Cairo - An Egyptian box office hit that highlights the religious establishment's cosy relations with the state has provoked a backlash from Sunni Muslim clerics, with some calling for the film to be banned. Adapted from a novel by prominent journalist Ibrahim Eissa, "Mawlana" ("The Preacher") tells the story of a popular television preacher who struggles to reconcile his religious principles with demands and pressures from politicians and security agencies as well as ordinary human temptations. Through the protagonist, a cleric from Al Azhar, Cairo's 1,000-year-old centre of Islamic learning, the film lays bare the complex and troubling interplay between the state, religious establishment, mass media and Islamist extremism in Egypt.