Afghan TV station pulls 'un-Islamic' Indian soap
Last Updated: Sunday, April 20, 2008 | 2:33 PM ET
CBC News
An Afghan television station has pulled an Indian soap opera from the airwaves on the orders of the government.
Kumkum had already raised the ire of conservative clerics in the country, who had called it "un-Islamic."
"Under pressure from the Ministry of Information and Culture, we had to stop running one of our famous shows, an Indian drama," Abdul Qadir Mirzai, chief news editor for leading private station, Ariana, said Sunday.
"It was a famous drama and had lots of fans," said Mirzai about the show, which centres on the love story of an Indian Hindu couple. It aired most evenings.
Kumkum is the first victim of a government edict which had given stations until Tuesday to stop airing several programs it had deemed inappropriate because they undermined Afghan culture.
The culture ministry, headed by conservative Abdul Karim Khurram, has called upon TV stations to yank soap serials Tulsi and Kasauti Zindagi Kay.
Tulsi chronicles the life of a Hindu housewife hated by her mother-in-law. In 2006, it became the first soap opera to be aired after the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. During Taliban rule, television was banned as "un-Islamic."
Heads of Afghanistan's broadcast media met with the Afghanistan National Journalists Union Saturday to find a solution to the bans.
They called for a meeting with President Hamid Karzai and religious leaders to find a way to allow the shows to air, offering to "edit out culturally and religiously sensitive scenes."
