'Subversive' Turkish TV series takes Arab world by storm

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

BEIRUT (AFP) — Despite being branded "subversive" and "anti-Islamic" by a top Saudi Muslim cleric, millions of viewers from Beirut to Algiers tune in up to three times a day to watch the Turkish-made soap opera, "Noor", dubbed into Arabic.

With his strawberry blond curls, blues eyes and engaging smile, Mohannad is setting the pulses of millions of Arab women racing in a television series critics claim is scandalising traditional Muslim values.

The series tells the story of Mohannad and his equally stunning wife Noor as they wrestle to reconcile the conflicting pressures of traditional and modern worlds.

"I love it because it is as glamorous as the foreign soap operas (American and Mexican) we sometimes watch," said Cairo resident Safaa Abdel Hadi, a...