Notes on the Sex Appeal of Belly Dancing (With Reference to the Case of Johara)

Ekaterina Andreeva (aka Johara)
Seems like a nice girl ...

I have to admit that, unlike Flaubert, I'm not a great fan of Eastern dance - or, as it is commonly known, belly dancing [1]. It's too obscenely sensual for my tastes I'm afraid and always makes me think of that old expression about jelly and jam.

Having said that, I quite like the costumes that some of the young women wear [2] and have no objection to them wiggling, wriggling and jiggling across a dance floor in order to earn a living if that's what they want to do. It clearly requires skill and discipline and performers deserve to be recognised as professional artistes continuing a long tradition of shimmy and shake.       

Although this style of dancing is found across the Arab world, Egypt has a special claim to be the home of belly dancing and the modern form (and modern outfits) originated in the nightclubs of Cairo. Many of the performers, however, are non-native; despite concerns that foreign-born dancers lack authenticity and didn't fully appreciate the folk traditions associated with the dance.

Unfortunately, as a more conservative form of Islam has taken hold across the Middle East in the contemporary period, dancers - as well as other female performers, including singers and actresses - have increasingly been villified by the authorities on the grounds that their immodest displays of flesh are haram.

In Egypt, for example, there are strict laws in place governing what dancers can and cannot wear; can and cannot do. Whether they wear a traditional bedlah or a more modern dress design with mesh-filled cutouts, is up to them. But they must cover their lower bodies, breasts and stomachs and retain their modesty (including modesty of movement and gesture) at all times.

Many dancers in Cairo ignore these rules, however, and they are rarely enforced. Having said that, there are multiple instances of foreign dancers being arrested - which brings us to the case of Russian-born Ekaterina Andreeva, known by the stage name Johara, meaning Jewel, who has been sentenced to a year behind bars in an Egyptian jail after she was filmed giving a performance which, the authorities claim, incited debauchery.

Not only was she said to be working without a licence, but, worse, she was clearly dancing without underwear! The ruling follows a video clip of her performance - on a boat sailing along the Nile - going viral and gaining her a large global following on social media: click here.         

Obviously, she's expected to appeal the sentence. And obviously I hope Miss Andreeva's conviction will be quashed. Though, equally obvious, is the fact that her performance is sexually provocative - what would be the point of belly dancing if it were not erotically charged? 

Not that there's anything wrong with that ... Indeed, I'm tempted to remind readers of Lawrence's view that sex and beauty are essentially one and the same thing, like flame and fire: "If you hate sex you hate beauty. If you love living beauty, you have a reverence for sex." [3] 

The greatest disaster that can befall any civilisation is a morbid fear of the body, its forces, its flows, its mysterious openings, and its desires. For this causes the instinctive-intuitive life within us to slowly atrophy. What we call sex appeal is really just the communicating of a sense of beauty and it will always invoke an answer of some kind:    

"It may only kindle a sense of warmth and optimism. Then you say: I like that girl, she's a real good sort. It may kindle a glow, that makes the world look kindlier, and life feel better. Then you say: She's an attractive woman, by Jove, I like her. Or she may rouse a flame that lights up her own face first, before it lights up the universe. Then you say: She's a lovely woman. She looks lovely to me. Let's say no more."

I'll let readers decide for themselves what level of heat Miss Andreeva produces and whether the fire of sex that she rouses is pure and fine, or something of which we should be ashamed ... 

Notes

[1] The term, belly dance, is a translation of the French danse du ventre, coined by an art critic in response to a controversial painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme entitled La danse de l'almée (1863). The picture is a classic example of pervy Orientalism, depicting a woman dancing, accompanied by musicians, before an audience of soldiers sitting with their legs spread in a fantasy setting. Eventually, this term came to be used for all dances of Middle Eastern origin in which a woman displayed her charms. It first entered into English in 1889.

[2] The costume most commonly associated with belly dance is the bedlah, which typically includes a fitted top or bra, a hip belt, and a full-length skirt or harem pants. The bra and belt are often decorated with beads, sequins, crystals, or coins. The modern bedlah style which originated in the early twentieth-century, is an amusing example of (Arabic) life imitating (Western) art, in as much as it took inspiration from Hollywood. I suspect my own forndness for the harem-look is due to childhood memories of Barbara Eden in I dream of Jeannie. 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), lines quoted are on pp. 145 and 147. 

