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In February, The Daily Beast published this story on Nadia Ali, a Pakistani-American porn star who is, as the article describes, “a 24-year-old…. first-generation American from Pakistan. She’s been in the adult industry for just a year, but doesn’t mind pushing religious boundaries in the name of XXX entertainment. Oh, and she’s also a practicing Muslim.”

Before I delve any further into the description of her work or her interview, let me just provide some context and clarify some points. First, I’m comfortable with the topic of sex. It doesn’t make me cringe or giggle. I’ve researched sexual health and provided workshops on sexual violence and sexual education. So I read the piece with an open mind. Second, my views of porn are mixed, though I tend to lean in the “not a fan” direction. I don’t find the genre, in general, feminist (though I know there is a feminist stream).  However, if a woman chooses to act in porn and maintains her independence and control then who am I to judge her? As such, this piece is not about judging her choice to act in porn, or shaming her.

Having said all that, I am deeply offended by the liberal and willing use of the most tired and stupid stereotypes of Muslim women (and men), in both the article and her porn (yes, I watched some of her films). It’s so bad I don’t even know where to start.

The Daily Beast article begins with a description of one of her films, entitled Women of the Middle East:

“A woman enters. Donning a hijab, she prepares and serves dinner for her turbaned husband. She appears subservient, but when the man isn’t looking, swipes his car keys, slips on a pair of high heels, sneaks out the door of their posh mansion, and speeds off. When she returns, the enraged man grabs her by the neck and drags her into the house. She pleads with him not to use “the stones” to torture her, so he opts for beating her with a switch. The woman screams, “I’m sorry! I did something for you,” but he doesn’t relent. He begins to get aroused by the pain he’s inflicting, and before you know it, the veil is lifted and we’re in the midst of a full-fledged porn scene.”

The film’s tagline: “They may look suppressed, but given an opportunity to express themselves freely, their wild, untamable natural sexuality is released. This may just be what was in bin Laden’s porn collection, experience it for yourself.”

Subservient wife in a hijab, suppressed, untamable sexuality, controlling and violent brown husband, posh mansion, and stones. You couldn’t fit more offensive stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs in one sentence if you asked a Fox News anchor to go on a stream of consciousness rant on Muslims. But this is her brand of porn.

In her films, Nadia Ali always appears in some form of head covering, usually a dupatta wrapped loosely or tightly around her head. She wears some form of shalwar kameez for which her ‘admirers’ find her exotic. The men she is with are never South Asian or Muslim, so she usually includes some explanation of her culture – her Middle Eastern culture, as she calls it. This despite that fact that Pakistan is not Middle Eastern and she clearly looks Pakistani in her Pakistani/South Asian clothes. Then, all of sudden, they’re getting down and dirty. Sometimes she keeps the head covering, sometimes it comes off.

From her interviews it appears that Ali is peddling in these stereotypes. Taking a deeper look at some of her quotes makes this clear (highlights mine).

“I’ve been told, ‘you’re not a Muslim, you’re a disgrace to Pakistan, Pakistan won’t accept you,’ but I do come from a Middle Eastern background and I am Muslim, not the way my parents are, but by practice.”

“…I do come from a Middle Eastern background, I have the gowns, I celebrate the culture, and speak the language.”

Although not being Middle Eastern (again, Pakistan is not in the ME), Ali appears to understand that to the Western mind Muslim=Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern=Muslim. Additionally, in Western discourse, Pakistani, Arab, and Persian cultures are all seen as the same and can be substituted for each other. Ali appears to be making the same assumption. Or at least feeding it.

“Me, I’ve never been married and have dated out of my race. I wanted to break barriers. I can be submissive depending on the situation but I am very dominant and powerful. I don’t like to let guys get away with shit. I’m not your typical Middle Eastern girl.”

The assumption here is that Middle Eastern women, which by now I’m assuming is her short-hand for Muslim women, allow men to “get away with shit” all the time. The assumption is that typical Muslim women are willingly subservient, passive, and oppressed.

“Being in America, I can be a voice for Islamic women—someone has to be. Even if I have to hit the headline news over and over again in a negative way, then let it be. It needs to be heard, and I am glad I have done these things.”

She also seems to believe, or at least be perpetuating the idea, that Muslim women don’t have a voice or are not using their voice. Considering that she is giving an interview to The Daily Beast it is highly worrisome that she make such a statement, given the centuries of Muslim women making their voices heard everywhere.  

She appears to believe the same about our sexuality.  

“Growing up I’d hear rumors like, “That girl’s a slut, don’t let the scarf fool you.” I kept those scenarios in mind. If a Hijabi were to be horny and wanting to fuck how would she fuck? I bring that to life on camera and people get mad about it because they want to keep it modest.”

