I Can Haz Sex Manualz? : Or How I Imported Sex Books From UK While Locally Published Books Are Banned
April 29th, 2010 § 20 Comments
M'sian Customs says, "Yes! You can haz sex manualz!"
Sharon Bakar of Bibliobibuli has written a number of blog entries regarding the seemingly random and downright stupid incidents of books that have been confiscated and banned in Malaysia by the Ministry of Home Affairs (or KDN, to use its more famous Malay acronym). Her latest entry on this matter was written on 1st April, 2010 when a reader complained that her orders from local online bookseller, Acmamall.com were detained by KDN. Well that’s weird, I thought. Since it was a local online retailer that she ordered from, the delivery must have involved nothing more than domestic mail. Does Malaysia’s secret police Home Ministry officers now keep an eye on our letters and parcels as well, in case we are sending each other material that might corrupt our morals and the morals of our children? Oh, will someone think of the children!
So, inspired by that blog entry, I decided to test a theory. My theory is that our authorities are a hypocritical and inconsistent bunch of people who wouldn’t know a good read if it got up and bit them on their collective arses and so I planned to order a book that would not be sold in Malaysia but I was pretty sure ‘they’ would allow my order to arrive safely to me. But I wasn’t going to order anything from a local online retailer. Oh no. I was going to go international, baby! I was going to shop for ‘restricted titles’ at Amazon!
You see, I have been ordering books from Amazon since 1998 and DVDs since 2000. I have never had any of my books confiscated before but that was because I practised the Malaysian citizen’s art of self-censorship and bought titles that I knew were considered ‘safe’. Also, I noticed that parcels that contained books were not inspected so thoroughly by the Customs Officers. Parcels that have been opened for inspection will be re-secured with tape that has the words “Diperiksa oleh Kastam” or “Inspected by Customs“. I have had a few of my DVD orders arrive to me in this manner but never my book orders.
Anyway, I now had to pick books that I thought were likely to be banned from Malaysia. I considered Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses but I read that book once years ago and it was BOOOORIIIIINNNGGG! The answer, of course, was obvious: order a book that discusses sex explicitly. What book would that be? What else but the Kama Sutra!
(By the way, searching Acmamall for the Kama Sutra brought 59 results but since it was a confiscated book ordered from Acmamall that inspired this whole exercise, I decided to stick with Amazon and see if I could get away with it)
Now that I have a title in mind, I searched Amazon UK for it. I chose the UK branch because from my experience orders from Amazon UK usually reached me within a week while orders from Amazon US would reach me anywhere between two weeks to a month. This is with standard shipping, the cheapest shipping method.
Anyway, while browsing for the Kama Sutra I came across two other books that piqued my interest. They were The Perfumed Garden, the famous fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and The Kama Sutra in Pop Up. A pop-up version of the Kama Sutra? Seriously? How could I resist? That should be good for a few laughs with the wife, I thought. So into the virtual shopping basket they went. Total cost (with shipping and handling) was GBP49.73 which is about RM350, more or less. They were shipped on the 13th of April and were estimated to arrive on the 23rd of April.
Based on my previous experience ordering from Amazon UK, I was confident that my order would arrive earlier than Amazon’s estimate. Maybe the 20th, at the latest.
So I waited.
And waited.
20th April came and went. No brown box from Amazon. No problem. I’ll wait.
23rd April came and went and still nothing.
24th, nothing.
25th, nothing.
26th, noth…you get the idea.
I was beginning to think that the Customs do inspect parcels now regardless of what they contain. That’s something new. I was having visions of bored Customs officials at the KLIA Cargo area having a laugh thumbing through my Pop Up Kama Sutra. Give me my sex books, ya creeps! I paid for those! Buy your own book of sexual techniques with pictures of Indian Rajahs and Indian princesses going at it like pigs in heat! C’mon!
Just went I thought my experiment would fail, this morning (the 29th of April) I was greeted at my door with a medium sized brown box, battered but otherwise intact with the words Amazon UK on its sides. With trembling hands I ripped open the box and yes, all three books were inside.
The Customs stamp on the box indicated that the box was released on the 27th. I don’t really know why this one took so long to arrive (even longer than Amazon UK’s estimate) but I didn’t care. They let me have my Kama Sutras and Perfumed Garden!
So this confirmed my theories: One, based on this and previous experiences, parcels from overseas containing books are not inspected by Customs even when you order something controversial. So go ahead and order that book on serial killing Satan worshippers who raped their daughters and ate their cats. It’ll arrive in a couple of weeks.
Two, our authorities are, as I said before, inconsistent and hypocritical. Ban, don’t ban. Confiscate, approve. Praise, condemn.
