The United States is, by far, the world’s largest producer of online pornography, accounting for nearly 25% of all such material. Rounding out the list of the top five porn-producing countries are the United Kingdom (5.5%), Germany (4.9%), Brazil (4.8%) and France (4%). Of the top 15, a dozen are western countries, the three outliers being Japan (3.8%), India (3.2%) and Turkey (1.8%). In total, more than 60% of all online pornography features western performers.
One might think that, given the western provenance of most of this material, it is also being consumed by a predominantly western audience. This, however, is not the case. Some of the world’s top consumers of online pornographic material are, in fact, to be found in Muslim countries. According to Google – by far the most popular search engine used by consumers of online pornography (83.5%) – Pakistan tops the list of countries whose citizens perform pornography-related searches. Of the top 8 such countries, 6 of them are predominantly Muslim states, including Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. While many of these countries have strict laws prohibiting the production and consumption of pornographic material, the advent of the smartphone has made controlling porn-related internet traffic virtually impossible – something an increasing number of Muslim men regularly exploit.
Muslims in Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates also search for beastiality porn more than any other demographic worldwide, with particular interest in donkeys, dogs, horses, cows, goats, snakes, monkeys, elephants and – yes – bears. The deeper one digs into the Google data, the worse it gets: the search term “child porn” is the second most popular porn-related search in Turkey, being topped only by Pakistan, which leads the world in searching for the terms “children sex”, “sexy child”, “sexy children” and, unsurprisingly, “rape”. Other disturbing terms searched in connection with porn include “father daughter” and “bother sister” – ranked numbers 4 and 5 in Syria; “mom” appears in Egypt’s top 10 porn-related search terms. Equally revealing is the finding that the second most common language used to search for homosexual pornography is Arabic, with the terms “gay man”, “gay sex”, “gay girl” and “homo sex” topping the list. In fact, “homo sex” is the top porn-related search term in Indonesia, home to more than 200 million Muslims.
Obviously, pornography is a universal problem. In fairness, depraved Muslims would not be consuming so much pornographic material if depraved westerners were not producing so much of it. Like the Arab sayf ḏū ḥadayn, however, that argument cuts both ways: if Muslim men were not so ready to click links to pornographic sites, increasing their revenue, there would be less such material produced in the West. The simple truth is that no modern culture or society can claim to be spotless when it comes to the scourge of pornography. Some are producers, some are consumers, most want nothing to do with it, but everyone is affected by it in one way or another.
This problem would perhaps remain a largely moral one were it not for the fact that Europe is currently being flooded by men of predominantly Muslim background whose only knowledge of western women is what they have learned by watching internet porn. Khaled Diab of The Guardian reports that porn is largely responsible for the mischaracterization, common among Arab Muslims, of western women as “oversexed, promiscuous and having revolving doors in their knickers.” He states:
“In fact, many Arab men, particularly those with little contact with the West, have this fantasy of western women that comes straight out of Playboy magazine or the grainy images of pirate pornos.”
He quotes an Arab friend as saying:
“A typical Egyptian male is a firm believer that any western woman is an easy catch and would not mind at all having sex with complete strangers.”
Not wanting to single out Egyptians, Diab reveals that similar views are held all over the Arab Muslim world. One Portuguese colleague told him:
“From my personal experience, the worst Arab men I found were the ones from Saudi Arabia. They think that all foreign women are prostitutes and they try to treat them like that.”
Given that this is the mentality of some – and perhaps many – of the Muslim men currently entering Europe in droves, incidents like the one which took place in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve 2015 – where more than 1,000 women were sexually assaulted and/or harassed by groups of immigrants of African and Arab descent – should surprise no one. While shocking in its extent, the incident is by no means isolated. Wherever Muslim immigration has increased, reports of sexual assault and rape have increased dramatically. Sweden, for example, which has prided itself since the 1970’s on having one of the most immigrant-friendly policies in Europe, is now widely acknowledged to be the rape capital of the West. The Muslim child sexual exploitation rings in Great Britain, in which well over 1,000 young, predominantly western girls were abused as sex slaves by groups of Muslim, predominantly Pakistani men, is but another shocking example of the same phenomenon.
