By contributor Sean Carey

I am driving along Mile End Road in east London around midnight with a Bangladeshi friend. I am giving him a lift home, after we had paid a brief visit to a “gentlemen’s club” located on the border between Tower Hamlets and the City, the so-called Square Mile, London’s preeminent financial district. “Well, I can now say that I am not very keen on lap-dancing clubs,” my friend informs me.

We had just spent around 45 minutes in the club. The venue opened two years ago. It is one of 11 currently licensed lap-dancing clubs in Tower Hamlets. Only those 18 or over can cross the threshold. The club opens in the late afternoon and closes at 3AM, Monday to Friday. Young, predominantly white men –- “City boys”, as they are known — with high levels of disposable income sit either at the bar, tables or in armchairs –- and can either talk amongst themselves or engage in conversation with around a dozen “girls” who are looking for clients. For a fee of £20, a striptease can be performed in an alcove at the back of the club. A “private” room is also available. The club takes a proportion of the women’s earnings and, along with the sale of alcohol, is a key revenue stream. “Do you ever have any trouble,” I ask the owner. “Never,” he replies. “Everyone is as good as gold. In any case, we have really good security.” He then indicates two very large men, one black one white, at the club’s entrance. He pauses and adds: “The only trouble we have is with the local authority.” More on this later.

My friend is nominally Muslim –- he visits the mosque only occasionally and is largely secular in outlook. He likes the U.K. and London in particular. Apart from his early years, he has spent most of his life in Tower Hamlets. He very much admires open and tolerant multicultural societies. “Each to his own,” could sum up his personal outlook in terms of how people organise their personal lives. But perhaps he has reached the limit of tolerance after a visit to the lap-dancing club. And even a relatively weak religious identity clearly plays a part in how he evaluates such cultural forms. “Everyone likes to have a good time, have a drink and meet people, but perhaps it would be better to meet somewhere else.” He paused for a moment to reflect. Because we had also visited a Bangladeshi-owned “Indian” restaurant earlier in the evening he then added: “On the other hand, running a restaurant which serves alcohol is also prohibited in the Koran.” He was obviously wrestling with the metaphysical problem of adjudicating between making a living from two types of businesses that according to Islamic law are forbidden (haram).

I asked: “From a Koranic point of view which is worse: running a restaurant which serves alcohol, or running a lap dancing club?”

“Difficult to say,” he answered. “Both are bad.”

I felt the issue could be explored further. “All right, but leaving aside for the moment how you view it, tell me how most Bangladeshis, either in the U.K. or in Bangladesh, would see the situation? Would they see owning a lap-dancing club as worse, the same or somewhat better than owning a restaurant which serves alcohol?”

Put this way, my friend was able to answer very quickly: “Oh, in both countries they would see the lap-dancing club as worse.”

How did my friend and I end up making our first visit to a lap-dancing club? We had been visiting a Bangladeshi-owned “Indian” restaurant in the Aldgate area to talk about my friend’s recent move to Sylhet, Bangladesh, to set up a business in the part of the country from which he originates. He wanted to run some ideas about marketing and branding past me.

Continue reading “Lap-dancing and moralities in a global world” →