Discounts on Hotels, Computers, Travel,
Real Estate, Movies, Air Fares, Health, Music,
Vitamins, Jewelry, DVDs, Books and more
007 Online Shopping Link Here

Controversy over Arab 'Marriage' TV Show

A Glimpse into the Arab mind - compare it to the culture in the U.S. and you will understand their fear of liberalism

DUBAI  - The first Arab reality TV show ended after three months of controversy over its format - parading women before suitors in a luxury apartment for 24 hours a day.

Critics damned the ground-breaking dating show Al Hawa Sawa (On Air Together) as too liberal, but fans writing on Internet diary sites said it supported traditional values of limited contact before marriage.

Suitors could view the girls 24 hours a day and contact them before a possible meeting in the flat to propose marriage. In a region of 280 million Arabic speakers, such shows have huge potential audiences and provoke much public debate.

The show ended just as Arab television channel MBC said it was temporarily pulling the plug on its version of the hit reality show Big Brother after charges of "indecency" and protests in the conservative Gulf state of Bahrain where it was produced. Big Brother is to be relaunched from another location.

Big Brother showed six men and six women living in the same villa, flouting traditional values in Arab societies that require the segregation of unmarried men and women.

Viewers of Al Hawa Sawa suspected that three of the eight girls from around the Arab world taking part in the show were secretly smoking, flouting a ban on cigarettes and alcohol in the luxury Beirut apartment they moved into in December.

"Hey - they are human. We all have our demons," one online diarist who gave his name as H. Qureshi said. "It's not a shocking thing for me. I feel sorry and sad for these ladies. They are living a hypocritical lifestyle."

The show ended when one of the last two contestants dropped a bombshell on-air, saying she refused to get married. She then locked herself in a bedroom until she was flown back to her native Algeria.

"Believe me, I do not want to get married. Please, please - I'm not feeling right. They will know the reason in the media when I get out - I'm going to talk," emotional 21-year-old Aicha Gerbas told the camera minutes before the finale.

Gerbas had earlier agreed to marry Hossam, an Egyptian who was sitting in the living-room next door to the "truth room" where Gerbas shocked viewers with her sudden change of heart.

INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

"This is completely inappropriate behavior," the show's "voice" responded. The Arab channel MBC, which ran the show, declined to comment on the incident. "Aicha has made fools of you all!" one viewer gloated in a text message that trawled across the bottom of the screen.

The show saw another hiccup earlier in the week when Lebanese authorities unexpectedly turned back the suitor Hossam at Beirut airport, refusing to grant him a tourist visa.

"One wonders why the production company doesn't stop the show with all the problems it's facing," the Lebanese paper Assafir wrote recently after some contestants who had left complained of boredom and jealousy.

Minutes after Gerbas's bombshell, the viewers' vote chose Mervat Fo'ani from Lebanon as the "Bride of On Air Together," sending her with her chosen suitor on a honeymoon to Malaysia, where conservative Islamic values are also strong.

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut)

To Warriors For Truth News Main Page
Back to Liberals Aid Terrorists - Why Muslims Hate Liberals

WARRIORS FOR TRUTH FOR CONSERVATIVE NEWS INDEPENDENT RESEARCH EXCLUSIVE ARTICLES