Cosmopolitan Islamism and its Critics: Ahmed Abu Haiba, 4Shbab TV, and Western Reception

4Shbab is an emerging music-television channel based in Cairo, financed by Saudi investors, and directed towards a global Muslim public. Through its programming and the public and private statements of its main producer, Ahmed Abu Haiba, it hopes to articulate a source of entertainment set apart from other music video channels by a religiously motivated practice of selecting material based on moral or ethical criteria. Abu Haiba was able to solicit funding for the channel, in his explanation, by seeking investors in Saudi Arabia, who historically have spent the most on media and have, by his account, an “Islamic culture ” with stronger roots, as opposed to Egypt, where that culture is, in his view, a “political trend”. He explained to these investors, and then to me, that music channels generally take 14 percent of advertising revenue, while religious channels take 5 percent. 4Shbab would thus be able to combine both sources, with profits expected after three years (press conference, 5 March 2009). As with his earlier success with Kalam min al-Qalb (Words from the Heart), a TV show featuring Islamic preacher Amr Khaled, Abu Haiba’s religio-ethical goals are impossible to separate from his commercial goals, and so I try in this article to analyze this phenomenon without the celebratory tone often accorded such hybridity, but more importantly without the critiques of opportunism ofte