What is perhaps most troubling, however, is the reaction of western political and cultural elites to this growing problem. Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker responded to the New Year’s incident by suggesting that the victims were at least partially to blame for what happened, going so far as to call for guidelines on how western women must change their behavior if they are to avoid such treatment in the future. Professor of Anthropology Dr. Unni Wikan suggested that the sharp increase in cases of rape in her native Sweden was largely due to the provocative manner in which Swedish women dress themselves, saying “Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes,” and “realise that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.” To the shame of Great Britain, it has been widely acknowledged that investigators regularly ignored reports made by the victims of the Rotherham child prostitution ring because they worried about the possibility of appearing racist and/or xenophobic toward Pakistani Muslims.
In the rare event of a public figure venturing forward to acknowledge some modicum of responsibility, that acknowledgement invariably takes the form of a collective mea culpa on the part of the West. It is our general failure to be “welcoming” and “open to the other” which is at root of the cultural conflicts currently threatening to tear Europe apart. Even prominent men in the Church have taken up the cause of limitless Muslim immigration, using the humanitarian good will of the European peoples against themselves as the means of their own cultural demise. As German Cardinal Rainer Woelki said while celebrating Mass over a carefully staged seven-meter-long refugee boat perched on the steps of the Cologne Cathedral – mere meters aways from where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted by Muslim immigrants only a few months prior: “Someone who lets people drown in the Mediterranean also drowns God.” Obviously, the Germans have lost nothing of their skill in crafting powerful slogans meant to browbeat the populace into submission.
In a way unforeseen by any of the members of the global financial and political elite, however, the peoples of Europe have begun to push back. One very powerful signal in this regard was the recent vote by 52% of the British electorate to leave the European Union – largely over the issues of border control and immigration policy. Financial independence and national sovereignty, while grand ideals, leave the common man largely untouched. It is when he recognizes an imminent threat to his wife and children that he is compelled to act. The tired self-accusatory excuses of the western liberal left are no longer effective in pacifying the populace in the face of an invading culture of sexual assault and rape.
Blame is to be placed – first and foremost – on the Muslim religion itself. While pornography is a significant contributing factor today, Muslim views of western women as sex objects are a tradition which can be traced back to that paragon of Muslim orthodoxy, the Prophet Mohammed, himself. Nadia Maria el-Cheikh, in the work Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, relates a story in which Mohammed used the “white-complexioned blondes, with straight hair and blue eyes” of Byzantium to tempt a new convert to help him wage jihad against the capital of the Eastern Empire, asking him, “Would you like the girls of Banu al-Asfar?” – the Arabic term used to refer to the “unbelieving Caucasians” of Byzantium and Rome. To another potential jihadi, he posed the question, “O Abu Wahb, would you not like to have scores of Byzantine women and men as concubines and servants?” to which Wahb responded:
“O Messenger of Allah, if I see the women of the Byzantines, I fear I will not be able to hold back. So do not tempt me with them.”
El-Cheikh explains that the hope of capturing Byzantine women – who became Islam’s version of the femme fatale – as sex slaves is a theme running through early Arabic literature:
“Our sources show not Byzantine women but [Muslim] writers’ images of these women, who served as symbols of the eternal female – constantly a potential threat, particularly due to blatant exaggerations of their sexual promiscuity.”
Examples of this include descriptions of European women as “the most shameless in the whole world”, “finding sex more enjoyable”, and “prone to adultery.” To a mind religiously and culturally disposed to viewing western women as “willing whores”, therefore, the flood of western pornography which has inundated the world over the last 50 years has only solidified that view into an absolute conviction.
Does this in any way excuse the individual Muslim who commits such acts? Absolutely not. But it does help to explain why so many Muslim men view western women as fair game for sexual conquest: they learned it from their Prophet.
Blame must also, of course, be placed squarely upon the shoulders of the ideological leaders of the libertine sexual revolution – especially those who mainstreamed pornography under the cover of “freedom of (artistic) expression”, such as Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione. Prior to the publication of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, pornography was cheaply produced and difficult to obtain. By the end of their careers, it had been transformed it into a multi-million dollar, high-glamor industry with product placement in nearly every convenience store and newspaper stand around the world. But, for all their moral depravity, these were ultimately businessmen who viewed pornography as a lucrative commodity to be bought and sold like any other. The truly ugly defenders of sexual immodesty are the so-called “sex-positive” feminists who promote the notion that pornography is “empowering” to women.
