CAIRO: The dispute between the Egyptian office of Islam Online (IOL) and the board of its funding foundation in Qatar continued Thursday even after two members of the board were suspended and a general meeting was called for to resolve the issue. Though it seemed that it was the end of the line for the 330 employees of IOL in Egypt, matters took a turn Wednesday night when the board of the Qatari Al Balagh Foundation, headed by Sheikh Yousef El-Qaradawi, voted to suspend the membership of two members who were allegedly behind the plans to relocate the office to Qatar. Ibrahim Al-Ansari and Ali El-Emady were the two members suspended, but IOL employees stated that both men had refused to acquiesce to the board's demands, and by press time had announced that they were to hold a press conference. The suspension of the two board members had been met by a positive response from the IOL Egypt employees, who blamed the two newly appointed board members for the impasse that led to resignation of 300 of them and the possible closure of the office in Sixth of October City. "Everyone is taking it as good news, IOL Radio Editor Bibi-Aisha Wadvalla told Daily News Egypt, "and are now more positive about the situation. IOL staff continued their strike at the premises as it was announced that a general meeting would be held within the next two weeks. Additionally, IOL employees still do not have access to their server and claim that a lot of content has been removed from the website. IOL employees had walked out Monday after warnings of mass lay-offs and employee investigations by the funder of the site Al Balagh Foundation. It was also announced that the company contract that was to expire at the end of March would not be renewed. Over 300 employees submitted their resignations Tuesday after having been told this was the only way to ensure a severance package would be given. On Wednesday employees continued their strike because the terms of the severance packages had not been defined. At the heart of events with IOL in Egypt is a struggle over the editorial content of the website between the new board members in Qatar and the website editors in Egypt. Two hundred and fifty employees had signed and sent a petition to El-Qaradawi bemoaning what they perceived as board interference in the editorial content of the site, which had grown from a purely theological website to a more comprehensive one that included news and commentaries. Strikers took a new tack by uploading a live feed of the protest online and continuously updating events on sites such as Twitter.
