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.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
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When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
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