It's important to note that Lawrence doesn't always approve of women exploiting their sex appeal: "There is, of course, the other side of sex appeal - it can be the destruction of the one appealed to. When a woman starts using her sex appeal for her own advantage, it is usually a bad moment for some poor devil." [148] Such thinking - clearly sexist in character - is unfortunate; as is his branding of these women as prostitutes and vamps.     

See also 'Pornography and Obscenity' in the above collection of essays and articles, where Lawrence develops his notion of sex appeal and admits "No matter how hard we may pretend otherwise, most of us rather like a moderate rousing of our sex. It warms us, stimulates us like sunshine on a grey day." [239] Those who deny this and are genuinely repelled by even the simplest and most natural stirring of sexual feeling, are, he says, perverts and puritans "who have fallen into hatred of their fellow men" [239]. That nicely sums up the theocratic morons who have brought the case against Miss Andreeva. 
 
To watch Johara doing her thing in another video on YouTube, click here.

This post is dedicated to my favourite Arab girl about town, Nahla Al-Ageli, creator and writer of the wonderful online journal Nahla Ink.

Islamism: What Would Nietzsche Do?

I. If Islam Despises Christianity, It Has a Thousandfold Right to Do So

Whilst it's true that Nietzsche does praise Islamic civilisation - particularly the wonderful culture of the Moors - within The Anti-Christ (1888), you rather get the impression he's doing so in order to provoke his mostly Western readers who pride themselves on the superiority of their own Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian inheritance.

For Nietzsche surely knew that Islam - as part of the same moral-religious tradition as Judaism and Christianity - is as problematic in terms of his own critique of values as either of the latter. He might like to romanticise the Arabs as a noble and manly race in comparison to the modern European, but such orientalism was common in the 19th century and needn't detain us for too long.

Besides, Islamism - a militant form of fundamentalism - is very much a phenomenon of the 20th and 21st centuries and so wouldn't have been something that Nietzsche would have been familiar with. He did, however, anticipate the rise of such murderous ideologies and he did directly address the question of revolutionary fanaticism in his mid-period writings.

It is, therefore, perfectly legitimate to speculate how Nietzsche might have responded to the question (and the threat) of Islamism ...       

II. Serenity Now

Firstly, it's important to point out that, despite what many of his adherents as well as opponents often claim, Nietzsche - for all his anti-humanism - remained pro-Enlightenment; that is to say, someone with a deep admiration for the faculty of reason. It was important to Nietzsche that he not be regarded as an irrationalist or fanatic; i.e., one who demands faith and obedience from his followers, whilst displaying all the irritable impatience and resentment of the invalid.  

As Keith Ansell-Pearson reminds us, Nietzsche conceived of philosophy as a method for curbing excessive forms of enthusiasm and tempering the emotional and mental hysteria that we encounter in the world's hot-spots. As so many of these hot-spots happen to be Muslim majority countries, one is tempted to characterise the entire Muslim world as one huge tropical zone full of absurdly violent passions and "the most savage energies in the form of long-buried horrors and excesses of the most distant ages" [HAH 463].

Ultimately, moderation is the key to Nietzsche's mid-period therapeutics. And the main aim is to counter all forms of religious and ideological stupidity. It is the duty of those he calls free spirits to cool things down in a world that is "visibly catching fire in more and more places" [HAH 38], via an analytical naturalism and a dose of eudaemonic asceticism.

Ansell-Pearson is keen to trace such a practice of philosophy back to the ancient Greek thinker Epicurus and he makes a very strong case for why it is instructive and legitimate to do so. Personally, however, I'm more interested in how Nietzsche's thinking resonates within contemporary popular culture; such as in the work of comic genius Larry David ...


III. Zügel deine Begeisterung

Like Nietzsche, Larry is driven by a stubborn and sceptical form of honesty that tolerates no bullshit or groundless idealism. And like Nietzsche, Larry encourages us also to find joy in the small things - in details and in the minutiae of daily existence (including our language). Ansell-Pearson writes:

"There remains a strong and firm desire for life but [...] this voluptuous appreciation and enjoyment of life [...] is modest in terms of the kinds of pleasures it wants [...] and in terms of its acknowledgement of the realities of a human existence." [43] 

Such a philosophy is clearly antithetical to any faith that claims absolute moral authority. And so, it's little surprise then that in the most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm Larry runs foul of the Islamists and has a death sentence placed upon him by the Iranian Ayatollah.

His crime: Mocking Muslim clerics on a TV talk-show whilst discussing his new project, Fatwa!, a musical-comedy based on the Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses) affair.

His defence: Religion should be made fun of. It's ridiculous. If I believed that stuff, I'd keep my mouth shut lest somebody think I was out of my mind.

