RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 19 - The three women wake to the sound of a burglar rummaging downstairs.
They summon the police, don their veils and flee into the street to wait, but when the officer arrives he refuses to investigate because there is no male present. "I swear by God I would love to serve you," the officer avows, retreating to his patrol car. "But we cannot enter if your male guardian is not here."
It was just one episode of what might be the most popular television series in Saudi Arabia, but it touched off both sustained outrage and peals of laughter across the kingdom.
The episode raised the hackles of religious conservatives for mocking the Islamic tenets and cultural traditions they believe Saudi Arabia must maintain at all costs. More liberal Saudis relished the subtle ridicule of the way such tenets jar with modern life.
"This show is a window that people can see us through, and we can show the world how we live," said Fowziyah Abukhalid, a sociologist at King Saud University. "Some of these issues used to be taboo, so to have someone talk about them and criticize them is very important."
That might be considered the view of the educated intelligentsia. The religious take an entirely different stance: "In the name of God, I prohibit acting in or watching such a series," reads one of the fatwas issued by theologians against the show.
Its creators, Nasser al-Qasabi and Abdullah al-Sadham, who got to know each other when studying to become agricultural engineers, have grown accustomed to setting off controversy in the 11 years they have been producing the show, "Tash Ma Tash." The name comes from a children's game and translates roughly as "You either get it or you don't." The two create just 20 episodes a year, all broadcast in prime time during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
But even the creators were taken aback by the uproar over the episode titled "Without a Mahram," or male guardian, which was the second to be shown this year.
The 30-minute episode was the subject of group discussions in schools and mosques. About 40 theologians organized a protest march against the Ministry of Information, demanding that the most prominent fatwa banning the show, issued by the government's own council of religious scholars, be carried out.
A few years ago it would have been unthinkable for anyone to challenge such an edict. The show would have died. This year, discussions in Internet chat rooms, which serve as a vivid barometer of public opinion in Saudi Arabia in the absence of free speech, raged back and forth between those damning the show and its loyal fans.
"If you read some of this stuff, you might get the impression that we made a sex film inside the Kaaba," said Mr. Qasabi, referring to the sacred shrine at Mecca. "It is only light social criticism, but the reaction makes it seem as if it was against God himself."
Aside from the entanglement with the police, the women in the episode run into all kinds of problems when the husband of one of them is sent to work in France for six months. They cannot enter a video store to rent "Cinderella" for a young daughter. When the bank card of one is eaten by an A.T.M., she cannot seek help in the bank because it is a branch for men. Ultimately, the women resort to borrowing the elementary school son of a neighbor or hauling along a deaf old grandfather just so they can eat in a restaurant.
"We suffer from this male guardian requirement just as much as the women," said Muhammad al-Wan, a Saudi short story writer, when asked if he liked the episode. "We are enslaved by the demands at home because a woman can't do anything without a man."
The show's writers find much to mock in Saudi Arabia. Episodes this season have poked fun at the servile ways people act around princes and then turn around and play the prince themselves at home, the harsh way Saudis treat imported laborers and the way guests on Arab satellite television shows scream at one other.
Mr. Qasabi said that in recent shows they had made a determined effort to focus on critical issues, the kind of political and social reforms that so many Saudis eagerly await and which he believes religious conservatives want to block. He is miffed that in the face of the current tirade, no liberal columnists have defended the show. He is unsure if they fear being attacked or consider the show too lowbrow to defend.
"Support for the development of all art in Saudi Arabia is sadly lacking," he said.
There are issues that the writers avoid. They started but stopped producing a segment that poked fun at the religious police, a highly influential group that serves as a kind of Islamic vice squad. Censors for the government network sometimes reject episodes. This year, they stopped one that mocked Saudi Arabia's glacial bureaucracy and another about how terrorists are spawned.
The humor ranges from broadly slapstick to rather subtle. Some viewers say that after 11 years there is not enough new material. To try to get around that, the developers have appealed to the public to send in story ideas via fax or e-mail. The "Without a Male Guardian" episode resulted from a viewer suggestion. . . .
It is a credit to the creators that it draws such a huge audience at home. Before the advent of satellite dishes, Saudi Arabia used to have just two channels, which were sometimes jokingly referred to as Forced 1 and Forced 2. Now only the truly devout sit through the hours of religious discussions that are the main fare.
When Saudi Arabia's rulers wanted to broadcast an interview this week with a sheik who recanted his previous approval for attacks on government forces and Westerners in the kingdom, they chose the time slot of "Tash Ma Tash," knowing they would pull the largest audience.
"The power of the show," said Suleiman Hattlan, an author and columnist, "is that it reaches everyone in society, unlike us intellectuals who just speak among ourselves." . . .
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/24/international/middleeast/24SAUD.html> *****
"Ramadan Times": <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/663/pr2.htm> -- Yoshie
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