The Catholic Information Center protested on Friday against the satirical show "Marhaba Dawle" because of an episode deemed offensive to religious values and considered that the series, which had already been the subject of a complaint from the state, "crosses an intolerable line by attacking the Christian faith, the person of Jesus Christ and the clergy."

"We categorically reject and condemn in the strongest terms this program and its participants who, through their statements, trample on moral values and disseminate offensive messages against monotheistic religions, through inappropriate insinuations and low-level expressions," said the religious center in a statement.

"Marhaba Dawle" is a weekly sitcom written and directed by Mohammad Dayekh, which "addresses, through the diaries of a group of security agents in an imaginary police station, the ambiguous relationship between the citizen and the state, in a social and comedic approach." This series has been controversial since its launch.

The controversial episode, aired Thursday on the LBCI channel, depicts Christian, Druze, and Muslim religious figures. In the sketch, two men strike a deal with an alleged "savior", hoping he would come to "save" a village presented as a place of perdition to purify. The plot revolves around the arrival of a missionary-messiah, supposedly sent by God himself to start his redemptive mission from this village. This character reproaches religious dignitaries in turn for not faithfully embodying the teachings of their respective faiths, accusing them of betraying the spirit of their faith. During this episode, a man who appears as an incarnation of the Messiah symbolically descends from the sky.

Attack against 'the Christian faith'

Reacting to this staging, the Catholic Center called on the competent Lebanese authorities to "intervene quickly with the responsible parties of the show and issue a firm warning", demanding "the immediate cessation of the broadcast of sequences containing defamation and disrespect, under penalty of appropriate legal prosecution against the production company." The text also accuses the show of attacking "directly and indirectly the Christian faith, the person of Jesus Christ and the clergy, under the pretext of a so-called comedy."

This is not the first time the show has been criticized. In January 2024, the Lebanese state filed a complaint against LBCI to protest the series, following an episode that mocked the Internal Security Forces. However, the complaint was rejected by the judiciary. A few months later, in April 2024, journalist Firas Hatoum, producer of the series, was released on bail after appearing before the FSI intelligence services following a summons related to the show.