Malaysia’s Young Imam reality TV show widens reach to Southeast Asia
A hit Malaysian Islamic reality TV show kicked off its second season this week after drawing more than 1,000 hopefuls from the region in a sign of the religion’s growing reach in Southeast Asia. Combining a reality TV format with Islamic teachings, the “Imam Muda” or “Young Imam” show is a talent contest for male Muslims aged between 18 and 27 who can speak Malay, with the winner crowned an Imam or religious leader.
The prime-time show features contestants in sharp-looking black suits who are judged on a variety of tasks including reciting Koranic verses, washing corpses, slaughtering sheep according to Muslim rules and counseling promiscuous young Muslim couples.
“Young Imam” first aired last year but was then only open to Malaysians. Its popularity led the producers to invite participants from other countries. More than 1,000 hopefuls from Malaysia as well as neighboring Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei and Thailand auditioned for the show’s second season, and 10 were shortlisted, said Izelan.
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Suleiman the Magnificent TV drama opens Turkish divide on religion
A steamy television period drama about a 16th century sultan has angered conservative Muslims in Turkey and sparked a debate over the portrayal of the past in a country rediscovering its Ottoman heritage.
“The Magnificent Century” chronicles the life of Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled the Ottoman Empire in its golden age. Scenes which have particularly offended show a young and lusty sultan cavorting in the harem and drinking goblets of wine, pursuits frowned upon by the Muslim faithful for whom the sultan had religious as well as temporal authority.
Producers of the series, which has drawn huge audiences and boosted sales of history books on the period, said they wove in imagined elements to the love story between Suleiman and his favorite slave concubine, and later wife, Hurrem, with the aim of presenting the characters as more human. But for many pious Turks, including Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who leads a government with its roots in political Islam, the series is an insult to the nation’s forebears.
That is not something he welcomes at a time when he is trying to revive Turkish influence in the old Ottoman domains across the Middle East. Tens of thousands of complaints have been filed with the national TV watchdog. Known as the “Lawgiver” among Turks, Suleiman is regarded as a sacred character, whose rule from 1520 to 1566 marked the height of the Ottoman military, political and economic power, when it stretched from Budapest to Mecca, Algiers to Baghdad.
Read the full story by Ece Toksabay and Ibon Villelabeitia here. Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld
Major Muslim TV preacher Amr Khaled heads for Cairo
One of the world’s most influential Muslim television preachers said on Friday that he was traveling back to his native Egypt, which is in turmoil amid mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak.
Amr Khaled, whose TV shows promoting Islam are widely viewed throughout the Middle East, told Reuters he was leaving the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland to head for Cairo. He would not say whether he would join the protests.
“My message to all Egyptians now is that our country is precious and the future needs a government that listens and respects young people,” he said in a telephone interview.
Khaled, a former accountant with KPMG, lives in London and is viewed in the Muslim world as a moderate who rejects extremism and has denounced the actions of Osama bin Laden. He has a reported 2.1 million followers on Facebook.
In an effort to connect with young people in the Arab world, Khaled conducted a survey in 2006 where he asked for young people from all over the Middle East to send him their hopes and wishes for the future.
“I received 1.4 million responses and highest priority dream that the majority of the youth had was to find a job, can you imagine that?” he said.
Russia to launch Muslim TV channel to promote tolerance
Russia will soon launch a Muslim television channel in the hope it will foster tolerance after the capital saw some of the worst clashes since the fall of the Soviet Union, state-run media have reported.
Proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev two years ago, the satellite channel will go on air in February or March across Russia, home to some 20 million Muslims, or a seventh of the country’s population.
“We believe it is necessary to cultivate a spirit of tolerance towards representatives of other faiths,” RIA news agency on Tuesday quoted Russia’s Chief Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin as saying, adding programmes will be designed for a young audience.
Neo-nationalist movements have been gaining ground over the past year, shocking authorities and many Russians. At rallies, some chanted slogans such as “Russia is for Russians!”
