Media : Movie Breaks Arab World’s Silence on Terrorism Issues : ‘Explosive’ script focuses on Muslim militant who foments violence and then learns the meaning of love.

Outside the movie theater, a line of stern-faced soldiers stand with automatic rifles at the ready, their bayonets pointed uncompromisingly toward the wave of incoming patrons. A truckload of backup police stands at the curb, and moviegoers pass through a metal detector before entering the theater.

That’s entertainment? It is in Egypt, where the occasional bomb, Molotov cocktail, hail of gunfire or ominous faxed promise thereof have become features of the urban landscape.

Then again, this is no ordinary movie. Its star, depicted on larger-than-life billboards plastered all over Cairo, wears the characteristic white skullcap, robe and beard of the Islamic fundamentalist, and he’s got a pistol in his hand. It’s called “The Terrorist,” and going to see it has become an exercise in daring and an affirmation of patriotism in a country which has declared war on Islamic terrorism.

Egypt’s film industry is the bedrock of popular culture throughout the Arab world, and “The Terrorist” in the month since its release has become the top Egyptian movie moneymaker of all time, earning half its $447,000 budget in the first three days of its release. It has opened in theaters throughout the Arab world, despite threats from Islamic extremists and decrees banning it in Jordan and northern Lebanon.

“This is the single most important and explosive film in the history of Egyptian and Arab cinema. There is no way you can underestimate the impact this film will have in cities and towns all over Egypt and in the Arab countries. The reactions and repercussions will be mind-boggling,” Cairo film writer Mohammed Shebl said.

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“What matters here is the extreme candor with which the picture discusses, headlong and for the first time, the most pressing and disturbing matter in the minds of all Egyptians and those concerned with Egypt.”

The film, written by well-known screenwriter Lenin Ramly and starring the Arab world’s most popular actor, Adel Imam, depicts with startling realism a series of the kind of terrorist attacks that are becoming everyday news in Egypt: a jewelry store smashed, a video shop burned, a busload of foreign tourists showered with gunfire, a popular secular writer gunned down in front of his home.

Then it shows the perpetrator of many of the attacks--Imam, dressed in Islamic militant gear as Brother Ali--hit by a car and left to convalesce in the home of an upper-middle-class family in the Cairo suburbs. With his true identity unknown to the family, Ali living in their midst learns the meaning of love and tolerance. He finds himself listening as the family roars with laughter at the ravings of a militant cleric, singing in the shower when he learns the family’s beautiful daughter loves him, and impetuously hugging the Christian Copt he formerly loathed when the two men watch with rapture the Egyptian soccer team score a victory.

Audiences have spontaneously broken into applause in the soccer scene, when family members set aside their loyalty to various local teams to cheer on the national squad as a crowd begins rhythmically singing, “We Are the Egyptians.”

In the end, Ali is forced back on the run when his identity is discovered and, breaking with his militant brothers, is finally gunned down by them as he tries to make his way back to the family’s home.

The film has its artistic shortcomings, but the wave of media attention it has attracted in Egypt focuses on the fact that the subject was addressed at all. Fundamentalism has gone virtually unremarked in the entertainment media despite the campaign of violence that has been escalating over the last two years in Egypt, claiming hundreds of victims and pitting Islamic fundamentalists against advocates of an open and secular society, albeit one grounded in moderate Islam.

All of that has changed over the last few weeks. During the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which ended last month, Egyptian television showed three serials that realistically dramatized the phenomenon of militant Islam: “The Family,” “Hala and the Dervishes” and “Arabesque--The Days of Hassan No’mani.”

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Then, the confession of a former member of a militant organization was played three nights in a row on Channel 1, and finally, at the end of Ramadan, “The Terrorist” opened in Cairo’s two deluxe cinemas--to the opposition of Islamic militants and threats of retaliation.

Egypt’s intellectuals have welcomed the production, hailing it as the artistic and cultural community’s answer to the rise in militancy. With Islamic fundamentalism spawning strict censorship and militants mounting direct threats against secular intellectuals--secular writer Farag Foda’s assassination in Cairo was the model for the killing in the film--the intellectuals have stepped into the fray.

“In the last two years, what I call civil society, the intelligentsia apart from the government, have risen up against the phenomenon. Seeing how clumsy the state is and how serious the problem is, they took the initiative to at least get into combatting it themselves,” political sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim’s Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies featured actor Imam’s bearded face on the cover of its recent newsletter, and in his official commentary, Ibrahim said the artistic debate over Islamic militancy has forced the Egyptian public to confront the intellectual issues posed by its rise.

“The dichotomous ‘black and white’ of the totalitarian state and its counter-religious totalitarianism are giving way to a more complex view of relative rights and relative wrongs. It is a promising beginning to the reopening of the Egyptian mind,” Ibrahim wrote.

Islamic leaders have not been pleased with the developments. Saif Islam Banna, a key figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, said the film deals with the violence that everyone deplores but fails to address the underlying social problems that have fueled Islamic militancy.

“The film deals with things on the surface, but is it possible for a movie to handle a political crisis?” he asked in an interview. “We have entered a whirlpool of violence that has been caused by the political crisis. . . . And the artist who really presents the hopes and the despair of Egyptian society with sincerity and honesty until now has not appeared.”

Leading Egyptian cleric Mohamed Ghozali complained that the movie is likely to hurt more than it helps. “The uprising is not put off with such conduct. It gets worse, like fire, when oil is spilled on it,” he complained. “Is terrorism fought with actors and actresses?”

Imam’s huge popularity is the engine behind the film’s popularity. His expressive and not particularly handsome face has become the mirror of the Egyptian middle class, with its tribulations, celebrations and frustrations. This is not the first time Imam has taken on militant Islam. Six years ago, as fundamentalists in the militant stronghold of Asyut in southern Egypt declared art forbidden under Islam, Imam took his theatrical troupe on the road, performing for poor Egyptians in the heart of Asyut.

Only last year, he starred in the hilarious “Terrorism and Kebab,” in which he played an ordinary Egyptian who finds himself unwittingly taking up a gun and holding a government building hostage in the public’s fight against corruption, bureaucracy and--again--Islamic fundamentalism.

When author Foda was gunned down by Islamic militants, Imam attended his funeral and without warning climbed up on a chair and began to sing “Balladi, Balladi (My Country, My Country),” moving the spectators to tears.

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Imam’s name figures prominently in the death lists circulated by Islamic militants in Egypt, and his high-profile performance in “The Terrorist” undoubtedly places him in new jeopardy. But he has said his role as a prominent artist carries with it an obligation to deal with the most important issues facing the nation.

“If we think of fear, it will be the end. If I get scared and if others do, and we remain silent, who will confront these people?” Imam asked in the Cairo weekly Sabah al-Kheir. Lenin Ramly, whose satires have made him one of the most respected playwrights on the Arab stage, said he was intrigued at the idea not only of presenting a dialogue of ideas between the terrorist and the family but the interior dialogue within Brother Ali as he sees his own ideas falling before the vision of tolerance around him.

“I did not mean in this film to deal with the bloody terrorist issue but the terrorism of ideology that has caused an atmosphere of total breakdown in the system,” Ramly said. “Because this is where I see the danger coming from, not in the violent acts. This climate of rebellion against civil society is the one that produces eventually the extremism.”