The highlighted quote is odd as I’m pretty sure hijabis have been having sex for centuries now. The use of “if” highlights the racist stereotype that women who wear hijab are not sexual beings and their getting aroused is hypothetical, not something that actually happens every day. Really, if that’s all she wanted to know then all she had to do was ask a hijabi woman.

But it is clear that Ali either believes that sex is something Muslims don’t engage in or she is purposely feeding the stereotype for the sake of enticing a non-Muslim, male audience.

“I have brown eyes and brunette hair. If I didn’t wear my cultural stuff and picked a name like ‘Sally’ then I might get famous, but it wouldn’t be interesting. But I do come from a Middle Eastern background, I have the gowns, I celebrate the culture, and speak the language. Coming from an Islamic background and doing this, that’s a taboo. The people are forbidden to see those things.”

“This year I plan to do a lot of girl-on-girl and solo scenes to show the world that Middle Eastern girls of Pakistani descent really do get horny. Since they are so forbidden to fuck, I want to show how they fuck girls and masturbate. I’m going to bring that to life.”

I am unclear why the word forbidden comes up so often in this discussion. I am guessing it is because forbidden things often have an allure and hint of mystery to them. However, this word does serve an important function in illuminating the centuries old colonial, orientalising narrative of veiled Muslim women and their hidden sexualities.  

Muslim and Arab women (and Women of Colour, in general) have been the subject of Orientalist sexualisation for centuries. European colonizers portrayed Muslim and Arab women in exotic and erotic ways to demonstrate the “backwardness” and “animalism” of Muslims and Arabs and to justify their violent colonial projects of “civilizing” the “barbarians.” Muslim women have been depicted as subservient and oppressed, in need of saving from angry, violent, brown-skinned Muslim men who imprisoned Muslim women in harems to fulfil their never-ending sexual appetites. In this historical context, the veil was portrayed as something unjustly hiding the sexuality of Muslim women from men (mainly European men), and, as such, something which had to removed. Colonization was a white supremacist project. These sexualized views of women had violent consequences for colonized bodies of colour, especially women who bore the brunt of rape as a tool of colonization, while men were depicted as sexual predators and subsequently punished. Within this historical context and the negative and damaging stereotypes which emerged, and which remain to this day, Ali’s films push highly problematic views of Muslim women.

But here is the issue. I can’t tell if Ali is truly naïve or if she’s exploiting racist tropes about Muslims and sex for the promotion of her work. After all, non-Muslim men, in a Western context, enjoy the orientalisation of Muslim women’s sexuality to a point of fetishization. Ali, and those who produce these films, appear to be capitalizing on this racist view of Muslim women. Although these offensive and dangerous tropes are centuries old they are in very heavy circulation to this day.

Meanwhile, The Daily Beast is more than happy to exploit and sensationalize this story. As Eren noted in an earlier piece on MMW, Western media loves the “conservative Muslim girl gone wild” story and The Daily Beast (once again) can’t help but show their excitement (pardon the pun) over a similar narrative appearing in this story on Ali.

They state that Ali is banned in Pakistan, but in the interview, Ali does not explicitly say she is banned there. Although she uses the word once, she rather states that if she were to go to Pakistan and be recognized then she could find herself in trouble. She says she is not welcomed by her family, but that is very different than being banned from a country. Or does The Daily Beast think that the country is so monolithic that one family’s estrangement means a whole country’s estrangement? Or perhaps The Daily Beast believes that Muslims are so against sex and prudish that the government of a Muslim country would ban a woman who lives in the US for doing something many Pakistanis do (act in porn) within the country.

The Daily Beast continues to push the Muslims-hate-sex trope by stating “but in a culture where it is conceivable for a cleric to ban women from touching bananas and cucumbers due to their phallic resemblance, she hopes to inspire change.” This, despite the fact that there is no evidence of said bans, and one supposed “ban” on cucumbers that drew widespread attention a few years ago was shown to be a hoax. Not to mention, there is no one culture when speaking of Muslims. The author makes the assumption that all Muslims belong to one monolithic culture, though Ali doesn’t appear to dispel that erroneous belief.

One could say that given we’re talking about porn I may be taking this a little too seriously. And, perhaps if her and her films were not getting mainstream attention I would not have bothered. But as Nadia Ali and her films get mainstream attention in the West, and dangerous old, orientalist, colonial tropes are being thrown around carelessly and recklessly, I believe it is important to call out these films and the discourses being perpetuated by both Ali and the films. Once again, I’m not sure if Ali is actually aware of how problematic her words are, but she is indeed selling an ages old Western, non-Muslim male fantasy steeped in white supremacy and racism. That has to be called out, always.