-Shaarawi “devoted his life to interpreting the Qur’an, drew people from all walks of life, was an exemplar of centrist scholarship, and held honorable national positions against occupation.” 

At the same time, the cleric’s family announced legal action against those who had defamed him.

The campaign weakened the regime’s popular standing, as many saw its arrows directed at deeply rooted Islamic symbols embedded in the collective consciousness.

It is in this light that el-Muslimani’s recent invocation of al-Shaarawi’s name can be read, as an attempt to move past that black mark, to reappropriate a beloved popular figure in order to repair the damage caused by earlier media policies, and to lend a more conciliatory face to the regime’s communications machine.

Qur’an Radio

Since its founding in 1964, the Qur’an Radio Station has been one of Egypt’s most prominent tools of soft power. 

It was the first station dedicated to the sciences and recitation of the Qur’an, and it became woven into the daily spiritual life of Egyptians, especially on Friday mornings.

Under el-Sisi, however, the station suffered from neglect and decline, as commercial and charitable advertising increasingly dominated its broadcasts. 

This sparked widespread anger among listeners and official religious institutions such as al-Azhar, which viewed the practice as a distortion of the station’s spiritual character.

When el-Muslimani assumed his post as head of the National Media Authority, he seized on this issue and saw in the station a valuable opportunity to redeploy it in the regime’s favor.

One of his most notable moves was the decision to ban commercial advertising on the Qur’an Radio Station, after years of heated controversy.

Before that, complaints from listeners and religious leaders had mounted, with many denouncing the ads as “profiting from religion,” in a way that undermined the sanctity of the content.

In December 2024, the authority issued a decision to transfer advertisements to other stations beginning in January 2025, in an attempt to absorb public anger and quiet the criticism.

El-Muslimani did not stop there. He also took the striking step of transferring the program Khatira Daawiya, hosted by former minister of religious endowments Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa, to another station.

Gomaa, whose name in the public consciousness is associated with a heavy-handed security presence in mosques, sycophancy toward the authorities, and allegations of corruption, enjoyed little popularity either among the general public or religious scholars.

El-Muslimani recognized this astutely, seeking to keep the Qur’an Radio Station “pure” of any controversial figures who might disrupt his plan to present it as a clean, spiritual instrument, one that the regime could use to reclaim some of its lost legitimacy.

Through these measures, el-Muslimani attempted to transform the station from a symbol long neglected by the authorities into a symbolic tool for rebuilding the regime’s image, leveraging its deeply rooted place in the Egyptian and Arab imagination.

The Maspero Card

One of the projects el-Muslimani relied on in his plan to polish the regime’s image was the “revival of Maspero.”

For many years, the historic Maspero building on the banks of the Nile, home to Egyptian state television, had been a heavy burden for successive governments.

The regime repeatedly promoted the idea of closing it and turning it into a profitable investment, while prime ministers complained about bloated staff, considering them a drain on the state budget with little justification.

Amid this rhetoric, the venerable building was left to decay, with dilapidated studios, lifeless content, and channels reduced to faded copies broadcasting outdated entertainment shows and hosting fortune-tellers and soothsayers, a scene that failed to reflect the value of a landmark intended as a cultural and news reference for the nation.

Into this bleak picture stepped Ahmed el-Muslimani with the “Maspero card,” seeking to use it as a powerful instrument to rehabilitate the regime’s image.

In his development plan, he moved beyond the old approach of marginalization and promises of privatization, towards a comprehensive revival project focused on developing content that is more specialized and engaging, through analytical, cultural, and educational programs capable of competing with private media and digital platforms.

The plan includes banning fortune-tellers and charlatans from appearing on television and radio, directing attention towards scholars, experts and intellectuals, and utilizing the neglected studios and infrastructure to transform Maspero into a multi-platform media hub capable of digital competition, as evidenced by the development of the “Naguib Mahfouz” studio within the building.

He also sought to reassure staff anxious about the threat of layoffs, emphasizing the full preservation of their financial and administrative rights, in an effort to restore internal confidence before projecting outward.

El-Muslimani did not stop there. He announced plans to produce high-quality children’s programming aimed at promoting moral education and national values.

The authority’s board is considering launching a new children’s channel with professional standards capable of competing with global networks, a step intended to reestablish Maspero as a central voice for the Egyptian family.

Through this initiative, el-Muslimani attempted to recast the image of a building that previous governments had described as a “burden,” presenting it instead as a “national project for media renaissance,” combining improved content quality with the consolidation of the regime’s role as a sponsor rather than an adversary.

Doomed to Fail

In an exclusive statement to Al-Estiklal, Egyptian journalist Qutb al-Arabi said, “The regime’s efforts to reform the media are doomed to fail because they offer the wrong prescriptions. The solution is not in building new studios or bringing back veteran broadcasters who were prominent in past periods. True reform begins with freedom first, and then ending the state’s monopoly over the media. Financial resources come later, but without freedom, the media cannot thrive, just as fish cannot live except in the sea.”

“Even the emergence of major figures in literature, art, thought and religion can only occur in an environment of freedom. It was such an environment that produced Taha Hussein, Al-Aqqad, al-Shaarawi, Umm Kulthum and Ahmed Zewail. Some of them indeed gained prominence during authoritarian periods such as the 1960s, but their upbringing and formation occurred during the liberal era, under conditions of freedom,” al-Arabi added.

He continued, explaining, “Ahmed el-Muslimani came to a difficult, if not impossible, task because he is working in a poisoned environment that drives away talent and kills creativity due to the absence of freedoms. He may have partially succeeded in restoring some respect to the Qur’an Radio Station after commercial advertising had taken over and alienated the audience, but this partial remedy cannot be applied to the other channels and radio stations.”

He went on, “Even the Qur’an Radio Station itself still needs greater freedom to regain a wider audience. At a minimum, the authorities should lift their hand off it, rather than pushing it into the hypocrisy of officials, and allow it to fulfil its mission of conveying Islamic values and principles free from political manipulation.”

Al-Arabi pointed to the political dimension of el-Muslimani’s role, saying, “El-Muslimani, like other officials in state and semi-state media institutions, ultimately has the task of polishing the regime’s image and promoting its policies. He works at this because he is part of the system, contrary to what his opponents claim that he is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

“He praised the Brotherhood at a particular political moment when it was required to do so, just as many of those who attack him now did, who at the time were racing to court the group,” he continued. 

“Many of those attacking el-Muslimani today do so out of professional jealousy; they wished they were in his position or close to it, but found themselves gradually sidelined. Some imagine that invoking the Brotherhood again might redeem them or bring them closer to power, but the truth is that their problem is not their stance on the Brotherhood; it is their lack of the role that el-Muslimani currently monopolizes,” al-Arabi concluded.