ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - In a fresh move to promote Islamic culture, Pakistan's TV censors have been busy. They have slashed footage of pop musicians sporting long hair and jeans. Male and female co-hosts of local television programs are no more. Scores of commercials and programs have ended up on the cutting room floor since the launching recently of a campaign by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government to impose its regimen of Islamic decency on television. For example, a toothpaste advertisement was considered unseemly because it showed a toothy young couple grinning at each other affectionately. Gone are the soap and shampoo commercials that showed "female glamour related to their bathing." Government officials say the campaign reflects Pakistan's traditional Muslim culture. The new policies are aimed at promoting Pakistan's rich heritage and Islamic traditions, not at trampling "acceptable" artistic expression, said Saddiq-ul Farooq, prime minister's spokesman. "The line of demarcation is that the animal instincts should not be aroused." But advertisers and artists say the new rules more reflect a slide toward Islamic fundamentalism that stifles freedom of expression - and costs them money. The campaign began in October after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reportedly complained that lascivious Western culture was polluting state-run Pakistan Television (PTV). PTV's censors took Sharif's gripe to heart. The censor board announced a new policy that banned footage of women "giving indecent and vulgar looks which are considered contrary to Islamic values." It also banned women from appearing in "jeans and seductive dress." Then a letter went out to advertisers saying commercials which depict "an alien locale and dresses not in harmony with our national culture will not be sanctioned for telecast." In conservative Pakistan, where sex outside marriage is a crime and many women don't venture outside the home without a veil, local film and television is traditionally conservative. Even before the newest campaign, Pakistani censors were discriminating, slicing footage of nudity, sexual intercourse, gratuitous violence and foul language from imported films and television programs. But critics say the new rules have gone too far. Advertisers have been warned against "exhibiting of body contours" and advised to avoid "unnecessary featuring of females." One of the first victims of the new rules was a soap commercial that featured a head and shoulder shot of a well-known Pakistani actress washing her face. Saying the footage was too seductive, censor board officials said it left to the imagination whether the actress was wearing any clothes, said Kareem Ramaal, an executive with Asiatic Advertising Ltd., the agency that produced the commercial. "It's quite a perverted attitude," he said. Ramaal and other advertising executives say the new rules could mean big losses for Pakistan's burgeoning advertising industry. Asiatic's clients have spent as much as $10 million producing some of the commercials that have been forced off the air. "That's just money down the drain," he said. If advertisers pull out, it could mean millions of dollars in losses for the cash-strapped state-run channel. PTV is Pakistan's only channel, but satellite dishes are making headway in this nation of 140 million people, offering dozens of channels over which the government has no control. A 1996 Gallup poll found that 58 percent of adults, about 38 million people, watch television. Seven percent said they had access to a satellite dish. "Culture and religious faith mean different things to different people ... the government should not even attempt to define them," the independent English-language newspaper The News wrote in an editorial. Pakistani singer, Salman Ahmed believes that the government worries that Western-influenced pop music and culture could foment discontent among the country's young. Ahmed said it wasn't his long hair and jeans that got his rock band, Junoon, banned from television, but rather government unhappiness over its hits, which speak of Pakistan's social ills and government corruption. "I think they are scared of us," Ahmed said. "The young generation listens to us and follows us - especially the social songs." PTV officials dismissed Ahmed's accusation, saying there was a difference between modernism and Westernization.