More TV jihad. "Afghan clerics want to clean up TV by banning soaps," by Nick Meo in the Times (thanks to KC):
With suicide bombers in the capital, spiralling opium production and half the country prey to Taleban guerrillas, Afghanistan's spiritual guardians have discovered a dangerous new peril: Indian soap operas.In an echo of the strict religious laws of the Taleban era, the Islamic Council of Scholars won the backing this week of a powerful government minister in its campaign to get dozens of wildly popular Bombay dramas off Afghanistan's television screens.
The Minister of Information and Culture has written to television executives to threaten prosecution if they show footage that offends morality. He is particularly concerned about Indian soaps.
His announcement came after dozens of clerics met President Karzai a week ago to demand a ban on shows that they claim are “spreading immorality and un-Islamic culture”. The dramas have won thousands of devotees in Afghanistan who enjoy the escapist world of the fictional Bombay rich. Anywhere else, the family dramas with wooden acting and creaking sets would be thought tame. They have, however, offended the country's new moral enforcers, who fear that the soaps will fuel a craze of “stone worship”, or veneration of Hindu idols.
The enforcers are also urging the Government to take action to get a young generation of rappers and pop stars off air. The old men accuse the musicians of polluting the nation's moral standards and they have chastised Afghans who watch television when they could go to the mosque....
The campaign is also an illustration of the renewed grip Islamic fundamentalists have in Kabul six years after the Taleban's fall from power....
Tolo TV, Afghanistan's first commercial channel, shows three Indian dramas, The Story of Every House; The Trials of Life; and Because a Mother-in-Law Was Once a Daughter-in-Law Too. Some channels show as many as six daily. Clerics accuse the dramas of encouraging “stone-worship” even though Hindu images are pixellated and scenes of Hindu worship are cut.
The hardliners also oppose Tolo TV's pop programmes - Hop, a local MTV-style show, and Afghan Star, a talent contest.
After meeting the President, an Islamic council spokesman said: “The unrestrained programmes on TV have angered and prompted the ulemas [scholars] to react. Hop ... is spreading immoralities and hurts the sacred religion of Islam. Afghan Star encourages immorality ... and is against Sharia.”...
....I have some friends from India, they are Sikhs (spelling?), they have a satellite dish that brings in Indian TV...the Indian TV plays several programs of a religious nature (prayers, prayer ceremonies, and readings of their holy books and lots of chanting)....then there are the Indian soaps...everyone in the soaps are rich, clean, they wears colorful slinky gowns, have money, are educated, and can actually carry on conversations and intelligently discuss family issues without beheading everyone in sight.... I can see why the Muslims are angry...can't you?....
Hopefully, their ruling won't include reruns of Baywatch.
....hmmmm, I thought they had already banned soaps.....perfumes too....
"The Minister of Information and Culture"
Straight out of Orwell.
Tell me again why our young men and women are dying over in Afghanistan? Why the hell are we there? What have we accomplished? One crazy fundamentalist muslim group has been replaced by another, at a terrible cost.
Censorship, intelligent and carefully circumscribed, is always necessary for the well-tended state. And the current absence of all censorship, based on some silly idea that it is the new duty of the state to ensure that "anything goes," should not elevated to a universal principle. Indeed, we need to turn a certain first-amendment clock back about fifty years, especially in the area of constraints on what quaintly used to called "obscenity."
Not everything that Muslims deplore on the greater or lesser screens must, therefore, be automatically defended. Many non-Muslims will not find this story immediately outrageous, for they will no doubt have in mind some programs of their own that are offenses to good taste and intelligence.
But in this case, two points should be made.
First, what the Afghani clerics are objecting to is not the worst Western trash, but much milder Bollywood trash, of a kind that is, juding by the titles, homely, touching, mildly comical. That is point one.
The second point is that these Muslim clerics would be, or conceivably are, even more outraged, one suspects, if the Afghan government banned (or now bans) the kind of anti-Infidel propoaganda that one routinesly and incessantly sees on, say, Arab networks. And one wonders if those clerics would object, say, to the depictions of supposed Infidel atrocities (these things are now a staple), and to the kind of recruiting tapes that show brave muhajidin decapitating helpless Infidels. The answer to the latter questions is no and no. And that gives those clerics no moral right to object to anything as "immoral."
