Mia Khalifa humping in a hijab is ill-advised in a world where fanatics are slaughtering people just for drawing cartoons.
And PornHub’s most popular star was warned she was going to have her head cut off after she had sex on camera in the shroud.
Here, she tells why she’ll continue her adult movie career in the face of intimidation.
Deadly liaisons by Phil Hamilton, March 2015
When a girl decides she is going to become a porn star her career may upset her parents, her friends and definitely her boyfriend if she has one. Reactions of dismay are to be expected in a world that refuses to admit it watches porn but has made it the internet’s stock in trade.
Very few adult actresses anger an entire country though. That’s what makes Mia Khalifa beautifully unique.
Starting in the porn industry in October 2014, 22-year-old Khalifa has become the most popular performer on PornHub (the 71st most visited website in the world.)
Much of her popularity has to do with the fact she’s found herself at the centre of an international storm.
Welcome to the shitshow
Her romps found their way to her home country of Lebanon and many of her countrymen did not like what they saw, to say the least.
They got their knickers in a twist as one – now infamous – scene involved Khalifa in a threesome with a bloke and her ‘stepmom’, in which both women wore the traditional Muslim garb the hijab. At one point in the energetic clip, Khalifa describes her Muslim headdress as “gross”.
Despite being practically American (Khalifa moved to the States from Beirut when she was aged 10, was raised a Catholic and lived in Miami), Khalifa has been branded a “disgrace” to Lebanon by Middle Eastern commentators and castigated for insulting Islam.
Her (mainly male) critics pressumably only know about Khalifa’s antics because they have clicked on her XXX entertainment.
“People need to understand that anything BangBros produces is basically satire. Whatever we do South Park has done 10 times worse”
Khalifa’s hump in a hijab has attracted close to 16 million views on PornHub, and has no doubt provided quite a lot of pleasure in bedrooms across the globe.
It has also attracted hateful insults, promises of violent retribution and death threats on social media – including mocked-up depictions of her being beheaded in the desert.
One user sent her a manipulated photo to make it appear as if Khalifa was in an orange jumpsuit and being held by Jihadi John, the Isis militant believed to have been involved in a series of beheadings – with the caption “coming soon”.
One keyboard warrior informed Mia she would be “the first person in Hellfire”.
Another of her Twitter haters who lacked diplomancy tweeted her to say: “Ur head will be cut soon, God willing.”
Khalifa shrugged that one off by replying to the user – who had the handle Abdullah Bakrr – “As long as it’s not my tits. They were expensive.”
Sour faces
In response to the ‘Hellfire’ taunt, she wrote: “I’ve been meaning to get a little tan recently.”
Despite her casual witty comebacks, Khalifa admits she has been stunned by the reation her PornHub popularity has prompted. “The messages tell me that I’m a disgrace to my country and that I should kill myself have been hard,” she says.
“Hearing that my home country hates me stings more than anything else.”
She is adament her decision to give oral sex in a hijab – shot by BangBros – wasn’t intended to offend anyone.
“Don’t cut my tits. They were expensive”
“The scene containing hijabs are satirical,” she insists. “People need to understand that anything BangBros produce is basically satire. Whatever we do, South Park has done 10 time worse.”
To Khalifa’s credit, she did remove the garment during (most of) the penetration. And the hijab scene that has attracted so much attention is nothing but a stereotypical porn plot.
Khalifa’s death threat-inducing masturbation fodder saw her cast as an American/Muslim with a biker boyfriend who gets caught by her stepmother putting her hijab back on after being taken for a ride on the back of his motorcycle.
Her stepmum disapproves of their relationship and warns Khalifa her “father will kill you”. But somehow both stepmother and stepdaughter end up having sex with Khalifa’s co-star, and each other.
Real world problems?
Who’d have thunk that would happen in a porn flick? Guy beds a rebellious college girl and her stepmother – whether they are Muslim, Christian, Jew or Atheist – happens all the time in porn.
Most of Khalifa’s other work is pretty stereotypical as well, and is less about her ethnic background and more about her being a sexy college student with two obvious assets. It’s not a hard role for her to play. Khalifa was a college student, and one with honours at that.
She graduated from the University Of Texas in El Paso with a B.A. in history.
Her Catholic parents were proud then, but having a porn queen for a daughter wasn’t something they had anticpated and they have let their disappointment be known to the Lebanese media.