California megachurch seeks bankruptcy protection
The Southern California megachurch founded by televangelist Robert Schuller filed for bankruptcy court protection, saying a number of creditors had opted not to prolong a moratorium on debt payments.
Crystal Cathedral Ministries, best known for its weekly “Hour of Power” television program that it claims has 20 million viewers, listed assets and debts of between $50 million and $100 million each, according to documents filed on Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, California. Its largest creditors include several U.S. television stations.
Hundreds of U.S. churches have defaulted on loans and even filed for bankruptcy as they struggle to pay debts leftover from a historic building boom now that a deep economic downturn has cut into offerings. Financial woes have hit many large congregrations, from Without Walls International Church of Florida to Shore Christian Center in New Jersey, which filed for bankruptcy.
The megachurch, based in Garden Grove in Orange County, has 3,000 members, according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
The church is contending with overwhelming expenses incurred in 2009, “when budgets could not be cut fast enough to keep up with the unprecedented rapid decline in revenue due to the recession,” Senior Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman said in a statement posted on the church’s web site.
Feisty debates between Catholics and secularists before pope visit to Britain
If you like debates about religion but were turned off by the uproar in the United States over Koran-burning and the New York Islamic centre, take a look at the rhetorical duelling that’s been going on in Britain ahead of Pope Benedict’s visit there starting on Thursday. For the past few weeks, the leading lights of secularist and atheist thought have been hammering away at the Catholic Church, playing up its sins like the sexual abuse crisis and arguing that the pope doesn’t deserve the honour of a state visit. A quick Google search digs out plenty of them.
On the other side, a group of lay Catholics has formed a speakers’ bureau ready to face off with the critics and defend the pope and the Church. They’re a kind of rapid reaction force, ready to appear anywhere to refute the secularists and atheists. The result has been a feisty in-your-face exchange providing the pro and contra arguments for many current disputes over the Catholic Church. Some arguments could be criticised as too emotional or even irrational, but boring they’re not.
Catholic Voices, the speakers’ bureau that’s been putting up sparring partners for the Church’s critics, must already rank as one of the big innovations of this papal tour. Popes are no strangers to protests when they visit foreign countries, but the Vatican and the local Church hierarchy usually ignore the critics or give cautious responses. Under Pope Benedict, Vatican public relations has been so badly organised that both he and his aides have often provided even more fuel for criticism. Given the strong and mostly critical interest the media would show in the pope’s visit, these speakers – journalists, lawyers, students and a few clergy – decided the Church needed a more professional operation if it was to get its message across.
Catholic Voices coordinator Austen Ivereigh (photo at far right in screengrab from Sky TV debate, click on image for video), a former deputy editor of The Tablet and spokesman for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, gave me his thoughts about the project and how it’s been doing:
“We thought that our model of a ‘media-friendly, studio-ready, ego-free’ speakers would work well for both the Church and the 24-hours news media, but we’ve been amazed at its success. A big part of the success, we think, is that we making ourselves available to talk about absolutely anything –authoritatively, but in straightforward human language. I think the media have been really impressed that ‘ordinary’ Catholics have been standing up and rebutting these critiques – rather than polemicists or professional talking heads (or indeed bishops). We haven’t replaced those, of course, but have offered another kind of “voice” – deliberately non-expert, but very well briefed – alongside the usual commentators and spokespeople.
“It’s the fruit of six months of intensive briefings on hot topics, and media skills training. It’s been enormously satisfying to see a group of 20-odd ‘ordinary’ Catholics – not leaders of Church organisations, but people with jobs, generally in their 20s and 30s – appear in studios and carry off an effective 3-minute live broadcast interview. I think we’ve presented a much more ‘real’ face of the Church than the media are used to.
“The ferocity of the criticism directed at the Pope and the state nature of the visit – a lot of it deeply irrational, and clumsy in its allegations – has kept us in demand; journalists have been looking for responses that are straightforward and human, and which reflect attitudes in the Catholic community.”
