Kafka Visits Cairo: Bassem Youssef’s Interrogation

Bassem Youssef tells Christiane Amanpour about the 5-hour Kafkaesque interrogation he underwent after being summoned by the prosecutor-general. The humorless prosecutors essentially made a montage of his punch lines and asked him about each of them as though they were evidence of a crime!

Youssef vows to continue with his satire and with the same tone.

One problem here is that Egypt still has the same system, which recognizes political libel, that was used by the Mubarak regime to silence critics. Political libel is incompatible with democracy, since if you can’t criticize elected leaders then they are actually dictators.

This is in American terms sort of as though Dick Cheney had Jon Stewart subjected to extraordinary rendition and waterboarded for his satires of the Bush administration.

by Juan Cole

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. He continues to study and write about contemporary Islamic movements, whether mainstream or radical, whether Sunni and Salafi or Shi`ite. He lived in various parts of the Muslim world for nearly 10 years.

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