Three, there is no coordination of methods between those who are responsible with inspecting books sold locally with those who are assigned to keep an eye out for “immoral stuff” from overseas. For example, searching Kinokuniya-Malaysia’s website I found that they have three Kama Sutra related books on offer although none were the ones that are in my possession now. But still. Those are okay but a satirical book about Malaysian politicians is not?
Four, Indian royalty from 500 hundred years ago were creative, agile, probably double jointed and they loved to partay !
Way to go bro!
I’ve just bought a book about ‘Islamic punks’ myself from Amazon.com called The Taqwacores. The Satanic Verses is just a walk in the park compared to the stuff written in this one. My parcel was still sealed with just a stamp that said ‘Dilepaskan’.
so, what does it mean by “dilepaskan”? is it true that the book was banned in malaysia? i’m writing a thesis on that book bro. and your saying “the satanic verses is just a walk in the park” is cool! salam!
‘Dilepaskan’ = released. It’s the word the M’sian Customs stamp on every parcel that passes through their hands. What Johnny meant was that a ‘controversial’ book like The Taqwacores could be ordered from overseas even though it’s banned in M’sia which proves that the whole practice of banning is ridiculous in the age of online shopping. Especially when the customs don’t really check parcels that contain books.
Is Taqwacores banned in M’sia? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
yep, there’s no system to it and clearly most parcels from amazon are not checked. i’ve had just one or two opened over the years.
some parcels are opened though and some books do disappear enroute. often pretty innocent ones.
it should be fun when downloading ebooks becomes commonplace. how on earth can any ban be put into place then?
Great read but you do realise you’ve probably ruined the well kept secret and now every package with the word Amazon on the outside will be stopped, contents will be watched/read and confiscated and we’ll all spend our weekends having our brains zapped by ASTRO…
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by sharon bakar. sharon bakar said: Khairul H goes shopping on Amazon.com for book titles banned in Malaysia. http://bit.ly/aRrs5G [...]
This is interesting. Sometimes I wonder if the Home Ministry just arbitrarily bans books that prompts Malaysians to think outside of this nice, cozy nasi-lemak-in-a-leaf shaped box that the authorities have delineated for us.
But possibly there is no sense behind this, and trying to find the logic behind it will just drive us mad. I thought that the book I wrote about was banned because of it’s salacious title: ‘Lips Touch Three Times.’ However, Kama Sutra titles are fine. I suppose… acrobatic sex – good. Kissing – bad. Possibly there *is* some sort of logic behind that.
Interestingly enough, another book I wanted was kind of a radical feminist type thing. But although it was ‘confiscated’ by the Home Ministry on the one hand, it was happily being sold in Kinokuniya on the other.
Also, I very recently found out from Acmamall’s website that bell hook’s ‘Feminism is for Everybody’ is “Not for sale in Malaysia.” It’s gone from the shelves of Kinokuniya, too, although it was there before. Either someone ran over there and got the last copy, or the Home Ministry officials were keen to educate themselves on feminism. (Bahahahaha.)
Curiouser and curiouser…
Acmamall is very infamous for getting book confiscated. I think they had bad relationship with the Customs (I guess they might have broken many rules in the past). I always get sex-related books by ordering from Amazon and Bookdepository for sex titles
Thanks for all the responses. It is frustrating that bookworms like us are being told what we can or cannot read by people who probably read less than two pages a year (local newspapers DO NOT count).
Thank God for the internet and online shopping.
If the books from Amazon UK were usually air despatched, could the this unusual delay be due to the volcanic ash chaos?
Yeah, the volcanic ash from Iceland could be the reason.
OMG. Now I need to get my hands on that pop-up book as well!
Good experiment – from my own personal experience, they do open and inspect, but not confiscate. Btw..I thought we couldn’t order DVDs if we had Msian addresses….I’ve never been successful with Amazon US with them.
Huh? Really? Amazon delivers books, cds and dvds to Msian addresses with no problems. Or did you try ordering from Amazon Marketplace? That’s not Amazon proper. That’s a place for sellers who want to use Amazon as a marketplace (something like Ebay but without the bidding). They rent a place at Amazon but all transactions are between the customer and the seller who is not associated with Amazon at all.
Ordering dvds from Amazon itself (Amazon US, UK, Japan, France etc etc) is not a problem. I’ve done it hundreds of times.
the kama sutra in pop up? you dirty dirty man =p
C’mon, how can you resist Kama Sutra in POP UP?? The title itself is already a winner!
Salam En. Khairul..
Permata yg hilang dah baca?
Lebih kurang S** manuals dlm BM
Itu pun kena ban jugak kan?
Err.. tak pasti pulak pasal ban. Yg pastinya buku ini amat rare, tak ramai yg ada copy. Mmg betul2 permata yg hilanglah.
I have Permata Yang Hilang in PDF format, LOL. Its not banned here AFAIK.