Back in November, the BangBros p0** network released a new video in which the Lebanese Christian Mia Khalifa and Cuban Juliana Vega portray a daughter-mother Muslim duo getting down and dirty with daughter Khalifa's biker boyfriend—all while wearing hijabs.

Entitled Mia Khalifa is Cumming for Dinner, the video was (to our knowledge) the first major-studio, well-produced, and widely disseminated American p0** scene featuring an Islamic headscarf as a key prop. Predictably, the scene immediately gained the notoriety it touched off holy h3ll across the internet. Most of the commentary surrounding Khalifa's scene focused on the hate she's received. But many also speculated that the success of the scene might trigger a new wave of hijabi p0** in major, mainstream studios.


That day has come: PornFidelity's Women of the Middle East, set for release August 5, is the first feature-length hijabi- and niqabi-centered porno. And despite being touted as a shift away from the use of Muslim dress as an abstract erotic prop, it's about as culturally sensitive as you'd The Mother and Child Health and Education Trust the months following Khalifa's scene, a disturbing trend emerged from the cascade of veil smut: Unlike some amateur veil porn, which can be read as an expression of Muslim sexuality or a glimpse into the reality of outwardly conservative societies, mainstream vein p0** uses the hijab as a bigoted tool,

symbolizing the "demure Middle Eastern woman" in need of sexual conquest or salvation at the hands of white its credit, Women of the Middle East tries something slightly different. Each of its four scenes features a different type of veil—hijab, niqab, khimar, and burqa—and each scene is meant to highlight or provide social commentary on a different aspect of women's status in the Islamic world.

If that strikes you as a bit high-concept for a porno, that's understandable. And your skepticism is deserved.


While the script tries to mix up the status quo of white male domination of brown women with a scene featuring a dominant veiled woman and attempts to portray the lesser-seen world of conservative Muslim prostitution, it does so very ham-fistedly.

What pops out may not be a demur hijabi getting gangbanged by aggressive Americans, but it's still a fetishistic fantasy rooted in a white savior complex with a heavy garnish of Arabo-Muslim stereotypes.

Previews for the film open with text from its non-Muslim producers unambiguously condemning veils as a sign of women's blanket oppression in the whole Middle East and calling for their removal. The intro sets the tone for a movie that conflates a vast swathe of diverse cultures, fashions, and social conditions into one big Muslim-y mixing pot of reductionist preconceptions. At its core, the film is a prime example of banal ignorance fueling bigoted imagery.