Egyptian comic winning support in TV battle with Shariah hardliners AS A NEW Constitution embeds Islam ever more firmly into Egyptian law, a young comic's escalating battle with a group of ultra-conservative television sheikhs has become an early skirmish over the application of Shariah law. In the weeks leading up to the referendum over the Islamist-backed charter, sheikhs hosting pumped-up religious shows have spent weeks attacking the protesters who clogged Cairo's streets, calling them perverts, drug users, paid thugs and Christians. When a 38-year-old television comedian, Bassem Youssef, began mocking the sheikhs for their outlandish allegations, they turned on him, too, accusing him of sexual immorality and even poor hygiene. Mr Youssef has used parody to argue that the ultra-conservatives, known as Salafis, are distorting Islam, and for the moment, his satire appears to have trumped their sanctimony. Mr Youssef is winning not only the laughs of young audiences but also the endorsements of respected Muslim scholars. "They outdo each over Shariah in a way that demeans Shariah and has no basis in Shariah," said sheikh Ahmed Kerima of Al Azhar mosque-university, defending Mr Youssef. Habib Ali al-Jifri, an internationally known Islamic scholar based in Yemen, proclaimed that "if the enemies of Islam used all their resources to abuse it, they wouldn't have been able to do what the sheikhs did." Mr Youssef stumbled into satire. A heart surgeon, he decided to take advantage of the media freedom after the fall of Hosni Mubarak by making his own online parody of a news programme. Appearing first only on YouTube, the show was soon picked up by private satellite networks. After a night of deadly street fighting between the Islamists and their opponents, Mr. Youssef played clips in which one sheikh after another demonised the protesters. "A bunch of thugs and female dancers," Gamal Saber, an ultra-conservative Islamist spokesman, called the protesters who camped outside the presidential palace. "You saw with your eyes the alcohol bottles they drank from - those who claim to be revolutionaries - and the coal they used to light their water pipes," he said, citing as evidence of their decadence only piles of apples and juice boxes that he insisted had been found at the site of the camp. In another clip, a member of the Salafi movement's main governing council listened solemnly as a caller purported to describe even more sordid discoveries. "I swear to the glory of Allah, I found money in - I'm sorry about the word, excuse me - a man's backside," the caller said. Others were sure the protesters were gay. Or they described discoveries of sexual lubricants, money or receipts from Persian Gulf monarchies hostile to the Islamists. "So far, those protesters have: drugs, coal for water pipes, condoms and money," Mr Youssef told his audience incredulously. All they need is a couple of belly dancers and five men from the gulf to open a nightclub. Mr Youssef played Christmas carols over clips of the sheikhs condemning the protesters as Christians.