A ‘strange dance’: media mogul Saad Mohseni on making TV under the Taliban

Daniel Boffey - TheGuardian - 21/04
Once dubbed the ‘Afghan Rupert Murdoch’, Saad Mohseni’s media business was founded after the fall of the Taliban and is now navigating their return

Saad Mohseni wants more female faces on his Afghan TV channel. He hopes he might get a deal with the Taliban for him to air a historical drama – in which all the women have been through the menopause.

“If a woman menstruates, [the showing of an uncovered female face] is haram [forbidden], right?” Mohseni said. “But as soon as they go through, you know, menopause, then you can have them uncovered. It’s ridiculous, it’s so offensive. So now we try to negotiate with [the Taliban] to do a soap opera that’s going to have these women over the age of 50. We have to try.”

Mohseni, 58, described as Afghanistan’s first media mogul or the ‘Afghan Rupert Murdoch’ is the chief executive of Moby Group.

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Founded by Mohseni and his siblings – Afghan emigres who returned to their childhood home from Australia after the removal of the Taliban in 2001 – Moby was the country’s largest media conglomerate until the Taliban re...
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