I was flipping through the channels on the Nilesat satellite, and a trend caught my eye. The rediculous amounts of religiously-oriented channels and the names they have!!!

Al Rahma (Mercy), Huda ( Blessing ), Al Hidaya (another word for Blessing), ofcourse Iqraa’ (Recite), Al Majd ( Glory), Sada Al Islam (Islam’s Echo), Al Da’wa (Prayer), Al Roh (The Soul), Meccah...

And I skipped a few as well.

Come to think of it, I also disregarded all the song channels with religious chants on them, all the channels I flipped through that had someone praying or just prayer, and all the channels that had religious names but broadcasted different things, oh, and of course, the channels with names I had no idea how to translate!

So while the entire world is moving towards secularism, 90% of the channels I just installed to my channel list last week were religious. Some of them sound ok, I must admitt I haven’t watched all of them equally, some of them scare me of course, with the amount of shouting and angry preaching. Some play religious music half the time and I like some of that, some play religious soap opera’s and cartoons (some of which are retarded!!), but some are actually quite educational and are well produced (mostly the Syrian ones)

However, many of them, Christian and Muslim in nature, have a very offensive tone to them. If not addressing their audience like complete idiots, they are preoccupied with coming up with fatwa’s. If not that, then they’re picking at other religions, AND, if not that, then they’re hinting at conversion.

I must say that two of the most watched channels by myself have been Iqra’ and Aghapy ( A coptic christian channel which comes from the greek word Agapy, meaning Love).
Iqraa’, seems to be one of the more popular channels in the west, and although I personally dislike it, I must say it is more moderate than many. Yet not always. I have many times heard the strangest fatwa’s on it. The last I heard was a Sheikh reprimanding an Old house wive for watching Arabic soap opera’s and issuing a Fatwa that it’s blasphemous...but that’s an exception, not a rule of course.

Aghapy, which is very popular among Egyptian Christians, is a personal favorite of mine. The amount of rediculous preaching and the focus on Muslim Converts is borderline funny. Two of the most beloved presenters were Muslims (and are remaining with their Muslim names) and never fail to recite their “Miracles” and how they found the right path. EVERY SINGLE SHOW!!!

Unfortunately, Aghapy is over occupied with reciting reasons why Christianity is the right religion, rather than explaining the religion to people, independently, without relying on comparative studies between Christianity and Islam, a mistake most religious clerics fall into on these kind of channels.

Now off the top of my head, I think most of the Nilesat today consists of News Channels, Religious Channels, and extremely bad Music Channels. I have also noticed a trend of those channels’ with the sole purpose of Chatting, one of which is actually called Chatco, and has nothing else but a blank screen with chat messages scrolling like movie credits.

Of course entertainment channels are now probably better than any time before, and the amount of free movie channels offer quite an array of choices. However I must say that other than 6 or so decent movie channels and the 4 or so decent news channels, and the excellent two or three documentary channels, the 350something channels on the Nilesat are completely useless.

That’s all I wanted to say really!