Guess who's coming to dinner. In the award-winning Egyptian movie “El-Daif” (The Guest), a daughter’s handsome suitor turns out to be her father’s worst nightmare, unfolding a conflict between radical Islam and Cartesian thinking on the Egyptian silver screen. Many Egyptians, however, might not get to watch the surprising ending of the psychological thriller if the Cairo Court of Urgent Cases decides on Feb. 23 that the movie should be banned for misrepresenting Islam.
The case was brought by the attorney Samir Sabri on Jan. 28 after a chorus of religious figures complained that the film promoted “inaccurate Islamic information” and misquoted the Quran. A group of Muslim scholars, or sheikhs, watched the movie together at a movie theater in Cairo in mid-January and afterward declared that some of the Quranic verses were misquoted and words mispronounced in ways that altered their meaning.