Transforming Islamic entertainment and values in Malaysian films

Abstract

Building a society with high moral and values is imperative in Islamic teachings. As media technologies have changed the ways of human communication and offered new platforms for media content, it provides many opportunities to produce Islamic entertainment programmes that suit with the nature of various medium. Producing Islamic media content could play a unifying role for representing Muslims’ diverse cultures as well as avoiding a negative picture of Islam. Ideally, Muslim culture is derived from the cultural and communication heritage. Islamic entertainment and values are rich in terms of virtues and can be transformed into various genres of media products including films. This article will examine the debate of the Islamic entertainment particularly by examining al-Ghazali’s views of al-sama’ (‘entertainment’) and subsequently contextualizing it to the Malaysian Islamic ambiences. Using narrative analysis, two popular melodramas (films) will be examined to manifest the process of transforming Islamic values into entertainment programmes. It is argued that the representation of values is considered essential in Islamic communication perspective. It encompasses social, religious and cultural foundations. Muslims must actively participate in producing media content so that it will strengthen both the form and content for communicating Islamic values across the world. Unity, brotherhood, equality, love and tolerance are part of the key formulas to ensure a better process of disseminating good connotations of Islam via media.