Pakistan Loves Animals, It Really Does

Our friend Ahsan at FiveRupees had once done a post on his blog about the curiously fanatical predilection of Pakistani internet surfers to surf the world of dark erotica, so to speak, more than any other country in the world. You know, not the usual hardcore porn that everyone else is surfing for around the globe, but porn of decidedly unusual tastes. We can confirm, from the kind of searches that have led readers to our blog, that there's a strange, strange world out there, and even stranger are some of the people who mistakenly land up at Cafe Pyala in search of their unusual fetishes. Think of your favourite Pakistani political celebrity and pair their name with the kinkiest of your fantasies and you'll be getting a sense of the kind of stuff we see all the time.

Now it seems the rest of the world has cottoned on to the decidedly bizarre thought processes of the Pakistani public. Here is what Fox News recently reported via the Associated Press:

No. 1 Nation in Sexy Web Searches? Call it Pornistan

By Kelli Morgan

Published July 13, 2010 | FoxNews.com

AP

Pakistan has banned content on more than a dozen websites because of offensive and blasphemous material. The Muslim country, which has laws on dress codes, ranks as the top country to proportionally search for certain sex-related terms.

This article was updated on July 14.

 

"They may call it the "Land of the Pure," but Pakistan turns out to be anything but.

 

The Muslim country, which has banned content on at least 17 websites to block offensive and blasphemous material, is the world's leader in online searches for pornographic material, FoxNews.com has learned.

 

“You won’t find strip clubs in Islamic countries. Most Islamic countries have certain dress codes,” said Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame. “It would be an irony if they haven’t shown the same vigilance to pornography.”

 

So here's the irony: Google ranks Pakistan No. 1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in the world in searches per person for certain sex-related content.

 

 

Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for "horse sex" since 2004, "donkey sex" since 2007, "rape pictures" between 2004 and 2009, "rape sex" since 2004, "child sex" between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, "animal sex" since 2004 and "dog sex" since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

 

The country also is tops -- or has been No. 1 -- in searches for "sex," "camel sex," "rape video," "child sex video" and some other searches that can't be printed here.

 

Google Trends generates data of popular search terms in geographic locations during specific time frames. Google Insights is a more advanced version that allows users to filter a search to geographic locations, time frames and the nature of a search, including web, images, products and news.

 

Pakistan ranked No. 1 in all the searches listed above on Google Trends, but on only some of them in Google Insights.

 

“We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered,” Google said in a statement, when asked about the accuracy of its reports.

 

The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.

 

In addition to banning content on 17 websites, including islamexposed.blogspot.com, Pakistan is monitoring seven other sites -- Google, Yahoo, Bing, YouTube, Amazon, MSN and Hotmail -- for anti-Islamic content, the Associated Press reported in June.

 

But it’s not to censor the Pakistani people, Reynolds said. It’s to shut out the rest of the world.

 

“[It] could lead to conversion, which would undermine the very order of the state,” he said. “Part of protecting the society is making sure that there is no way it could be undermined in terms of foreign influences.”

 

Pakistan temporarily banned Facebook in May when Muslim groups protested the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” page, where users were encouraged to upload pictures of the Prophet Muhammad. The page remained on Facebook, but Pakistani users were unable to view it, said Andrew Noyes, manager of Facebook’s Public Policy Communication.

 

And while Pakistan is taking measures to prevent blasphemous material from being viewed by its citizens, pornographic material is “certainly” contradictory to Islam, too, Reynolds said.

 

The country’s punishment for those charged with blasphemy is execution, but the question remains what -- if anything -- can be done about people who search for porn on the Web.

 

“It’s a new phenomenon,” Reynolds said."

I had once thought about doing a post about some of the searches that led people to Cafe Pyala but gave up the idea after I realized that it would probably lead to scandalizing decent people for no fault of theirs. All I can add to the report above is that Professor Reynolds is dead wrong about this being a "new phenomenon." Long ago, at the beginning of the net revolution in the country in the 1990s, Pakistani ISPs realized that were they to start filtering out sex sites (not that it would be possible in totality in any case) their traffic (and hence their revenues) would face a major downturn.

But why blame ISPs for the repressed fantasies of the common user? Pornography has been at the cutting edge of internet usage all over the world and continues to be the single biggest revenue earner in cyberspace. The only question that really is worth asking is why Pakistanis are so sexually repressed in their public life that their only outlet is on the net? And yeah, what is up with that bestial shit?

Porn To Be Wild

"It’s late at night and the room is dimly lit. The walls are decorated with paintings, posters of sportsmen and some birthday cards. There is silence. A boy and a girl are sitting hand in hand. In due time, the boy starts playing with the girl’s hair. She walks away from him and he follows her to the edge of the bed. The girl looks coyly up at him and says, “Please don’t.” "

“But it’s too late,” says Fawad Ali, writer of the moment at a new English language newspaper to his imaginary girlfriend, “by this time tomorrow this story I am doing on Pakistan’s porn industry will be on newsstands and the net. People all over the world will be saying who is this man? Look at the hardness of his prose, the rhythm of his sentences, and the tumescence of his intellect…”

“Oh Fawad,” she sighs.