6 of the top 8 countries with the highest rates of internet porn searches are Muslim states
A statement issued by a her dejected mother and father read:
“We are probably paying the price of living away from our homeland.
“Our kids had to adopt to societies that don’t resemble our culture, traditions and values. Hence, we emphasise that we disassociate ourselves from her actions that do not reflect her family beliefs, her upbringing or her true Lebanese roots.
“We hope that she comes back to her senses as her image does not honour her family or homeland – Lebanon.”
Their words and their reaction has hurt Khalifa, especially as it was their choice to give her an American upbringing.
“No one in my family is speaking to me,” she says. “They are very strict, overbearing and very conservative.
“They assimilated to American culture by latching on to the Republican party.”
Bedded
Their shame has spread to the rest of her family. Khalifa says: “It’s blown up on such a huge scale. Everybody from my second cousins to family friends to my parents’ friends know, and I don’t think it is something that is going to be forgiven. I feel guilty for dragging my parents into this and having all their friends know now that it is on Lebanese media. But that was never my intention.”
Khalifa has also upset Lebanon with her tattoos. One on her left arm is an inking of the opening lines of the Lebanese national anthem – “All of us! For our Country, for our Flag and Glory!”
Another on her right wrist is an etching of the Lebanese Forces Cross – the symbol of a Lebanese conservative Christian political party opposed to the Syrian Bashar Assad regime – of which her dad is a supporter.
It was an inking she got following a Beirut bombing in October 2012, and she says it was to “show solidarity” with her father’s political views.
“First and foremost, as a woman, she is free to do as she pleases with her body”
Khalifa clearly doesn’t mean to offend, but politics and hardcore porn rarely mix well. Many think her decision to have sex with American men with part of the Lebanese anthem tattooed on her body is shameful to the country of her birth.
Despite a reputation as one of the most liberal nations in the Middle East, the vitriol aimed against Khalifa has been unrelenting.
But she has tried to respond to the attacks sensibly. “Doesn’t the Middle East have more important things to worry about besides me?” she asked in one tweet, adding: “How about finding a president?”
Khalifa also believes that she is being used as a scapegoat for the internet censorship that is being brought in across Lebanon.
In September, the country’s Telecommunications Ministry ordered internet service providers to block access to six pornographic websites for reasons of “societal decency”. Khalifa says: “They are using me as a tool.”
Thick rims
Amidst all the hatred, there have been voices of support that have also highlighted the absurdity of Lebanon’s anger over her hijab-clad porn role.
British/Lebanese author Nasri Atallah wrote on Facebook: “She is a 21-year-old in Florida who has made a decision for herself, with absolutely no wider implications. The moral indignation is wrong for two reasons. First and foremost, as a woman, she is free to do as she pleases with her body.
“As a sentient human being with agency, who lives halfway across the world, she is in charge of her own life and owes absolutely nothing to the country where she happens to be born. There is this odd perception that being Lebanese is a vocation and a duty first and that your personal life comes second.”
Beirut-based blogger Gino Raidy also defended Mia’s choice of work, saying: “I don’t really care what any of you think about her career choice. After all, it’s her body to do whatever she wants with.”
But the media storm that has engulfed Khalifa is age-old proof there is no such thing as bad publicity.
A quarter of online searches for Mia Khalifa originated in Lebanon
Statistics released by PornHub for the first weeks of January 2014 revealed searches containing the words Mia Khalifa had risen five-fold since the jihab scene hit headlines.
There’s no prizes where a quarter of the searches originated.
Yes – it’s Lebanon. Other traffic spikes online around her name and videos came from Syria and Jordan. So, maybe Khalifa is only getting the bile because Lebanese lads are feeling a lot of love for her and are feeling guilty for it given their upbringing.
So, forget Kim Kardashian – Khalifa is the woman who is really breaking the internet these days. And she’s becoming a brand too. A Lebanese brewery recently ran an ad showing a bottle of Almaza beer next to Khalifa’s thick-rimmed glasses, with the slogan: “Both of us are for adults only.”
While Khalifa waits to become the Middle Eastern version of Jenna Jameson, she says she’s going to keep shagging on camera – despite the anger.
She concludes: “I’ll ride it out until I can’t do it anymore.”
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