A Kuwaiti Islamist lawmaker yesterday urged authorities to ban a team from Lebanese reality TV show "Star Academy" from recruiting young Kuwaitis, saying the program destroys morals.
"The recruitment of youth for a program that destroys morals and fights our (Islamic) values is no less bad and dangerous than recruiting them for terrorism or for peddling drugs," MP Waleed Al-Tabtabae said in a statement.
Tabtabae pointed out that a team from the TV show staff had arrived in Kuwait and set a center at the Holiday Inn Hotel to interview young men and women from Kuwait to select new participants for the coming cycle of the talent probing program.
Tabtabae, who adheres to the rigorous Salafi current of Islam, said Star Academy "imports Western values that are rejected by our society, and is based on mixing members of the two sexes to teach them Western habits and practices that they want to spread among our youth."
He warned Information Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Sabah that he would hold him politically accountable if he does not stop the team from operating in Kuwait.
The mere admittance of this team in Kuwait means breaking an earlier promise given by the government not to allow them in, as a bid to preserve the Kuwaiti society principles, values and traditions," stressed Al-Tabtabae urging the information minister to stop the team and hold whoever licensed them to practice socially and traditional rejected activities in Kuwait.
Further, Tabtabae added that it was not acceptable that the Ministry of Information denies licensing the program's activities in Kuwait as well as denies any knowledge of it. "The ministry licensed the program producers; the LBC Satellite TV channel to establish tier office in Kuwait and it can cancel that license as a penalty for practicing public media activities without prior permission from the ministry," he said.
The Arab version of Star Academy is produced in Lebanon. Male and female contestants live in a boarding-school called The Academy, which is managed by a director, and are coached in various artistic disciplines and filmed day and night. Once a week, they participate in the equivalent of a prime time show, singing a song they prepared during the week before, as well as recapping their trials and tribulations from the past week.
Based on verdicts from judges and viewer voting, the weakest contestant is dropped while the eventual winner is awarded a record deal and usually some money. A number of Kuwaitis have taken part in the program since its inception about four years ago. It caused an uproar in Kuwait in 2004 when young stars of the program staged a concert in the conservative Gulf state.
Kuwait remains a religiously conservative country, where alcohol and discotheques are banned. Radical Islamists and tribal conservatives made strong gains in May 17 general elections.
-- Kuwait Times
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