He’s a creepy protector of child abusers and should be arrested and jailed.
Expect papal meeting with UK sexual abuse victims — Patten
One regular but regularly unannounced feature of papal trips in recent years has been the private meeting with local Catholics who were sexually abused as youths by priests. Journalists only find out about them after they’ve taken place. Just such a meeting seems to be on the cards during Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain next week, but of course it does not appear in his official schedule. Chris Patten, the prime minister’s special representative for the papal visit, said as much on Monday in an interview with BBC television (quote at the end of the clip):
“On several previous visits, the pope has met victims of abuse. He has never said he was going to meet them before he did and his meetings have always, for very understandable reasons, been private. I would be surprised if in this visit or any future visit he behaved in any different way.”
When our London correspondent Avril Ormsby asked about any possible meeting with victims in an interview with him last week, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said: “It will not be announced beforehand, and it will take place in private, if that is going to be the case. But precisely because of those rules, it is not clear.”
I agree with the previous two comments. Meeting with a small group of hand-picked victims to pray and extend sympathy is a symbolic gesture which needs concrete action to back it up. The pope met with the US victims for a mere 1/2 hour. They have never had any follow-up contact with his staff. Let’s see the church leaders actually walk the walk, not just talk empty talk.
Malaysia TV station axes Muslim ad because of Christmas overtones
(Photo: Screengrab from TV3 commercial on YouTube)
A Malaysian television station has axed a commercial for an important Muslim holiday after viewers complained that it looked more like a promotion for Christmas. State-linked TV3 aired the commercial earlier this month to wish the country’s dominant ethnic Malay-Muslims a joyous Eid al-Fitr, which is likely to fall on Friday and marks the end of a month-long Ramadan fast.
The advert shows an avuncular white-haired man taking children to a fantasy land aboard a flying trishaw, drawing complaints from Muslim viewers that it resembled Santa Claus and his sleigh. TV3′s news anchors apologised on Sunday’s prime time news broadcast, saying the station had stopped airing the clip — which stirred a storm on the Malaysian blogosphere with numerous postings lambasting what was seen as an insenstive move by a government-linked company. TV3 officials could not be reached for comment.
Malaysia’s government has struggled to balance relations between Muslims, who make up a majority of the country’s 28 million people, and minority Hindus, Christians and Buddhists who complain of growing religious intolerance.
Here’s the commercial (in Malay):
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Maybe a flying carpet would have been more appropriate. The flower should have been our national red hibiscus!! But to me it seemed more like ET flying around using our local trishaw around our nation.
Take it in your stride TV3 – IT takes all kinds of people to make this nation great. Brave of you to appologise and move on.
Christian-themed TV shows spark complaints in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon
Television shows with Christian themes have sparked complaints in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon in recent days, but from different groups and for different reasons.
In Saudi Arabia, a popular sitcom has drawn the ire of conservative clerics over an episode portraying Arab Christians in a positive light after the kingdom sought to sell itself as a leader of dialogue between faiths.
A two-part episode of the sitcom “Tash Ma Tash,” which has aired during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan for 17 years, showed the two main Saudi characters, both Muslims, being advised by their dying father to visit the brother of their deceased Lebanese mother.
After a tearful reunion, the pair discover their mother’s relatives were Christians and their Uncle Boutros was a priest. Despite their initial shock, the brothers slowly come to respect their uncle’s Christianity, although they try to convert him to Islam and give him a Koran.
Some Saudi clerics were not impressed. “A Muslim is allowed to praise only the one true religion — Islam,” said Eissa al-Ghaith, a judge at the Justice Ministry, in remarks carried by al-Madina newspaper on Sunday.
In Lebanon, two Muslim channels, including Hezbollah’s al-Manar television, said on Friday they had stopped airing a series depicting the life of Jesus after complaints from Christians. Al-Manar and NBN television said they had selected the series to show during Ramadan, but had “decided to stop airing it … to prevent any attempt to use it in a negative way.”
