Prominent Egyptian TV presenter says Saudi Arabia funds IS

Television personality Ibrahim Eissa has contributed to the Egyptian media’s recent campaign against Saudi Arabia, accusing the Kingdom of funding the Islamic State group (IS, formerly ISIS) and destroying Egyptian culture.

The journalist said on his programme 25/30, on the pro-government satellite channel ONTV, “We have Egyptian intellectuals and innovators who could run the world with their abilities and bring prestige back to Egypt’s culture, arts and civilisation.”

The Salafis who are funded by Saudi Arabia and the oil states are polluting the minds of Egyptians and destroying the Egyptian collective consciousness - Ibrahim Eissa

“But instead we’re left it to be run by idiotic religious extremists such as IS who corrupt people’s minds, ruin children’s lives and spread Wahhabi ignorance funded by Saudi Arabia and oil money,” he added.

Eissa then said Saudi-funded Salafis, ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims, had “polluted the minds of Egyptians” and “turned Egypt into an intellectual desert with a primitive Bedouin culture”.

Eissa’s comments are not an isolated incident; over the past several months the Egyptian pro-government media has often been critical of Saudi Arabia, with many well-known journalists taking shots at the Kingdom.

In February, purportedly leaked phone recordings of Egyptian President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi revealed he tried to funnel $10bn into Egypt from Saudi Arabia without public knowledge.

"They have money like rice," Sisi is heard saying in the recording.

Unsurprisingly, Saudi social media users were quick to return the blows back at Eissa, “He’s received his orders [from the government] to attack Saudi Arabia now that the rice from the Gulf has stopped coming in and Iran has taken its place,” one Twitter user said.

Veteran Egyptian journalist Mohammad Hassanein Heikal recently said Saudi Arabia was behaving "very foolishly" with its war in Yemen. Heikal said Saudi Arabia will “sink in the quagmire of Yemen” and that the war will completely consume the country.

The editor-in-chief of the state-run newspaper al-Ahram, Abd al-Hadi Allam, also recently slammed Saudi Arabia in an opinion piece for recently inviting several Muslim Brotherhood figures, most recently Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal to Riyadh.

In April, Eissa’s programme on Saudi-owned MBC Masr was cancelled after he called Saudi Arabia a state that supports terrorism, made fun of the war against Yemen and criticised King Salman.