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When the Saudi-produced historical drama Muawiya finally reached Arab audiences in Ramadan 2025, it arrived in Egypt under a cloud of religious prohibition and political sensitivity. Developed by MBC with a reported budget of around 100 million dollars, the series set out to dramatise the life of Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, companion of the Prophet Muhammad, Qur’an scribe and first Umayyad caliph, against the backdrop of the violent ruptures that followed the assassination of Caliph Uthman. The show was marketed as a sprawling political epic, promising to revisit one of the most contested episodes in early Islamic history for a mass prime-time audience across the region.

Religious veto from Al‑Azhar
In Egypt, however, the series collided head‑on with the red lines of the country’s most powerful religious institution. Shortly before Ramadan, the General Authority of Senior Scholars at Al‑Azhar issued a fatwa declaring it religiously impermissible to watch Muawiya, on the grounds that portraying the Prophet’s companions in drama is “inappropriate” and “religiously unacceptable”. Abdel Fattah Abdel Ghani Al‑Awari, a senior member of the body, stressed that the companions should not be depicted at all, and that dramatizing disputes over leadership and the caliphate opens sacred, historically sensitive matters to subjective interpretation and popular controversy. The ruling built on a long‑standing institutional position at Al‑Azhar, which has repeatedly opposed visual portrayals of prophets and their companions in cinema and television, arguing that such representations risk misrepresentation, trivialisation and, ultimately, idolatry.

Ban on broadcast, but not on viewing
Following the fatwa, Egyptian authorities did not license the series for broadcast on domestic television, effectively keeping Muawiya off terrestrial and satellite channels that target Egyptian viewers. Similar moves were taken elsewhere in the region: Iraq’s Communications and Media Commission banned its transmission on local affiliates, citing fears of sectarian tension and threats to social peace, while regulators in Iran prohibited translation and streaming of the show. Yet the same decision that blocked the series from Egyptian screens did little to prevent it from entering Egyptian homes. MBC continued to air the show on its pan‑Arab channels and through its Shahid streaming platform, making Muawiya readily accessible to anyone in Egypt with an internet connection or satellite access beyond local regulatory control.

Sectarian anxiety and narrative control
Beyond doctrinal concerns about representation, the controversy exposed deeper anxieties over sectarian politics and narrative control in the region. Muawiya is revered in Sunni tradition but widely criticised in Shia memory, particularly for his conflict with Imam Ali and his role in the foundational schism of Islam; critics of the series accused MBC of promoting a distinctly Saudi–Sunni reading of this period, at a moment when Riyadh is investing heavily in cultural production as soft power. Religious and political actors in Egypt, Iraq and Iran warned that screening a big‑budget drama centred on this figure during Ramadan risked inflaming existing Sunni–Shia sensitivities and disturbing the image of Ramadan as a month of spiritual unity rather than historical contention.

Implications for artistic freedom
For artistic freedom, the Muawiya case in Egypt reaffirms how religious bodies continue to operate as de facto regulators of cultural content, alongside formal state censorship. Al‑Azhar’s fatwa did not only express theological opinion; it translated into a practical broadcasting ban, with direct consequences for what can be shown on Egyptian television. At the same time, the partial and territorially limited nature of the restriction underlines the growing gap between traditional censorship tools and digital reality: while local channels complied with the prohibition, Egyptian viewers could still watch the series online, turning the ban into a symbolic gesture of control rather than an effective barrier to access. In this sense, Muawiya becomes a revealing test case of how religious authority, state power and transnational media platforms intersect to shape – and often fail to fully contain – historical storytelling in the contemporary Arab public sphere.

The Saudi historical drama Muawiya became a flashpoint during Ramadan 2025, facing a religious ban in Egypt from Al‑Azhar for portraying the Prophet’s companions. While local broadcasts were blocked, online streaming made it widely accessible, exposing tensions between religious authority, state censorship, and digital media’s influence on historical narratives.

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