John Bradley Fri, Jul 18, 2008 The Straits Times Sex on foreign shores: A whiff of hypocrisy
NOTHING is more guaranteed to whip the British media into a frenzy than the plight of a white, middle-class British woman holed up in a grubby prison cell in a Muslim country. Especially if the reason for her arrest is the result of the transgression of strict sexual or religious mores. Hence the blanket coverage the British newspapers have given this past week to the case of Michelle Palmer. A few hours after arriving in Dubai, Palmer met fellow British tourist Vince Acors, and the two proceeded to have sex on a public beach - an impulsive tryst described by one British tabloid hack as an 'X-rated version of the famous beach scene in From Here To Eternity'. When approached by a local policeman, who asked them to stop what they were doing, Palmer allegedly hurled verbal insults at him. Apparently intoxicated, she then reportedly threw a pair of shoes at the policeman's face. Both Brits were then apprehended. Because she resisted arrest, Palmer now faces a maximum six-year prison sentence. 'Michelle has become the victim of a strict Muslim regime,' fumed a columnist for the Sunday Mirror, adding that while Dubai is 'quite happy to take our money, (the emirate) won't compromise when it comes to values'. The incident quickly escalated into a symbol of the much-vaunted clash of cultures: the liberal, secular West versus the repressive, fun-hating Islamic East. Even the shoe-throwing incident was portrayed as emblematic of the huge cultural chasm. Hurling shoes at a man's face, The Daily Telegraph solemnly informed its readers, is considered a 'grave insult' in Muslim cultures - as though whacking a policeman on the head with a shoe can be interpreted as a mark of respect on the streets of London. The Sunday Mirror went even further, comparing Palmer's incarceration with the release on bail in Britain recently of a Jordanian Muslim suspected of being an Al-Qaeda member. 'On the one hand, a British girl is facing incarceration in a hell-hole prison for getting drunk and having sex on a beach,' the columnist noted, 'while a fanatical extremist suspect is being given five-star treatment because he happens to live in the world's most liberal country.' Ironically, the Dubai authorities were as keen as every one else to exploit the incident, and not least in order to shore up its Islamist credentials. Eager to perpetuate the myth that they are the guardians of a 'strict Muslim regime', police have been ordered by the emirate's rulers to patrol Dubai's beaches with renewed vigour. New floodlights would be installed to 'leave people committing indecent acts with no place to hide'. The emirate has 'vowed to eradicate' lewd behaviour 'once and for all', officials have been quoted as saying by the local media. When you clear away the rhetorical fog, it is difficult to decide which side of the argument is the more deluded one. For instance, having sex in public while naked and drunk, insulting verbally and assaulting physically the police officer who politely asks you to stop, and then resisting arrest to boot, is hardly a right enshrined in the laws of 'the world's most liberal country'. Having sex in public is in fact illegal in Britain. Bearing in mind that Palmer was also drunk and had assaulted a police officer, she would have been arrested at home too. Moreover, a recent poll in Britain has revealed that three-quarters of the population lament that their country is in a state of 'moral decline'. Coupled with a growing despair at the spiralling levels of violent crime in the country, popular opinion in Britain would also probably encourage a bit of prison time for the string of offences Palmer allegedly committed. For sheer hubris, however, it is the Dubai authorities that have to take the biscuit. For their 'vow' to eradicate lewd behaviour 'once and for all' belies a stark reality: these days the emirate is the prostitution capital of the Middle East, where tens of thousands of sex workers ply their trade in a hot bed of sleaze that no pile of glitzy architecture and superficial moral outrage at a Western couple having sex on the local beach can conceal. 'The variety of places to purchase sex is abundant, from brothels...and the back alleys where migrant workers pay for a few minutes of pleasure to the mainstream Westernised nightclubs, often inside upscale hotels, where women from all over the world congregate according to their nationalities awaiting the next client,' a recent PBS Frontline documentary reported. Meanwhile, international human rights groups routinely cite Dubai as the world's main gateway for the trafficking of women and children for sex - many eventually finding themselves bought and sold within the emirate itself. There they are controlled by pimps linked to crime syndicates but, as a recent expose in the New Yorker pointed out, dare not report their incarceration and abuse to the authorities for fear of further abuse at the latter's hands. If the beach sex incident tells us anything, then, it is not so much to do with the mythical 'clash of civilisations' than with the universal hypocrisy and accompanying self-serving moral outrage that invariably defines the discussion of sex in foreign cultures - East or West. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://travel.asiaone.com/Travel/News/Story/A1Story20080718-77342.html
