The Egyptian entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Haiba isn’t having a good day. A Saudi columnist has accused him of corrupting the country’s youth. A music video he has been working on for months is behind schedule. He hasn’t had time to prepare for his weekly talk show, an Islamo-Egyptian version of “Dr. Phil.” Worse, one of the program’s financiers has become upset because there was to be a woman on the show — unchaste behavior, to some. We’re driving along Sheik Zayed Road in the desert outside Cairo on a bright day as the radio plays Sami Yusuf, a saccharine-sweet Muslim pop star based in London. Abu Haiba theatrically throws his arms in the air to perform his frustration. At the age of 42 he is tubby and, as a sign of his deep faith, has a large zabiba — a dark smudge on his forehead born of rubbing his head repeatedly on a prayer mat. And yet he is not a conventional man and certainly not a conventional Muslim. Today he looks more like a hip-hop mogul, with a black knit golf cap on backward and a suit of all black. And a pink tie.

As the brains behind 4Shbab, the world’s first Islamic version of MTV, Abu Haiba is the consummate man in the middle — situated between the dictates of Islam and those of the pop-music business. Introduced in the spring of last year, 4Shbab, which means “for youth” in Arabic, broadcasts music videos, variety shows (including Abu Haiba’s own), news and even a reality program called “Your Voice Is Heard” — which might as well be called “Who Wants to be an Islamic Pop Star?” Imagine MTV without the gratuitous gyration and skin, and with videos about family, public service, Palestine and, above all, salvation. In trying to make Islam relevant to youth, 4Shbab is part of a recent trend that, from Cairo to Kuala Lumpur, has inspired restaurants with Islamic themes, Islamic entertainment centers and even Islamic water parks and beaches. 4Shbab’s mission seems to be communicating that there is a middle ground between the rigid Islam of stern-faced elders and jihadists on one hand and the louche ways of the West on the other. On 4Shbab, you can be traditional and modern at once, Islamic and hip, pious and fun. The channel’s music videos speak to real life, from the difficulties of finding work to the pain of depression to the burn of spurned love. And in all of 4Shbab’s promotional spots a tremendous smokey voice booms: “Lissssssten . . . to the tune of Islam.”

4SHBAB’S HEADQUARTERS occupy a floor of one among many anonymous high-rises in Cairo’s Mohandiseen district. The office furniture is fashioned from red plastic, as if to urgently communicate 4Shbab’s modernity. As I sat down with Abu Haiba, young men — all of them under 30 — came in every few minutes to show him this or that letter or to go over the schedule for a coming shoot. The core team also gathered there at prayer times. At one point, Abu Haiba’s iPhone rang with the distinctive harp sound that indicates his wife calling. I could hear her excitedly telling him how many fans 4Shbab had on Facebook.

“The media is changing everything,” Abu Haiba told me. “Television, the Internet, Facebook. We have to think faster, move faster. Time flies! 4Shbab is part of that change. It’s more than music. We have 25,000 members in the 4Shbab Forum. We get 3,000 S.M.S. a day from viewers. I have fans in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Iraq — you name it. We think of it as a new kind of preaching for the ‘rebound generation.’ ”