Osama's Dirty Mind

The smut in bin Laden's compound reveals the Muslim world's dirty secret: porn is rife, everyone looks at it—and the U.S. finds it in militants' hideouts all the time. The discovery of an " extensive" porn library in Osama bin Laden's compound kicked off the predictable wave of jokey headlines. Everyone from the New York Post ("Osama Gone Wild") to Radar Online ("Debbie Does Pakistan") delightfully reveled in the irony of the find. But should we really be that surprised that leader of one of the world's most notorious terrorist groups was living with a collection of smutty pictures or videos? In the Muslim world, conspiracy theorists are likely to call the porn story a hoax, claiming the stash was planted by the U.S. after killing bin Laden to embarrass him. Pornography, however, is the Muslim world's dirty little secret, rife in even the most conservative realms—including among the extremists. Click Below to See Photos of Dictators Who Love Porn EPA / Landov 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.” “Some of the Muslim societies that are the most repressive toward women...also have some of the highest rates of pornography usage in the world." "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. It’s not clear whether bin Laden himself viewed any of the porn. On CNN, bin Laden's biographer Peter Bergen said he thought the porn wasn’t likely for the al Qaeda leader's “personal consumption.” But its presence speaks to the contradictions that permeate Muslim society. Last year, Google ran an analysis of its search queries and concluded Pakistan is the leading nation in sex-related, porn content searches, leading Fox News to dub the nation “ Pornistan.” Iran came in third on the overall list, and Egypt was fifth. (Google later partially backtracked on its findings, saying that its sample size was too small to be definitive.) Small or not, we don't need Google to tell us Muslims are looking at porn. Pakistan is home to a bustling porn black market, as well as a lucrative business enterprise and tradition of exotic dancing, called mujras. Just last month, a Muslim member of parliament from the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party in Indonesia resigned after being caught watching porn on the floor of parliament. He was, ironically, a proponent of anti-porn legislation, a hypocrisy that may sound familiar to Americans who are used to seeing their conservative lawmakers busted for the very behaviors they speak out against. Turkey is the only Muslim country known to allow porn, experts say. But even there, increasing restrictions have kept pace with expanding Islamic conservatism. Earlier this year, three academics in Turkey were fired because a student had shot a porn film as part of his dissertation, “The Porn Project.” ( The student ultimately got a "D"). This is not to say that sexuality is entirely repressed in these places. Islam has a very rich tradition of sacred sexuality and eroticism. The prophet Muhammad talked about the “sweetness” of intercourse, and he dealt realistically with issues of pleasure, desire, and even sexual frustration. Children were married when they reached puberty to allow for codified expression of sexuality at the age when it ripens. The prophet told men not to leave their wives for more than six months because sexual tensions would become too high. It’s no wonder that, even while he was hiding out as the world’s most-wanted man, bin Laden was still likely getting laid by his many wives.