By Aidan Maconachy
Google Trends provides the means of assessing how often a search term is used. When you enter a word such as "sex", it returns a list of cities, countries and languages in which the term is used most often.
According to an article entitled "Sex and Taboos in the Islamic World" published in Spiegel magazine, when the word "sex" was entered into Google Trends a result was returned that indicated Pakistanis use the search term the most, followed by Egyptians. In the Spiegel test in 2006, other Muslim countries - Iran, Morocco, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia - were in the top ten category of nations where "sex" was used as a search term.
Muslim authorities by and large don't approve of this and there are efforts underway to reduce access to sexual content on the internet. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Yemen, Iran and the United Arab Emirates employ commercial filtering systems to target pornography and other material deemed to be un-Islamic. A US product named SmartFilter is used in Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. In the case of Tunisia the blocking of porn also extends to blocking of politically sensitive material, but the state masks its censorship of opinion by returning a "file not found" message to users, when in fact the material is being deliberately blocked by state censors.
In Uzbekistan filtering blocks pornography, but blocking also applies to sites with political content. In some cases users can access the main page of a site but are unable to use deep links to explore the content.
Censorship is alive and well in many Muslim nations, and a great deal of the effort to control the flow of images and information relates to pornography. Censorship also relates to sites that deal with sexuality in less obvious ways. For example in Yemen, blocked sites include those that offer sex education, advertise "provocative" fashions, dating sites and gay information. So internet filtering has become a tool of cultural control in many cases.
The latest crack down on "un-Islamic conduct" comes in Malaysia, where the state has taken upon itself to appoint volunteer spies to watch for unmarried couples who are misbehaving. Some waitresses and janitors for example have been mentioned as possible auxiliaries of the "religious department". They would have the task of snooping on lovers for evidence of heated passions that exceed the permitted degree of affection on the department's intimacy barometer.
Enforcers of religious law in Saudi Arabia are known as the muttawa, or Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
There have been many reports of their high handed treatment of women. For example, if an unmarried Saudi female is found in the company of foreign men, she risks being taken into custody and subjected to a medical examination to determine whether or not she has had sex.
Not so long ago the Saudi trial of the so-called "Girl of Qatif" made headlines around the world. She was accused of un-Islamic behavior for the "offence" of being alone in a car with a male. Even though she and her companion were abducted by male assailants and she was the alleged victim of a sexual assault, she was nonetheless sentenced to 90 lashes.
In 2002, the muttawa prevented rescuers from helping out when a school in Mecca caught fire. The reason? They considered the teenage females inside to be immodestly dressed. As a result, fifteen of these young women died.
The willingness of some Muslim authorities to repress liberated behavior, especially of a sexual nature, extends also to publishing. Recently in Indonesia protests erupted when Playboy magazine produced its second edition. Prior to this the magazine's editorial offices in Jakarta were attacked. As a result of this and other intimidation, the Playboy Indonesia operation moved to the island of Bali.
Indonesia is 85% Muslim, but is quite moderate compared to Yemen for example. Honor killings of women that occur in Pakistan and elsewhere, are almost unheard of in Indonesia. So the violent opposition to Playboy magazine on the part of a vocal minority of Muslim activists may not be wholly reflective of general opinion.
The court sentences imposed by some Islamic jurisdictions for sex related offences, have given rise to a good deal of concern on the part of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. In Iran there was the case of a sixteen year old girl named Atefeh Rajabi who was charged with "acts incompatible with chastity" - having sex in other words. Atefeh had no access to legal council during the trial, and offended the judge by removing her hijab during a heated interchange. Allegedly she was considered mentally incompetent by the authorities and yet the trial and sentencing went ahead nonetheless. Her death sentence was upheld by a supreme court of conservative mullahs, and the judge himself was the one who hung this child publicly in Neka, in August 2004.
As with most religions there are varying interpretations of Islamic law. Sharia codes are the most draconian when it comes to free expression of sexuality. On the other hand, in Canada there an activist and writer named Irshad Manji who advocates the revival of critical thinking within Islam, known by the term "ijtihad". So there are different cultural currents within the Muslim community that are grappling with issues related to freedom of expression and individual rights.
Meantime stories continue to make the headlines that reflect the clash between traditional Islamic values and more progressive trends.
Aidan Maconachy is a freelance writer and artist based in Ontario. You can visit his blog at http://aidanmaconachyblog.blogspot.com/
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