Islamic NGO in Senegal seeks to block immoral web series

Producers and actors of web series in Senegal have received a suspended sentence after being arrested and detained last month after Islamic groups complained the show violated morality and public decency.  

The public prosecutor had sought a harsher penalty for the people involved in the production of  “Cirque Noir”, which triggered strong controversy on social media after broadcasting a trailer with a naked woman and a scene suggesting sexual intercourse.

Religious organizations in Senegal, a country where 95% of the population is Muslim, filed a complaint for "broadcasting images contrary to good morals and public indecency". 

The action, which was spearheaded by the Islamic NGO Jamra, led to the arrest of two co-producers and four actors.

During a hearing on August 27 in the Dakar court for flagrant offences, the public prosecutor requested two years in prison for the producers and one year for the actors. 

The court handed down its verdict on September 3: two years suspended prison sentence for the co-producers and six months suspended prison sentence for the actors.

Jamra

The "Cirque Noir" case is not the first to pit the Islamic NGO Jamra against film productions. 

Jamra already filed a complaint against the production of the hit series "Mistress of a Married Man" in 2019, as well as against that of another series, "Infidels".

Mame Mactar Gueye, head of the NGO, said one of the objectives is to defend Senegalese social, cultural and moral values. 

"No producer has the right to trivialize verbal pornography or trample on our values under the pretext of fiction or freedom of expression," she argued.

But other Senegalese are concerned about the censorship imposed by this Islamic organization.

"Moreover, what justifies that a Muslim-inspired organization should take upon itself the right to impose its cinematographic policy on a secular state composed of Muslims, Christians, practitioners of traditional religions and atheists?" asked Hady Ba, a teacher and researcher in philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University. 

He pointed out in an August 20 post on his Facebook page that the repeated polemics brought by this NGO on films and people considered harmful paradoxically promote them because they make them known to a wider audience.

Censorship 

Senegalese journalist Hamadou Tidiane Sy agreed. He noted that in the digital age, censorship is not a solution and that the family is the best place to educate children and young people.

"The censorship of a Senegalese series offers no guarantee to parents who want to instill 'values' in their son or daughter," he emphasized.

"Other series, other films, other sources within reach (of the child), will offer highly 'obscene' content and the opposite of the 'values' that the censors want to defend," he added.