Stupid Question ™

Oct. 25, 2001

By John Ruch

© 2001

 

Q: Both belly dancing and women wearing veils are hallmarks of Islamic culture. How does Islam reconcile these apparently contradictory practices?

—Big Mike

 

 

A: It’s not really a contradiction at all: in either case, female sexuality is considered fearsome and inherently sinful.

            However, the overtly sexual forms of “belly dancing”—indeed, the very term “belly dancing”—are Western exaggerations of Middle Eastern dance, sold by Hollywood and Western strip clubs before returning in the their new form to countries such as Egypt and Turkey. This Western burlesque model is increasingly condemned by conservative Muslims.

            Belly dancing and veils are more hallmarks of Middle Eastern culture than of Islamic culture.

            The Koran does instruct women to be veiled among unrelated men, but modern theological interpretation merely dictates “modest dress,” or hijab.

            This can be any garment that completely covers the arms and legs, and is not tight-fitting or revealing. In the Middle East, it’s usually a robe, sometimes with a head scarf, and in very conservative societies like Saudi Arabia, a face veil. Hijab exists specifically to ward off sexual temptation.

            After Islam and hijab rolled out of Saudi Arabia around AD 625, non-Muslim slave girls were still free to dance unveiled in the caliph’s palace. And Muslim women, now typically living in segregated quarters, were free to dance for each other’s private entertainment.

            Around the 10th century, Gypsy entertainers blew through much of the Middle East. As non-Muslims, they could dance openly, and developed a style incorporating elements from many different regions. This was the real beginning of “belly dancing.”

            Though only mildly erotic, it was very popular, and it became common to hire Gypsy dancers for weddings, clearly for sexual symbolism. It appears that Muslim women also eventually became dancers.

            Then Westerners heard about it and started exporting it as erotic and exotic. The 1893 Chicago World Exposition featured a dancer called “Little Egypt” doing the “danse du ventre”—French for “belly dance.” Strip clubs and Hollywood jumped all over it, adding more raunch and such Far East fantasy touches as sequined bras.

            By the 1940s, Egypt had re-imported this raks al-sharqi (“Oriental dance”) for nightclubs and its own film industry. Places such as Turkey and Iran soon followed suit. Local dance, including the wedding gigs, was soon dominated by these more risque belly dancers, and has been ever since. Many of the dancers are now Muslim, and in Egypt they’re still required to cover themselves—but usually only with skin-tight gauze.

            Islam long took a tolerant view of belly dancing, but in recent years clerics have condemned it. Iran shut it down. Egypt’s top cleric banned dancers from making the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, and fundamentalists have attacked and burned nightclubs.

            Like most conservative Muslim outrage these days, this is only partly religious. There’s also the not-wholly-inaccurate perception that modern belly dancing represents an invasion of corrupt Western values.

           

 

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