KHARTOUM – The controversy in Sudan over "Wad Al-Mak", which airs in Ramadan on two local channels and is also available on YouTube, has grown and discusses a range of unspoken social issues as well as political issues.
The character of the cleric "Al-Rifai" is the main focus of intensive criticism campaigns on social media, which reached the point of demanding the suspension of the series, and a reporting campaign was launched on the page of the series' producer, which broadcasts the episodes, in preparation for its closure.
Critics believe that the series paints a nefarious picture of the imam of a mosque, and did not spare "Wad Al-Mak" from the criticism of specialists and viewers, but in return won wide praise on the platforms themselves because it addressed with unprecedented boldness to corruption issues and worked to expose the sanctity unjustly imposed on the religious guide or the imam of the mosque as a situation that exists and watches reality, but it does not include all, of course.
Actor Salah Ahmed embodies the character of the cleric "Sheikh Al-Rifai", who deliberately defames his neighbors when he ascends the pit of the sermon, and is characterized by extreme stinginess, in addition to being corrupt and accepts bribes, and does not hesitate to beat his family and deals very nervously.
High acceptance rate
And rejects Salah Ahmed, who embodied the character of "Rifai" controversial accusations of abuse of clerics, and confirms to Al Jazeera Net that the work talks about corruption in society in general through the embodiment of different characters, and provides different models, including the figure of a corrupt cleric, begging religion for worldly purposes.
Salah confirms that the series received an acceptance rate of more than 98%, and the number of views of the first six episodes exceeded 10 million views, which reflects the wide resonance achieved by this work by touching a reality that the majority of people live and are also aware of the sincerity of the embodiment of the different characters in it.
He goes on to say, "The cleric is no exception to the corruption of the rest of society, which includes the good and the bad, as the personality of the corrupt imam of the mosque exists with many evidence and evidence, which Wad al-Mak only did to reflect it in a dramatic form that people in Sudan are not used to."
"We did not target clerics or clerics in the series, and if critics of the rest of the episodes are patient, they can see the treatments raised for many issues in this work," he said.
Salah Ahmed confirms that most of the opinions rejecting and inciting against the series are impressionistic, the owners did not bother to follow the episodes that include within them a rejection of the behavior of Sheikh Al-Rifai, and reflect the lack of acceptance of the people of his actions.
On the other hand, scriptwriter Youssef Amara Abu Sen believes that the character of Al-Rifai in the series represents "a painful blow to any moral postulates in the fragile Sudanese society, weak cultural immunity, and easy to lead."
Abu Sen says – Al Jazeera Net – that the author of the text aimed to kill the positive image of the conservative cleric and Muslim committed to presenting it in the box of misguidance and lover of women and miser and lurking for the conditions of people.
He believes that the actor Salah Ahmed "was able to embody the character in a very good way, but the problem is not in the performance, but in the construction of the character itself and the absence of logic in the events and the miserable crowd of bad and personal defects since the beginning of the series, so the writer did not leave a blame but included in the list of disadvantages of Sheikh Al-Rifai without gradation or dramatic escalation in the discovery of those negative aspects, which suggests that the writer writes the events of the series during filming or through thoughts without planning or rational construction of events and people."
Early anger
In turn, Haitham Al-Amin, author and director of "Wad Al-Mak" believes that the campaign against the series is intensifying without knowing the threads of the series and its paths, and says to Al Jazeera Net that he expected to provoke reactions to address issues in the rule of the unspoken, but he did not expect it to be so fierce.
He stresses that the goal was not in any way to offend Islam or the clergy, but to shed light on issues that are not knocked and cause serious damage to society, as the series deals - as Al-Amin says - part of the bad faces of different society, as well as knocking on the political door by exposure to the secession of South Sudan.
The author talks about the fact that the character of Al-Rifai in the series presents the image of the prodigal man who exploits religion and the patient behaviorally, and in contrast to him, the character of Sheikh Hassan, who is religiously committed, emerges so that "Rifai" is just a situation that already exists in society.
Al-Amin believes that the arrows directed against the series aim to stop its broadcast, although he has not yet begun to present the main idea of presenting two points of view, by explaining the reasons that will push Bod Al-Mak to rebel and take up arms against the state.