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Afghan info minister: Tawdry television fuels “extremist insurgents” and must be censored

Feb 16, 2009 12:04 am By Marisol Seibold

Maybe he got a copy of a Dinesh D’Souza book to review in the course of his work.

But no, the unending jihadist violence can never, ever have anything to do with the Qur’an and ahadith. There’s just got to be another explanation, so… how about exposed kneecaps?

“Afghan TV stations find censorship line is blurry,” by Heidi Vogt for the Associated Press, February 14:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) “” The young Afghan woman in a headscarf spends all day staring at other women’s bodies and Hindu idols on her computer screen, then covering them up.

It’s Laila Rastagar’s job to turn Indian and Korean soap operas into family viewing in this conservative Muslim country. Dual flat-screen monitors illuminate the 22-year-old’s face in the dark cubicle as she draws a blurry square with her mouse to obscure a collarbone, then a kneecap, then a Buddha statue.

She’s one of a crew of such editors employed by Tolo TV, Afghanistan’s most popular station, to censor shows in an attempt to balance its programming at the intersection of radical Islam, traditional values and the West.

Television has flourished in Afghanistan since the hard-line Taliban regime was ousted in 2001. Eleven private stations and one state channel now broadcast in the capital. More than 80 percent of city residents own televisions, along with more than 20 percent of rural dwellers, according to the Asia Foundation. For the rest, there are kebab restaurants with flat-screen TVs and teahouses with smaller sets playing in the corner.

But in recent years government regulators have gone after more Afghan TV stations for their content, reflecting an increasing desire to control Afghan culture as extremist violence has worsened. Some stations have gone more conservative and others more defiant as the culture war builds over what’s legal, and what’s Afghan. The baseline of acceptability can be hard to define in a country that has swung from miniskirted university students in the 1970s to mandatory burqas under the Taliban and now is trying to settle somewhere in between.

Tolo TV removes what it thinks will spark anger. Uncovered knees and low necklines are off limits, along with the nape of the neck, the upper back, the sliver of stomach left exposed by an Indian sari, teens dancing together in a disco and a kiss on the cheek. References to religions other than Islam are blotted out. […]

Afghanistan’s government tried to ban a number of Indian soap operas in April, saying the shows were too risque and did not represent Afghan culture. Most networks complied, even though the shows are large moneymakers. Tolo refused and said the ministry did not have the right to ban entire shows, only offensive parts. The issue has gone to the courts and litigation is pending.

The media laws in Afghanistan are vague, commanding broadcasters to stay “within the framework of Islam.” Self-censorship can be the best way to pre-empt angry letters from a government-established oversight commission. […]

But the information ministry says stations like Tolo are the problem “” run by Afghans who grew up abroad and have now returned en masse. More than five million Afghans have flooded back into the country since 2002.

“This is a society that has not yet emerged from war. And our young generation who grew up maybe in Pakistan, in Iran, they don’t have knowledge of our culture,” Information Minister Abdul Karim Khurram says.

Khurram says Tolo’s owners are “drugging the people” with low-quality entertainment shows while providing fuel to extremist insurgents….

Just like Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” led to all those suicide bombings by Christian conservatives. No, wait…

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