Oh what to do when your long repressed country suddenly has access to Bollywood films. Its enough to drive a good religious man to have sinful thoughts, no? The Christian Science Monitor reports on what happens when Bollywood flesh presents itself to a society long confined to looking at bharkas:

One midnight during Ramadan, Sullyman got up and flipped on the TV. His family was sitting down to eat before the 4 a.m. prayer and he decided to do a little channel surfing. But the station he landed on stunned him.

“It was 100 percent sex,” says the dapper young man in Kabul’s Macroryan neighborhood. “It was the first time I’d seen anything like that.”

The prurient film – and the questionable programming being pumped to thousands across Kabul – prompted the Supreme Court chief justice to ask President Hamid Karzai to stop cable broadcasts during the holy season. Last month, a Council of Ministers banned virtually all cable broadcasts in the city. The minister of information and culture created an advisory committee to review the cable networks. Since then, the networks have begun to broadcast again.

This wasn’t real sex he was referring to of course? After all, most of us grew up acutely aware of the fact that Indian censors didn’t allow Bollywood stars to kiss. Still, the thought that Bollywood movies, which are tame by Western standards, could have such a strong effect on Afghan society intrigues me. Maybe Bollywood films are the way to “spread democracy” and combat religious fundamentalism in the Middle East. Isn’t that what the U.S. administration wants? Maybe Bollywood films can do what bombs cannot. Maybe the military should broadcast Bollywood movies into Iraq as a way to soothe the insurgents. Maybe I am getting carried away.

University professors say student gangs are cropping up. And Health officials lay partial blame on Bollywood films for a spike in teen delinquency during the last year, as more young girls are fleeing their families with boyfriends to avoid arranged marriages.

Mawlawi Abdul Qudus, the leader of a Kabul mosque, says that while the number of youths coming to the mosque has stayed the same, he’s concerned about how Westerners – and their leisure-time habits – in Kabul have influenced youths. Explicit movies, he thinks, could lead to more illicit relationships.

“In Afghanistan, the rule of government is according to Islam,” he says. “These kinds of illegal movies are persuading the youth. This is not good for Islamic society.”

The article ends with the clearest of insights with respect to Afghanistan’s new access to foreign media,

“During the night, we had the possibility of watching BBC and CNN. We had the possibility of understanding what’s going on around the world,” says Ahmadulla Amarkhil, a student at Kabul University. “Islam never prevents us from being cultured or sophisticated. Islam invites people to see this and to learn.”