Have any of these islamic clerics ever made any economic contribution to any society they have settled in?
Seems they just want to ban things, punish people and moan about freedom of speech.
"Have any of these islamic clerics ever made any economic contribution to any society they have settled in?"
...well, they do extort money from the NonMuslims...and buy guns with the income received...
Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ Who said: If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Wow, this is RICH. "...fear that the soaps will fuel a craze of “stone worship”, or veneration of Hindu idols."
This from a mob that is supposed to go at least once in their lifetime to parade around a pagan stone idol that predates mohammedism, indeed, even kiss it if possible.
Yep, as others have said before, mohammed's version of the truth must be very shaky in human hearts because the least little distraction will cause its adherents to fall into apostasy....
Let me get this straight, they are afraid of “stone worship”. This from someone who is required to bow down in total submission five times a day and pray to a “rock”. Who said that Islam has no humor.
I'm guessing the TV just doesn't have enough honor killings on it.
The clerics needn't worry too much. If the Taliban manages to seize the whole country there won't be a TV set left.
Except where the clerics live of course.
Tonight on ShariaVision:
The Bachelor: Kabul - Through negotiations with their fathers and brothers serving as intermediaries, unseen women must compete for only four available spots as wives of our lucky bachelor.
Complete Lack of Jazz At Lincoln Center - Watch as we melt saxophones, trumpets, and trombones into weapons and farming implements for the opium crop. "Lincoln Center," by the way, is our name for a vacant lot in Spin Boldak.
Halal or Haram? - Fun and educational!
Monday Night Effigy Burning - "All my rowdy (and pious) friends are here on Monday night!"*
*rerun, due to effigy makers' strike
Every time Muslims anywhere go into a frothing rage about Infidel 'immorality', those of us who know need to explain to our fellow Infidels that the Muslim definition of 'immorality', or of 'corruption', or even of 'ignorance', is not the same as ours. Indeed, at bottom, 'ignorance', 'corruption' and 'immorality' = 'ANYTHING that is not Islam'.
These guys would object with equal - or, probably, far greater - rage to any film (however restrained and moral, to our perceptions) that merely featured, for example, non-Muslim religious content.
Let's think about some examples of that, from the West. "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" (Ingrid Bergman plays Gladys Aylward, English Christian missionary who spent years in China); "The Jesus Film" (earnest literal portrayal of the events of Jesus' life as described in St Luke's Gospel, which provides the script of the film); or Peter Weir's 'Fearless' which includes a scene inside a church in which two characters have a no-holds-barred theological argument, in the course of which the camera pans over 1. a statue of the Virgin and Child and 2. a statue of the Crucified Christ, and which also includes a wrenching scene in which one of the protagonists, a Catholic woman, is praying the Hail Mary, passionately, over and over.
How about 'Places in the Heart' (concludes with scene of communion being taken in a Christian church)? 'Tender Mercies' (includes a Christian baptism scene)? 'Chocolat' (Begins and ends with scenes inside a Christian church). Or even Ang Lee's 'Eat Drink Man Woman' which includes a scene in which the young man who is going to marry the Christian daughter, is being...baptised! Or ...'The Sound of Music' (more churches: Christian religion, MUSIC, SINGING, and modest love scenes).
Can one possibly begin to imagine these Afghan clerics reacting to a broadcast of 'Songs of Praise'? Churches! Crosses ! MUSIC! LITURGICAL music! Aaaarrrgh!
How about 'Fiddler on the Roof'? (Although they'd *love* the pogrom scene, they wouldn't get that far: they'd have already shorted out mentally, upon hearingTevye talking back to YHWH ) Or -'Shine', about troubled Jewish Australian pianist, David Helfgott (the scene in which David uninhibitedly imitates his Biblical namesake - who danced half naked before the LORD, would drive them C.R.A.Z.Y).
