After its January 2011 debut, critics hurled eggs at billboards advertising the program, protested outside the production company's office and filed more than 70,000 complaints with the Turkish government television agency. The show's producers shortened kissing scenes and toned down certain elements.

Today, Magnificent Century is the most popular program in Turkey and one of the most popular shows in the Middle East. Aired in 45 countries, it is the latest Turkish soap opera to take the region by storm. And according to Turkish academics, the programs are subtly changing cultural norms.

"Somehow, in those serials, you have a very balanced adjustment," said Aydin Ugur, a professor of sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University. "Women are modern, but they are not degenerate."

What may someday be known as the Islamic world's accidental cultural revolution began in 2006. A Saudi-owned, Arabic-language satellite television channel, MBC, bought the rights to a Turkish soap opera about a young woman named Gumus who marries into a wealthy family.

Dubbed into colloquial Arabic, censored of its raciest scenes and renamed Noor, the series was a phenomenal hit. Unlike Western soap operas, it focused on an extended family, a strong tradition in Turkey and the region. In 2008, the show's final episode drew an estimated 85 million viewers over the age of 15, according to MBC, including 50 million women, a figure that represents more than half the adult women in the Arab world.

Like Magnificent Century, the show violated conservative cultural norms. Some Muslim characters drank wine with dinner and engaged in premarital sex. In one case, a character had an abortion. The lead male character, Muhannad, was the show's handsome hero. A loving, attentive and loyal husband, he supported his wife's career as a fashion designer and treated her as an equal. Their successful marriage -- which combined traditional loyalty and modern independence -- was both popular among women and groundbreaking. Some Arabic-language newspapers reported that arguments and even divorces occurred in several countries as a result.

In Saudi Arabia, conservative Islamic clerics issued Limbaugh-like denunciations. They declared the show "wicked and evil" and a "secular Turkish assault on Saudi society." They issued fatwas against watching it and forbade people from praying in T-shirts that depicted the show's two stars. The head of a Saudi religious council said the owner of MBC should be tried and potentially executed for airing indecent material.

Since then, Turkish soap operas have grown even more popular and received glowing coverage from Arab and Western journalists. Beyond breaking cultural taboos, the shows display something else: Turkey's rapid economic growth. Today, the country boasts one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. In its soap operas, Turkey is modern, Muslim and prosperous at the same time.