Abstract. Religion and media are converging and frequently becoming a subject matter for news content and popular entertainment programmes in television and film, publishing, music as well as the new media. Religion, arguably has become part and parcel of the media environment today. In Malaysian context, during the millennium era, many locally produced 'Islamic programmes' started to gain popularity among Malaysian audience especially within the entertainment genre such as television drama. With the establishment of Malaysian first Islamic free-to-air television, TV Al Hijrah in 2010, this paper aims to understand the nature of Islamic content available on the station. The preliminary findings of this paper suggest that there are varieties of television programmes created and aired on TV Al Hijrah cutting across different genres meant for disseminating Islam as a way of life. Programmes available are mainly about showcasing the values of Islamic teaching and beliefs with the ultimate goal to highlight Islam as a beautiful and peaceful religion.

Health and beauty have been proposed as mutually inclusive physical and psychological constructs, mediated by one's own personal emotional and spiritual state of well-being. While it has been widely accepted that health and beauty are interrelated in the sense that beauty reflects one's inner health, there has been a worrying trend in which health is exploited in peddling beauty products and vice versa. In understanding how health has been commoditized in the beauty market, this study examines the manner health in the name of beauty, have been constructed in propagating beauty ideals and hegemonic values in a popular daily television program in Malaysia, Wanita Hari Ini (WHI). The findings concluded that within the prevalent capitalist hegemony, health had been turned into an apparatus in selling beauty. For the product owners, it is not about promoting health in gaining beauty, but rather about capitalizing on health because it can sell beauty.