Has there ever been such a well researched, factually correct, emotionally evocative piece of sensationalist drivel? Fawad writes the prequel to his acceptance of next year’s APNS award for Best Feature Story as he revels in her willing vapidity, her unnatural blondness, her loud smile.

“Oh Fawad,” she sighs.

The moment of intimacy is broken as someone shouts, “Repeat.” Fawad takes a minute to step outside his cubicle and reply “Nothing sir, I was just talking to myself again,” to his editor at the newspaper. The newspaper, which is considered one of the best in the country (at least around the office water cooler), combines the innovative with the traditional in its products. For example, retaining the character and formation of old school journalism by putting all the words into pretty columns, while simultaneously making sure the words are often complete batshit.

“Oh Fawad,” she sighs.

Bite your lip, Express Tribune (source: Express Tribune/ Creative Commons)

He takes a moment to run his hands through her hair again before writing the quotes that will be used in the story. He knows he cannot omit the one in which the owner of the studio that has made 90 porn films since 2002, Junaid, says he sees his work as a kind of health education for young people who have questions about intimate relationships. Or the one in which he says his business model is revolutionary because his films feature young people. These are important points to make, thinks the hard-nosed investigative journalist, because people often forget that porn filmmakers are in the business because of the goodness of their hearts, and the idea of using young women instead of old crones to turn people on is really a revolutionary one.

Fawad sketches the outlines of this movement for mass sexual literacy with rhetorical virility. Having established that the opening scene is in a room with a bed, he points out that it is being shot in a study. The filmmakers initially "hired commercial sex workers" for their films but then "they began to expand by hiring enthusiastic volunteers." Fawad considers, but then discards, the thought that readers might have questions about the existence of enthusiastic volunteers for roles in pornos in a country where girls caught on camera kissing in net cafes have killed themselves. If there are people out there who see the world in such a bleak, cynical light, he feels, they might actually find inspiration in this moving story about a passion for passion. Plus, the directors sidekick Tina, a former actor herself, explains it sweetly (and "somewhat menacingly") when she says “we have the ability to convince people.”

Nonetheless, the need for a balanced perspective having been drummed into him during the intensive training sessions conducted by the newspaper before it launched, Fawad decides to include a description of a less-than-ideal situation. One actor describes how she ran away with a boyfriend who then sold her to another man who raped her for a month before putting her up for sale again. Then he realizes the hint of exploitation takes the story in a needlessly negative direction. He compensates by including a bevy of beauties who do it because they like it. Because they are aroused by it. Because it has become an addiction.

Fawad ends his piece with a cursory nod to distribution and law enforcement, two factors that have, he feels, traditionally featured too heavily in any examination of the porn industry. In this he is aided by the courteous compliance of nameless shopkeepers who are only too happy to facilitate the sale of super hits like Take Me In Your Arms and Love On The Beach, and the bumbling incompetence of local policemen, who scoff at the very notion of there being a local porn industry. Spent, he reclines, exhausted, as the editor runs his/her eyes hungrily up and down the taut lines of his blunt word hammer.

“I’m wondering,” says the editor, “if I should listen to that little voice in my crack-smoking head that is saying 'Yeh article hamaray 'We’re not tabloid ji' credentials ki patloon utar day ga?'”

Fawad looks up coyly and says, “Please don’t.” 

Author’s Note: The above was, of course, inspired by Fawad Ali’s bodice ripping (not) take on Pakistan’s adult film industry, which was printed in the Express Tribune last Sunday and has since been doing the rounds via email and FB. Another article in their Sunday magazine, The Matriarch, also generated much excitement, primarily because it mentioned female undergarments and featured descriptions such as the following:

“Rolling around the floor in hysterical laughter, the women passed the item under inspection from hand to hand, checking the adjustable straps, the fasteners, the oyster satin and lace cups and cracking jokes about the underwires which gave it its shape until, with incredibly fast, startlingly deft movements the matriarch swung my caftan up and over my head, checked me over with her work-worn hands, covered me up, ripped open the fastening down the front of her kameez, held her matched pair of overripe watermelons out for inspection and said ‘See. Mine are much bigger than yours but I don’t wear one of those!’”

And:

“The room erupted as she then tried to stuff herself in to the too small bra, two of her granddaughters struggling to squeeze her appurtenances into its delicate cups as if they were kneading dough for chapattis…”

Fawad Ali is presumably a reporter, while Zahrah Nasir is a columnist. His function requires research and analysis; hers can be satisfied by whimsical musing. Another crucial difference between Fawad Ali’s rather sketchy sketch of local titillation options and Zahrah Nasir’s playful piece on lingerie and women’s relationships with their bodies is that Zahrah Nasir can write. The Matriarch works because its somewhat lurid descriptions of undressing and breasts are merely a stepping stone to observations about culture, tradition and communication. Fawad Ali’s piece, on the other hand, is merely a stone that he should be beaten on the head with, repeatedly. So I will stand by Ms. Nasir’s right to examine the geo-strategic significance of knickers. Unless she uses the word ‘appurtenances’ again. Then she’s on her own.