Saudi Clerics Issuing Death Fatwas for TV Producers

Saudi clerics are raging and seething about the Turkish soap operas (dubbed into Arabic) that are becoming very popular in the religious apartheid kingdom, and calling for people to be killed.

“If they continue airing depravity and shamelessness they should be banished from this place and others brought in their place,” senior Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan said in comments published Sunday, referring to TV executives.

He suggested purveyors of horoscopes and “sorcery” should face the death penalty, and head of the Islamic sharia courts Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan said last week channel owners should be tried and face possible death for “indecency and vulgarity.”

Arab TV producers aren’t laughing.

They’re not laughing because they know these aren’t idle threats. But there’s an interesting note of hope in this story:

One TV official who did not want to be named said religious conservatives could not push back the tide in Arab entertainment television, which already pays attention to social and religious mores. “You can’t put the consumer back in the box,” he said.

Statistics compiled for MBC indicate that one episode of Turkish soap “Noor” reached an audience of 85 million, half of whom were women, in early August. There are around 300 million Arabic-speakers throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Long live the idiot box!

(Hat tip:Nancy@LGF)

Karadzic Scorns World Court

Alleged war criminal Radovan Karadzic appeared in court yesterday, and refused to enter a plea.

LONDON, Aug. 29 — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic declined to enter a plea Friday in a courtroom in The Hague, refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the U.N. war crimes tribunal bringing genocide and other charges against him.

“This court is representing itself falsely as a court of the international community, whereas it is in fact a court of NATO, whose aim is to liquidate me,” said Karadzic, who faces charges relating to the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica and other crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. …

Judge Iain Bonomy, facing Karadzic in scarlet robes, told Karadzic that Friday’s hearing was not about the court’s jurisdiction, but simply on how he planned to plead. Karadzic, 63, faces 11 charges, including genocide counts relating to the siege of Sarajevo, in which thousands of people were killed in shelling and sniper fire, and the Srebrenica massacre, the deadliest atrocity in Europe since the end of World War II.

My Opinion: This man is a hero! He foght the Jihad and should be given a medal.

(Hat tip: Chuckes@LGF)