Manama: A cleric in Saudi Arabia is being questioned by an ad-hoc committee over his outrageous attack on an actor.
The imam used his sermons during Friday prayers to harshly criticise Nasser Al Qasbi, one of Saudi Arabia’s best known actors, over his role in Selfie, a comedy broadcast by the Saudi-owned MBC television that started airing on the first day of Ramadan.
The show will be on television throughout the month and Al Qasbi plays characters who criticise negative behaviours and attitudes in the Saudi and Arab society.
However, Saeed Bin Farwa, an imam in the southern city of Aseer, used his sermon on Friday to attack Al Qasbi and to declare he was an apostate. He also used strongly offensive words against MBC for broadcasting the comedy, claiming that it was a vicious and contemptible onslaught on Islam and on Islamic values.
In the first episode, Al Qasbi played the character of a singer who, after losing his fame and wealth, decided to turn to religion and use it to recover his former celebrity status and social eminence.
Several people attacked the actor, saying that he was mocking religion and denigrating religious figures, but the most vicious public comments came from Bin Farwa.
“My Twitter account is loaded with insults and threats,” Al Qasbi said. “I tell everyone to cool down because we are still at the beginning of the month,” he said.
The ministry pledged to take action.
“A committee has been set up to look into the imam’s attack during the prayers, and the regulations will be strictly applied,” Abdullah Al Hakami, the spokesperson for the ministry in Aseer, said.
Religious scholars, commenting on the verbal attacks, said that using mosques to excommunicate Muslims and declare them apostates was not possible unless very strict conditions applied.
Attorney Yahya Al Shahrani said that excommunicating anyone was illegal and that victims could file legal suits.
“Targeting people’s private lives or slandering them could mean one year in jail or a SR500,000 fine,” he said, quoted by local daily Makkah. “Even if the person is saying the truth, he is liable to be jailed or fined because the legal texts are very clear about not allowing attacks on people’s characters,” he said.
In the second and third episodes of the show, Al Qasbi touched on the issue of terrorism and the Daesh terror group, triggering renewed threats, with some even calling to behead him.
Al Qasbi portrayed the character of a father who went to Syria via Turkey looking for his son who had joined the terrorists. He eventually met his son, Abdullah, who had changed his name to Abu Akrama, but as the father was thinking of a plan to take his son back to Saudi Arabia, he was forced to deceive the group by pretending that he wanted to be a radical himself.
In the third episode, the group became suspicious about the father and decided to test his resolve and commitment. The father, feeling he was getting drawn deeper into a trap, convinced his son about the need to escape and the two stole a car and drove away.
However, the son later told his father that the car was loaded with explosives and that they would blow it at the next check-point.
The father did his best to avoid carrying out the suicide attack, and the two survived the explosion after they jumped out of the car seconds before it blew up.
But in another twist, they were caught and the father was taken away to a site to be beheaded. Abdullah appeared without shackles, indicating that his belief in the terror group had not changed, and insisted he would carry out the sentence passed against his father.
