Saudi clerics are raging and seething about the Turkish soap operas (dubbed into Arabic) that are becoming very popular in the religious apartheid kingdom, and they’re calling for people to be killed.

“If they continue airing depravity and shamelessness they should be banished from this place and others brought in their place,” senior Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Fozan said in comments published Sunday, referring to TV executives.

He suggested purveyors of horoscopes and “sorcery” should face the death penalty, and head of the Islamic sharia courts Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan said last week channel owners should be tried and face possible death for “indecency and vulgarity.”

Arab TV producers aren’t laughing.

They’re not laughing because they know these aren’t idle threats. But there’s an interesting note of hope in this story:

One TV official who did not want to be named said religious conservatives could not push back the tide in Arab entertainment television, which already pays attention to social and religious mores. “You can’t put the consumer back in the box,” he said.

Statistics compiled for MBC indicate that one episode of Turkish soap “Noor” reached an audience of 85 million, half of whom were women, in early August. There are around 300 million Arabic-speakers throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Long live the idiot box!