German Catholics urge pope to speak out on sex scandals
German Catholic politicians and lay activists urged Pope Benedict on Monday to speak out about sexual abuse cases by priests that have shocked the country and led to questions about his management of the crisis. The calls came amid widespread criticism in the media that the Bavarian-born pontiff made no statement after getting a briefing on the scandals at the Vatican on Friday from the leader of the Church in Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch.
In Bavaria, a convicted abuser priest whose transfer to Munich in 1980 while Pope Benedict was archbishop there threatened to draw the pontiff into the scandal, was suspended from his post in a spa town, the Munich archdiocese announced.
“The Holy Father needs to say something about this,” Dirk Tänzler, head of the Federation of German Catholic Youth (BDKJ), told the Berliner Zeitung daily. “The Church needs to be more honest and stricter with itself, and that naturally includes the pope,” Wolfgang Thierse, a vice president of the German parliament and member of the Central Committee of Catholics, told ARD television.
A Vatican prelate, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, said Benedict would soon speak with “his clear and decisive voice, without hiding anything” in an expected letter on similar scandals in Ireland, but gave no date or hint if it would mention Germany. Fisichella, in an interview with the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, echoed Vatican attacks on the media for pursuing the scandals. “The rage against the pontiff is insane,” he said.
Stats on Catholic Church sex scandals are NEVER properly reported.
– There are hundreds of millions of Catholics. How many of them have been abused
– In the recent Irish Dublin scandal, the reported cover up addressed a period of 70 years and identified 170 cases of abuse. That is less than 3 cases per year. How many priests in that area per year? How many youthful male Catholics in that area per year. What percentages per year. If only 300,000 Catholics in Dublin per year (ha!), that is .0001 percent were abused. Ask Guinness what is its rate of statistical success for weeding out bad bottle of beer ? You will find that .0001 percent is impossibly close to perfection, and this stat is based on a likely underestimate of the Catholic population that is at risk, which when corrected will make the error even more minute. Ask then how many priests serving in Dublin area in any given year and again consider the 3 cases per year. If only 3,000 priests, then the rate of potentially abusive priests was 1/1000. When the Bishop is accused of “covering up” priestly abuse, ask whether there was ever a factual report of rape, battery, blood .. ignored by a Bishop? Is it a cover-up to refuse to play-to-the-news the allegations of potential victims? Certainly, sometimes it may be so. But then again consider the rate of potential abuse, and consider the rate of potentially wrongly reported abuse? Which should a Bishop do — leap to the support of a potential victim, or leap to pillorying a potential abuser? Neither of course. But after all is said and done, if an abuser is proven to be such, any delay by the Bishop is said to be “cover up.” And cover up of what?
== Doubtless there are sick priests, even malevolent priests, and some who are downright pains in the you-know-what. But how do you tell them apart, and who should do that .. the evening news or the priestly hierarchy .. and what are the limits on “forgiveness” for incidents of abuse that may have been but are decades old, from priests who have lived decades of self-effacing and useful lives since times when any abuse has even been alleged. But then consider, does a Bishop who “forgives” and does not publicize and eliminate an accused abuser, contribute to a “cover-up” if indeed the accusations do not persist .. from others ? And what are the statistics on independent allegations of repeat offenses in those 170 cases. Probably in all. But in how many cases were aberrant but truly repentant priests “saved” by Episcopal charity and enabled to lead useful and even holy lives thereafter? And lastly, for a number to use as a basis for comparison, estimate how many young men of 21 or so have, on some late night, “groped” (or worse) some young lady of under whatever is the local legal age of consent. Of this number, ask how many of these young ladies would allege years later that (a) they were traumatized, and (b) that the young man was a child abuser IF there was money to be had. Answer is “who knows?” But the answer must be known before anyone can begin to establish the magnitude of any sexual abuse crisis among Catholic Bishops.
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