Riyadh - Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority slammed Turkish soap operas, now hugely popular in the Middle East, as being "evil" and "un-Islamic", a local newspaper reported Monday

The country's head of the Higher Council of Religious Scholars, Sheikh Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, told a seminar in Riyadh that it was not permitted to watch Turkish soap operas, according to the Saudi Gazette.

Warning Arab television channels that broadcast them, al-Sheikh said those channels would be perceived as waging a war on God and Islam if they helped to make those soaps more popular.

Those soap are "full of wickedness, evil and moral degradation," he said.

The Turkish soap opera "Noor" has become a hit across the Arab world.

In Saudi Arabia, between three million to four million viewers watch the soap every evening, according to figures issued by Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC).

The Saudi-owned, private entertainment satellite channel MBC started airing the show four months ago dubbed into the Syrian Arabic vernacular.

Unlike state-owned channels in the conservative kingdom, the relatively liberal channel screens Western films and shows slightly sanitized for conservative Arab audiences.

Other Saudi and Arab clerics have previously condemned "Noor" and popular Latin American and US soaps, which they perceive as immoral for their portrayal of secular societies' values, such as women's equal rights and unrestricted gender mixing. (dpa)