Saudi Gazette AFTER a long day of work, grocery shopping, cooking, chaperoning noisy kids to and from school and soccer games, and helping with homework, it is blissful when the children are finally asleep and the phone stops ringing. I usually like to sprawl on our worn-down yet cozy sofa with a cup of green tea and a good book. But there are those days when I'm too tired to even think, so I reach for the remote control and turn on the TV. Living in the Middle East, you have to face the fact that the number of English channels on Arab satellites is quite limited, except for MBC 4 which airs popular English shows like Oprah, The Doctors, Rachel Ray, and Dr. Phil. Recently, I have found Turkish soap operas dubbed in Arabic on this channel. Evidently, several Turkish dramas translated into Arabic have become a mainstay of many TV channels. Out of curiosity and to compose this report, I forced myself to watch more. The titles of these programs were enough to expose the degree of moral degradation they portray: Forbidden Love, Men Wanted, Fame, The Fire of Passion. Brief glimpses into these programs will show the dangers they pose to our culture, traditions, education, and religion. What purpose does the following Turkish story serve? A beautiful young woman marries a 60-year-old man for his money but she is secretly attracted to the dashing young man who her husband's teen-aged daughter is in love with!! Here is another scene from another show: A girl dressed in a short, yellow dress worriedly bites her lip and asks her mom, “How do I look?” When the mother reassures her that she looks great and should not be so nervous the young girl matter-of-factly explains, “Mom, I have to look perfect for going out with my new boyfriend.” The overall theme in all these shows are that parents are cruel, unreasonably domineering and thus they deserve to be disobeyed by their rebellious children. Women are only interested in money, fashion, beauty, stardom, and relationships. The stories are saturated with jealousy, betrayal, family feuds, and revenge. And all these foolish scenarios unravel as the main characters drink wine and use foul language. Intelligent, hard working women in Saudi Arabia have denounced these shows as debasing and disrespectful to women. We are at risk of having our youths corrupted by these shows. Repeatedly viewing this types of immoral conduct in these shows will make them think that it is not bad after all to lie, steal, cheat, and yell at their parents. It should not be considered politically incorrect or old-fashioned to say that non-marital relationships are wrong and should not be idealized in TV programs shown to Arabs and Muslims. Media in general is a tool for education, entertainment, to have a few laughs, and listen to news from around the world. However, these TV shows are stripping us Arabs and Muslims of the values we hold dearest to our hearts, such as: female shyness and modesty, putting the happiness of your family ahead of your own, honesty, fidelity, integrity, and generosity. In Cairo, MBC 4 issued a press release stating that their programs “aim to continue raising the levels of engagement with Arab women and simultaneously widen its audience-base to young Arab families.” Isn't it baffling that they aim to engage us women by insulting us and polluting the minds of our families? When a handful of women contacted the MBC 4 via e-mail to complain about the bad quality of the Turkish soaps, the response they received was: “We always like to hear from our viewers as we are keen on listening to their opinions. We have an avid research team that constantly conducts market research (quantitative and qualitative) to assure that we are delivering programs based on viewership preference.” When I called the MBC 4 office in Dubai to express my disappointment with these Turkish programs, the lady at the desk said to me, “That is only your personal opinion. There are a lot of people who like these shows. We have a research company that found that these shows are very popular.” That response struck me. Is this the type of programs we really want to watch? If our society does not collectively object to these programs, they will be here to stay. By not speaking up and voicing our dissatisfaction and just accepting whatever they dish out, these shows will continue to be aired. The influential and learned American scholar Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson eloquently said, “Most of us recognize the importance of keeping our environment clean and free of pollutants in order to live in a state of physical well-being, but the more important environment of the mind and soul seems to elude most people.” In other words, we should strive to keep our mind and psyche clean and pure as well as our homes and external environments. __
