Saudi media pushing line against extremism

Riyadh: The Saudi media is using Ramadan to tackle the sensitive issue of Islamist extremism, with TV soaps ridiculing militants and clerics crying foul at the way their religion is depicted.

During Ramadan, Muslims fast from dawn to dusk, but the evenings are a time for celebration when television channels across the Arab world dish out dramas and comedies offering a chance to tackle difficult social issues.

Reformers in the Saudi royal family want to use the media to promote liberal policies in a country where Wahhabism exerts a strong influence.

Long-running Saudi comedy Tash Ma Tash this year broke taboos with its depiction of extremists at a school for militants jokingly named the Terrorism Academy, named after the popular global TV franchise Star Academy.

"The programme pushes the envelope and we need it to be pushed. These issues have been addressed in the past but it's more direct now," said liberal activist Hussain Shobokshi.

"People are being challenged to differentiate between the human and the divine part of religion. It's on the human side that we need to work," he said.

Clerics and others are furious, saying the humour ridicules Islam itself. The believers at the school are depicted as simpletons robotically repeating mantras about 'infidels', which are in fact part of mainstream Saudi religious discourse.

"Media in the Islamic world must not adopt people who deride God's religion, its holy men and their supporters, or who produce such drama serials and propaganda," Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Shathry recently said in one of many edicts against the show.

But Wahhabism has been under fire since the Sept 11 attacks of 2001 when 19 young Arabs, including 15 Saudis, killed 3,000 people in the United States. In 2003 Wahhabi radicals in Saudi Arabia launched a violent campaign to topple the Saudi royal family, which has been closely allied to Washington for decades.

Underlining sensitivities, Saudi state television has declined to air the show. It is being carried on MBC, a popular pan-Arab network, whose Saudi owner is close to the Saudi royal family.

In one scene, the two main characters are in a Cairo nightclub on a secret sex weekend away from their wives.

"But we couldn't have this sort of thing in our country, could we?" one says, as if trying to convince himself. "Oh no, we have something special," the other replies.

The idea that Saudi Arabia has 'something special' or khususiyya in Arabic is often cited by Islamists to hold back liberal reforms.