This is the thing that most casual Infidel observers don't *get* - that the Muslim definitions of "Immorality" and "corruption' have got nothing to do with our own (any more than their bizarre definitions of 'peace' 'oppression' 'justice', etc.)
PS - exsgtbrown - Those Indian (Hindu, Sikh) soapies do in fact sound quite amusing. Westerners have already embraced Chinese movies; others are discovering 'Bollywood' ( I suspect that many Indian movie rental stores, in the West, don't just have Indian customers).
The louder the clerics howl, the more relentlessly the entire infidel world should flood Dar al Islam with our music and our art and our thought - but not the garbage...pour in lots of the good stuff, such as I have already described.
We won't reach the Sayyid Qutb's - they're so far gone in devilry that they perceive light as darkness. But we might just deprogram others.
Broadcasts of Christian gospel songs in Berber language using traditional Berber musical forms are having very interesting results in parts of North Africa.
Who will compose similar songs to traditional Afghan folk tunes, employing the tropes of traditional Dari love poetry?
Hit those Dementors with the equivalents of the Patronus charm. Over and over and over, while we still can.
..."Afghan clerics campaigning against "un-Islamic" TV shows"...
....soon , they will be campaigning military style...
Why not have the East-Meets-West channel
where comedy and reality clash to give 30 minutes of Burka slapping gut bust-in laughs that will make you so happy you'll tempt Allah by touching a Pig during Ramadan.
Here's one :
"The Jihadi-Mooners"
This newly married couple wants the first night of marriage to go over with a bang , and it does except the Show last just one Episode.
Canada has the farced a "Little Mosque On The Prairie" where nobody gets killed over the Hijab .
But , how about "Little Morgue On the Prairie" where macabre humour blends in with the day to day suicide bombers slaughtering those Infidel Canadians.
Canada aslo has the Comedy hit "Corner Gas" , but with a little tweaking the script we can call it "Corner GAZA" where gas profits buy missles to fire across the border into the USA while Muslims live in Apartments so the Jihadists can wage war from know the US won't fire on civilians.
Those wackey Muslims will love the shows once we add the death,murder,mayhem , beheading, car bombs , and the odd CAFE suicide bomber for old time sake so the Palestinians in Canada feel right at home.
In Islam, Muslims are fodder for the spread of the religion. This is evidenced in the suicide bombers, the lack of widespread Muslim giving during the 2004 Tsunami, the practice of using Muslim safe havens (ie Bosenia) as bases for attacks.
Islam does not love non-Muslims or Muslims. It only loves itself. Islam exists to spread Islam, not to bring Muslims out of poverty or advance humanity.
If I am wrong, show me the love. Show me the mercy. Show me all the respect for human rights in Muslim countries. All I see if a pile of bodies and if you are a Muslim reading this, tell me something, if the Ummah was so important, then why is all that oil money not used to better the poor more substantially in Muslim countries. Islam does not make a better human being, the opposite.
I was wondering when these neanderthals will come out to ban indian soaps on aghan tv. unlike the more secular indian movies, indian soaps are always showing scenes and situations with indian hindu values and worship. I am sure these guardian of islamic morality wouldn't want their young ones exposed to peaceful and beautiful hindu values and worship.
at least hindus worship their gods with human forms as do the christian with their jesus and mary figures. muslim on the other hand prostate 5 times a day towrards mecca to a stone figure that resembles a female vulva. or is it an alien?
desidude,
I just had to go find a picture of the stone after your post. Sure enough, it does look like female genitalia. This is a quote from the website:
Touching or kissing the Black Stone has a profound impact on the faithful as it is supposed to count in their favor on judgment day. The great Muslim traveler from Valencia, Ibn Jubayr (1145 - 1217) describes the emotion he felt on touching the stone; The stone, when one kisses it, has a softness and freshness which delights the mouth, so much so that he who places his lips upon it wishes never to remove them.It suffices, moreover, that the Prophet said that it is the Right Hand of God on Earth.
Maybe that's why muslim men are so incredibly sex obsessed.
"Tonight on ShariaVision:"
....bwahahahahah...
"..."un-Islamic" TV shows..."
....whatever you are watching is one of these...