The Porn Bomb Is Exploding

Papertiger who has been a frequent commenter here left a comment at Classical Values that I found rather interesting. In that comment he left a link to an article on Internet Porn in the Muslim world.

Called fuhsha in Arabic, pornography is considered haram, or illegal, according to most interpretations of Islam, because it publically exposes a person’s awrah, the Arabic word for the zones forbidden from public eye. The debate over pornography, masturbation, and the line between the erotic and the pornographic is a serious one in the Muslim community. Muslims today are negotiating these issues much like the West started doing decades ago.

In fact, the porn found in the bin Laden compound was probably not even much of a surprise to the American forces who discovered it. Porn is frequently found by military teams who engage in “sensitive site exploitation” in raids on militant hideouts and safe houses, according to current and former U.S. military officials. All such finds are evaluated for use “in an information operation (IO) campaign to mold public opinion.”

Hours after the news of the porn stash, Christine Fair, a Georgetown University terrorism expert, wrote on her Facebook page, “Of course they found porn! Every damned jihadi loves porn.” Indeed, the “USG,” or U.S. government has become so accustomed to finding porn, she said, it has “media analysts” designated to analyze the porn looking for “messages.” They work on “document exploitation.

"The USG has recovered terabytes of the stuff from terrorist computers," Fair wrote, noting that "kiddie porn" is included in the mix. Current and former U.S. officials have acknowledged that porn featuring sex with animals also gets picked up regularly. Fair said the U.S. government has had to hire counselors to minimize the trauma to the many young twentysomething analysts poring over the porn.

That sounds like some really ugly stuff and a very no fun job. But there is some good coming out of all this.

“Interestingly and ironically,” says Safi, “some of the Muslim societies that are the most repressive toward women or that have the strictest gender segregations also have some of the highest rates of pornography usage in the world. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt rank as among the highest consumers of pornography worldwide. I think what is true of bin Laden, the Taliban, and many of these extremist movements is that there seems to be a link between the dehumanizing of women and the dehumanizing of the entire block of humanity, Muslims and non-Muslims included.”

Our Muslim communities are engaged in a cultural struggle, both spiritual and sexual, that can be illustrated by a paper titled “The Erotic and the Pornographic in Arab Culture.” Written by an Islamic scholar in Khartoum, Sudan, named Adil Mustafa Ahmad, the paper argues that the “erotic,” as “lofty, spiritual, high-minded” pursuits, “has always been accepted and admired by the Arab in literature," and says, “There is no reason why, with the gradual ongoing liberation of the Arab mind from past taboos, it should not enjoy a similar position in the visual arts.”

My thesis, propounded in a couple of articles I wrote in 2007

Defeated By Pornography

Jewish Porn Sweeps The Arab World

is that pornography would eventually destroy Muslim culture as we know it. I also said that for the West, what ever difficulties porn causes have already been dealt with. For the Muslim world the difficulties are just starting.

Early in the war I proposed flooding the Middle East with porn to liquify their culture. I thought it might be worthwhile for the government to do the job. What we have in actuality is much better. They are paying for it. Heh.

Cross Posted at Classical Values