“Sadly, most of the few women scholars in the Kingdom refuse to go on TV,” said Mohammad Sallam of Iqraa channel on Sunday. “We are willing to train any capable woman that would like to appear on air.”

Sallam was speaking at Iqraa’s seventh annual Ramadan Press Conference at Park Hayat. Among the 25 programs aired by the channel, only one is presented by a woman scholar.

Iqraa is a religious channel owned by Saudi businessman Saleh Kamel who is competing with 60 other similar channels in the region.

Only four of these channels target English speakers. Iqraa already has a few programs either dubbed or subtitled in English and plans to open seven channels in other languages including English, French and Urdu. Iqraa appears to have started welcoming women reporters at its events, which marks a change of direction from the past. At the conference, there were eight seats for women and a partition that only partially concealed them.

Iqraa has also chosen some surprising names for its Ramadan programs, such as “The Wrestler,” “School of Love” and “An Invitation to Happiness,” although Sallam claims the content is only about religion. He says the aim is to attract younger viewers.

Saudi scholar Sheikh Mohammed Al-Areefi has produced a new program called “The End of the World.” He had announced in April on Iqraa that he wanted to shoot a program in Jerusalem, a claim later denied by the channel.

The program is expected to face attacks from critics who are likely to say that Dawa should not revolve around fear, although Sallam said it would not be “a scary program.”

Iqraa has labeled a number of its programs as “exclusive” even though some of its presenters appear on rival channels. Sallam said that they would never use the word again.
 
Iqraa is promoting two new religious scholars on its programs, a Jordanian and a Saudi.

They have also managed to sign contracts with well-known scholars in the region including Egyptian scholar and head of the International Muslim Scholar League Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qardawi as well as Egyptian Mufti and head of Al-Azhar Islamic School Sheikh Ali Al-Jum’ah. However, the majority of scholars appearing on the channel are Saudis.