Post date: 31-Aug-2010 13:17:58
I have received a number of requests and comments asking my opinion on the number of Shi’a inspired TV stations being broadcast from the UK at present. As a religious scholar I don’t think it’s appropriate to choose between the stations or to pressure people about how they should legitimately spend or don’t spend their own money to support one or more of these TV stations. In some areas of spending I have to speak,
9.122 Nor should the Believers all go forth together: if a contingent from every expedition remained behind, they could devote themselves to studies in religion, and admonish the people when they return to them,- that thus they (may learn) to guard themselves (against evil).
Since some Muslims must study it is a duty to provide for them and their studies and it becomes my duty to insist that money is spent on these projects and it is the same with zakat and khums. There is a duty to remind people to do their duty.
Television stations have to be seen as businesses serving a world market. While they may be based in the UK their benefit has to be balanced against the number of viewers they reach around the world. In the UK there are five terrestrial TV broadcasters each with several channels and a host of cable and satellite stations. Their investors seem happy to continue investing. Perhaps we should be asking if we need more channels and how these channels can be more effective, better managed and more profitable rather than running away from the hard questions they pose.
What should decide if our religious channels are to survive are market forces. Put simply, if their programming is so poor, amateurish and boring that only the most pious amongst the community have the sabr to watch them the channels are failures. If no non-Muslim or ‘nominal’ Muslim can find a programme that interest’s them and they want to watch, the channels are purposeless. If no viewer knows when or if a programme will be broadcast they will not wait around or come back. In these cases any TV channel is a business failure, a waste of time and a waste of money. It's not the ammount of money that matters but getting value for money does.
Islamic scholars do have a right and a duty to speak against bad business, futility and wasting money!
6.141 It is He Who produces gardens, with trellises and without, and dates, and tilth with produce of all kinds, and olives and pomegranates, similar (in kind) and different (in variety): eat of their fruit in their season, but render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered. But waste not by excess: for Allah does not love the wasters.