Former Porn Star Reveals She Quit Over ISIS Threats
“Looking back on it I don’t know what I was thinking... I was 21 and dumb.”
3.1.2018
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What with all its murdering, torturing, enslaving, inspiring terrorism abroad, and now fleeing American bombing runs under President Trump, it's hard to imagine how the Islamic State (ISIS) finds time to scour porn websites and take offense over specific performers, but perhaps they're just good multi-taskers.
In a podcast interview with former cyclist Lance Armstrong called The Forward, former porn star Mia Khalifa revealed that she left the biz for several reasons, but primarily because she found herself on the receiving end of death threats from ISIS.
Fox News reports that the Lebanese-American Khalifa performed in porn for only three months at the age of 21 but swiftly found herself the top-ranked performer on the adult website PornHub
“Looking back on it I don’t know what I was thinking ... I was 21 and dumb,” Khalifa, now 25, told her friend Armstrong about the decision to do porn. “As soon as I started to gain popularity that’s when I was like ‘Get the f--- out of this’... This was not what I was trying to do whatsoever. I just wanted to let loose and rebel a little bit. It didn’t validate me. Nothing like that ever does. That’s not what you should be doing to try and build your self-esteem.”
The porn experience "started to spiral out of control," she said, "when the death threats from ISIS started coming in."
Armstrong noted that he had had at least one other guest who had gotten death threats from ISIS, and he joked that it was becoming a trend.
"Can I get on that list?" he kidded.
"That's not a list you want to be on," Khalifa countered. She laughed, but there was clearly a very serious undercurrent to her response.
What may have prompted ISIS' outrage was one particular sex scene Khalifa did while wearing a hijab.
Khalifa - whose family is Christian - said that the scene was meant to be satirical, according to the UK Daily Mail. ISIS apparently didn't get the joke and threatened her via social media with beheading, sending her mocked-up execution photos.
She also took a lot of social media heat from other Arabs for her tattoos, obviously very visible in her sex scenes, which include the opening line from the Lebanese national anthem and another of the Lebanese Forces Cross, which is meant to "show solidarity with my father's political views after a bombing in Lebanon in 2012."
One Twitter user threatened that Khalifa's head "will be cut off soon." Another warned her she would be "the first person in Hellfire."
Apparently off ISIS' radar now, but still widely recognized as a former porn star, Khalifa is attempting to move forward by accepting her past and rebranding herself.
“I gave up on just trying to lead a normal life. Now I’m going to try to rebrand and change the narrative,” she said. “Accept that I’m Mia Khalifa now and try to be successful at that, doing something else.”
The moral of the story, young people, is don't get involved in porn. ISIS is watching.
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