Saudi Fatwa gives the greenlight to kill Arabic-satellite-channels owners

A new Fatwa in Saudi Arabia gives the greenlight to kill owners of Arabic satellite TV stations because of immoral programs being aired through their TV stations. The Mufti Salah Al-Liehaidan didn’t specify which stations but I’m sure MBC and Rotana are among the top of these stations. It’s weird but I can understand where does he come from.

Without any doubt, MBC is the biggest media in the Arab world in terms of reach, and influence. MBC was the first Arabic satellite TV station, it was launched back in 1990 from London, later on they decided to move their operations to Dubai. Ever since, MBC flourished and grew-up to become a media giant that operates 5 different channels, in addition to Al-Arabiya.

One can notice the major role that MBC is playing in changing Arab’s mentalty to be more opened to the west, I mean it’s becoming normal to see intimate scenes on MBC 2 or 4 in the middle of the day, at the time when kids are mostly awake and watching TV. Appearently there are no rules or regulations to control such issues, but I rememeber ArabSat shutting down the French station TV5 for airing movies with very hot intimate scenes in the middle of the day.

I’m not sure if there are any regulations to control this aspect in the west, but I’m sure it’s being controlled in a way that suits their standards and mentality.

To be fair, it’s not only MBC, there are so many players

Personally I’m an addict on western movies and sitcoms, but I always think of their effect over younger generations, mainly teenagers, specially because they are exposed to the teen life of the Americans.

What really disturbs me is that we are being stereotyped as terrorists on our media, I saw this many times, specially MBC Action, a TV show or series where they feature a terrorist who happens to be an Arab and a Muslim, they do this always, so if you think about it, it’s not western media that says we are terrorists, it’s our media.

Media is power, media is influence, media can be very damaging if not used wisely, but the question is: who decides what’s appropriate and what’s not?

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Arabia, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.