An Islamic reality TV show that made its contestants counsel promiscuous teenagers and bury corpses has named a 26-year-old mosque prayer leader as Malaysia’s top role model for young Muslims.
Producers voiced hopes yesterday of launching similar versions of Imam Muda, or Young Leader, in other Muslim-majority countries after the Malaysian show’s first season became the most-watched program to ever air on pay-television network Astro’s Islamic channel.
Muhammad Asyraf Ridzuan beat a 27-year-old Islamic schoolteacher who studied at Egypt’s al-Azhar University to win the competition late on Friday in an event broadcast nationwide from an auditorium packed with spectators who secured highly coveted tickets. It was the culmination of a 10-episode run to find a young man whose religious devotion could inspire other Malaysian Muslims of his generation.
PHOTO: AFP
The boyish-looking Muhammad Asyraf’s victory earned him prizes from a new job as prayer leader at a prestigious Kuala Lumpur mosque and an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Mecca — with the secular, including a car, iPhone, laptop and 20,000 ringgit (US$6,400) in cash.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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