Wendy McElroy, a self-described “individualist anarcho-feminist”, argues that pornography “benefits women, both personally and politically.” In regards to the personal “benefits,” she writes:
“Pornography strips away the emotional confusion that so often surrounds real world sex. Pornography allows women to enjoy scenes and situations that would be anathema to them in real life. Take, for example, one of the most common fantasies reported by women: the fantasy of ‘being taken’, of being raped. The first thing to understand is that a rape fantasy does not represent a desire for the real thing. It is a fantasy. The woman is in control of the smallest detail of every act. Why would a healthy woman daydream about being raped? There are dozens of reasons. Perhaps by losing control, she also sheds all sense of responsibility for and guilt over sex. Perhaps it is the exact opposite of the polite, gentle sex she has now. Perhaps it is flattering to imagine a particular man being so overwhelmed by her that he must have her. Perhaps she is curious. Perhaps she has some masochistic feelings that are vented through the fantasy. Is it better to bottle them up?”
So, rather than dispelling the Muslim myth of the western willing whore, McElroy doubles down: they actually fantasize about being raped.
Joining the “sex-positive” ranks of McElroy are some big names in feminism: novelist and poet Kathy Acker (née Lehmann), academic and social critic Camille Paglia, and Megan Andelloux, founder of the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, just to name a few. Ellen Willis, considered one of the pioneers of the “sex-positive” branch of feminism, argued that “the claim that ‘pornography is violence against women’ [is] code for the neo-Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it.”
Well-known activist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was raised a devout Muslim, recently released a short film asking the question, “Why don’t feminists fight for Muslim women?” Given the views of “sex-positive” feminists like McElroy and Willis, the answer should be obvious: not only do they not care about Muslim women; they don’t care about western women, either. If a woman is offended by the sexual advances of an immigrant, she’s actually suffering under the oppression of the patriarchy which turned her into a prude, and to portray her as the victim would be to perpetuate the image of the defenseless and sexually repressed female. Besides, she secretly fantasizes about being raped by him, anyway. So what’s the big deal?
Snark aside, the reason modern feminists largely refuse to stand up to Islam is because doing so would force them to acknowledge that they are not the oppressed suffragettes they regularly portray themselves to be. As blogger Janet Bloomfield notes:
“What radical Islam does is remind feminists that if patriarchy were a real thing in our culture, if misogyny were a real thing, if men hated women and wanted them chained in basements, we would be chained in basements. In actual fact, Western men are the most indulgent, permissive, tolerant men you will find anywhere on the planet, and in the face of real misogyny, whining feminists end up looking like petulant toddlers tossing expensive toys out of their designer prams complaining they are oppressed.”
Opposing actual Islamic aggression toward women – even western women – is simply bad for the feminist narrative. So it is quietly ignored – or, in the case of new wave radical feminism – excused. As old-school German feminist Alice Schwarzer recently remarked with an appreciable degree of consternation, “many of the so called ‘post-feminist’ Internet feminists who are for pornography and prostitution are in favor of the head scarf and even the burqa. They say this is all about the free choice of women.”
And thus feminism and Islam, which one could be forgiven for assuming should be mortal enemies, become bedfellows, aligned through their mutual hatred for the Christian West and their willingness to sacrifice the welfare of women and children to achieve their socio-political ends.
Despite the claims of Wendy McElroy, any normal person should have a hard time believing that there is anything close to a statistically significant number of women who secretly fantasize about being raped. While many “studies” were produced in the 70’s and 80’s which claimed to document precisely that, more recent analysis suggests that fantasies in which a woman is consensually overpowered by a desireable male are not and should not be referred to as “rape” fantasies at all, but are instead expressions of the natural relationship between the sexes, i.e. a woman’s healthy desire for an assertive and physically powerful male partner. When consent is removed from the scenario, the number of women who report erotic – as opposed to aversive – “rape fantasies” becomes negligible. And while one may speculate as to the underlying causes of this residual element, we can be sure of this: by willfully ignoring the threat that Islam and Muslim culture pose to women everywhere, feminists are doing everything right if their goal is to facilitate such a nightmarish fantasy becoming a reality. For an increasing number of European women, it already has.
