Late Wednesday, Mohamed Salah released a short video on his social media platforms.
Most of the Egyptian’s updates are decidedly non-controversial — pictures of his goals, his holidays, his family. This one was different: a video message, delivered up close, straight to the camera, about the war in Israel and Gaza.
Salah, 31, shared no blame for any of the bloodshed. His message was, simply, a call for humanitarian aid to be sent to Gaza, noting that all life is sacred.
Salah, one of the world’s best footballers, is largely praised in the West for his diplomacy, but this is a reminder of the tightrope Salah walks — an icon of the Arab world whose fame reaches across the planet — that in Egypt and other parts of North Africa and the Middle East, his popularity rose.
At first, it was because he was not as quick as other public figures to offer insights about what was going on. While international team-mate Mohamed Elneny, for example, posted a photo of the Palestinian flag to show his solidarity, Salah kept a lower profile until Wednesday. Then, his candidness in the video — which, 17 hours after its publication, had been viewed 138 million times — dialed up the buzz around him.
— Mohamed Salah (@MoSalah) October 18, 2023
Salah is aware of false claims on the internet that the video was in fact created by artificial intelligence due to its relatively quiet and short nature. In truth, it took him several takes to film the clip after becoming emotional dealing with the implications of the conflict, particularly its impact on children and families whose backgrounds are not so different from his own.
Returning to England on Wednesday morning from Dubai following international duty in Egypt, discussions took place between Salah and his representation regarding the developing situation in the Middle East.
Wary of inciting more violence, he wanted to choose his words carefully. It was decided that the responsible thing to do was to place sharp importance on the value of life.
Before posting the video, Salah quietly made a large donation to the Egyptian Red Crescent campaign, which helps people affected in Gaza.
However, his critics have noted his early public silence in Israel and Gaza because he fears damaging his reputation in Europe — where he has been based since leaving Egyptian club Al Mokawloon in 2012 — along with any financial which consequences may come there. As a global brand, can he be as clear in his words or actions as the older version of himself?
![go deeper](https://cdn.theathletic.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto/app/uploads/2020/01/04083945/SalahAFCON_Article-1024x512.jpg)
Salah straddles two worlds. He has achieved legend status in Europe thanks to his goals for Liverpool, but he is also the most famous Arab footballer on the planet.
In an era of intense political and religious strife, some of his responsibilities were competing and this led to particularly intense scrutiny, with his reaction to events being regular compared to other famous people.
Bassem Youssef serves as a useful comparison. Just as Salah’s football career was taking off, the Arab Spring arrived in Egypt. Youssef was a doctor, tending to the wounded in Cairo’s Tahrir Square when the uprising occurred in 2011. Within months, he released a satirical comedy sketch on YouTube that focused on the massive chaos around him. .
Youssef’s popularity would have a similar trajectory to Salah’s and his show made him one of the most popular people in the country. When the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, they also became a target for his humor, and in 2013, an arrest warrant was issued against him for allegedly insulting Islam and the president, Mohamed Morsi.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/10/19162650/GettyImages-1231112269-scaled-e1697747314121.jpg)
Youssef defends Salah (Bobby Bank/Getty Images)
With Morsi and the Brotherhood removed from power, Youssef turned his attention to the new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He was brought to court for allegedly disturbing the peace and, fearing imprisonment, fled to Egypt. He didn’t even come back for his father’s funeral.
He remains a significant voice in Arab politics and his denunciations this week of both Hamas and Israel, while defending the suffering Palestinians in Gaza, have gone viral on social media.
The conflict resonates more loudly in Egypt because, along with sympathy for the Palestinians’ position, there are also concerns about what the refugee crisis could mean for the Sinai Peninsula.
Youssef’s bravery is widely praised in Egypt and his story serves as a useful context for what his countrymen hope for Salah, whose voice travels further.
![go deeper](https://cdn.theathletic.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=128,height=128,fit=cover,format=auto/app/uploads/2023/09/05070004/GettyImages-1657818249-scaled-e1693911658173-1024x682.jpg)
Egyptians want to see proof that fame hasn’t changed their, arguably, greatest soccer player — that he still considers himself Arabic and cares about what’s happening in the region where he was born.
More importantly, after years of searching for someone whose messages are being heard in other parts of the world, Salah is thought to be one of the few Arabs being listened to by the international media.
His status seems untouchable. Since he never played for any of Egypt’s biggest clubs in Zamalek or Al Ahly, he never brought with him some of the tribal talk that followed many Egyptian footballers around.
Over the past decade, he has instead emerged as the great lone hope of Egyptian football, leading a national team that collectively is not as strong as the one that won three Africa Cup of Nations titles in between 2006 and 2010.
Salah led Egypt to their first World Cup appearance in 28 years in 2018, scoring the winning goal from the penalty spot in stoppage time in a game against Congo that secured qualification.
Before that tournament, his power was illustrated when he received public support in a dispute with the Egyptian FA over image rights. This put pressure on the authorities and he later took to Twitter to thank Egyptians for their support.
Attitudes towards him soured in 2019 when his team-mate Amr Warda was dropped from the national team after being accused of sexual harassment. Salah’s subsequent tweet about the importance of people “having to believe in second chances” invited disapproval, especially after Warda was recalled just two days after being dropped.
![](https://cdn.theathletic.com/app/uploads/2023/10/19163020/GettyImages-1717161504-scaled.jpg)
Salah has spoken out on controversial issues in the past (Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Last weekend, the mood began to change against Salah, more visible on Facebook, where he lost more than a million followers, as he recalled some of the events he had commented on in the past.
Earlier in his career, he made the symbolic gesture of wearing the No 74 shirt during a spell on loan at Fiorentina in honor of the fans who lost their lives in the Port Said stadium disaster.
Since then there have been posts about the importance of saving wild animals, as well as a message last year after Queen Elizabeth II died. When an earthquake devastated Morocco recently, he didn’t let the moment pass without offering some reflection.
For most of these developments, there was little or no backlash to anything he said, so some of these comparisons are probably unfair.
It doesn’t help him now that during the escalation of violence between Israel and Palestine in 2021 he posted a photo of himself at the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic shrine at the heart of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem , but perhaps he realizes that popular gestures like these have changed nothing about a conflict that has troubled some of history’s brightest minds.
On Thursday night, Salah was defended by Youssef, who blamed the media for turning to successful people like Salah to “cover up a failure in their own field”.
Salah, after all, was not a politician from the first day of his own career. Youssef did not see him celebrating Christmas in the United Kingdom — where Salah has received criticism — as a message, political or otherwise, that he has abandoned his beliefs. Instead he saw it as a “humanitarian activity” that should never be compared to putting up a flag to show people what you think.
Salah, according to Youssef, remained “the pride of the Arabs”. But, as recent days have proven, that status brings complications.
(Top images: Getty Images)