Faizel Patel, radio Islam News – 2013-01-25

 

An inflight movie got a bit "too hot" for the head of Egypt’s Shoura council Ahmed Fahmy on a flight from Khartoum, Sudan to Egypt. He caused a stir during the flight when he called on the plane’s staff to stop screening a movie featuring “Hot Scenes."

Fahmy and member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and parliament’s upper house speaker, objected to one scene in the film “Arees Mama” or “Mom’s Suitor” and asked the crew to switch it off. But passengers on the flight rejected his requests to do so.

A brief verbal altercation ensued during the flight between the crew and the council delegation which was resolved when the captain intervened and lifted the television screens in front of the council members.

Egypt Air president Roshdy Zakareya said Fahmi condemned the scene as “conflicting with morals,” deeming it insulting to “public decency.”

Zakareya confirmed that all forms of entertainment shown during flights would be re-evaluated, to ensure that they do not contain scenes that may “disturb” some passengers. He said that a designated committee typically picks movies to be screened on flights and that they are rented from Sawt Al-Kahera (Voice of Cairo) for audio-visual materials. All films chosen to be screened inflight have received censorship committee approval.

Earlier this month, Moroccan MPs were outraged by “erotic” scenes from a film on Egypt Air on a flight from Cairo to Casablanca. Abdel Aziz Aftati, an MP from Morocco’s Islamist Justice and Development Party, told AFP that the film “consisted of long and obscene scenes, and there were women and children on board who were forced to watch such content.”

The Moroccan MPs said the crew was at first not responsive to the complaints of several passengers, including a few Moroccan parliamentarians.However,they succumbed to pressure and switched off the movie, despite protests from a few passengers who wanted to keep watching it.