Notes

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy, (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Vol. I., trans. Gary Handwerk, (Stanford University Press,1995). 

To watch a clip from the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9, featuring a rehearsal scene from Fatwa!, click here.  

Gaby Hinsliff Versus Douglas Murray: You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Choice

In her review of his new book, The Strange Death of Europe, political journalist and commentator Gaby Hinsliff accuses Douglas Murray of gentrified xenophobia; a phrase by which she means a "slightly posher, better-read, more respectable" form of racism.

The implication being that if you scratch away the smooth exterior, then Murray is revealed as simply a more articulate (thus more persuasive, more dangerous) version of Katie Hopkins, appealing to the kind of people who "wouldn't be seen dead on an English Defence League march", but who nevertheless fear Muslims are coming to rape their loved ones and destroy their way of life.

I don't think this is a fair characterization of Mr Murray, or his readers. And nor can such fears be dismissed as entirely irrational or groundless; not after Rotherham. In fact, I would say concerns about the three i-words around which Murray weaves his text - immigration, identity and Islam - are perfectly reasonable.

Nor do I think that Murray's book - which Hinsliff rather bizarrely disparages as a "proper book, with footnotes and everything" - is "so badly argued" that she can dismiss it without addressing any of the factual data that is carefully documented and detailed in those footnotes, even if she chooses to interpret it differently from the author and play down the seriousness and legitimacy of his concerns. 

Hinsliff insists the work "circles round the same repetitive themes" and "regurgitates the same misleading myths" concerning immigration that UKIP like to peddle. But, ultimately, it's she who bores us by repeating the well-worn platitudes of liberalism and her feigned ignorance - at least I hope its feigned - of what makes European culture uniquely precious and worth defending.

In a tweet, published on the same day that her review appeared in The Guardian, Hinsliff jokes that she'd read Murray's book so that her readers wouldn't have to - hardly an inspiring model of criticism. But, in that same spirit, I'm writing this so that you'll not waste your time clicking on the link below - whilst at the same time strongly recommending Murray's text.


Notes

Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, (Bloomsbury, 2017).

To read Gaby Hinsliff's review of the above in The Guardian (6 May 2017): click here. 

To read my reflections on Murray's text, click here.  

Photo of Gaby Hinsliff by Mark Pringle. Photo of Douglas Murray by Matt Writtle. 

Of Virgins and Raisins

According to Christoph Luxenberg's controversial reading of the Koran, one of the better known inducements offered to young Muslim males prepared to martyr themselves is not, in fact, a heavenly harem of virgins, but, rather, a fistful of raisins. 

However, without wishing to doubt for one moment Luxenberg's scholarly credentials or the painstaking nature of his research, I have to say I'm not entirely convinced by his argument that the Aramaic word hur, meaning white raisins - a great delicacy in the ancient world - was mistranslated into the Arabic term for a fair maiden (and subsequently transliterated into Latin as houris). It just seems a revision too far; that is to say, too good - because so splendidly amusing - to be true.

One fears that Luxenberg has some kind of anti-Islamic agenda in wishing to strip Jannah of its sexual promise. Accused by some of being a Christian apologist, perhaps he can't stand the thought that whilst all that he's offered in the afterlife is, at best, a family reunion, a bit of a sing-song, and the chance to hang about with Jesus, Muslim martyrs hit the jackpot.

Delights on offer include: rivers of wine, milk and honey, young boys of perpetual freshness to attend to one's every need, fine silk garments, and, as mentioned, 72 virgins. And when Allah provides virgins, they're not just any old virgins - they're übervirgins, the purest of all pure beings with lovely gazelle-shaped eyes, naturally large breasts, hairless, translucent bodies and inviting vaginas; immortals who have no need to urinate, defecate, or menstruate.

Despite Luxenberg's etymological argument, it's difficult to assign a raisin - no matter how plump and delicious it might be - such physical attributes. The fact is, the Islamic paradise is a far more sensual and priapic place than the sexless Christian heaven, which is free of pain and tears, but also lacking in erotic joy.

Some might caricature the former as nothing more than a celestial brothel, but that's a slightly more appealing prospect if I'm honest than a great care home in the sky.            


See: Christoph Luxenburg, Die Syro-Aramäische Lesart des Koran: Ein Beitrag zur Entschlüsselung der Koransprache (Verlag Hans Schiller, 2000)

Reflections after the Atrocity in Nice

Marianne à bout de souffle face à la terreur ...

swahacartoons.blogspot.co.uk 

After Nice, a lot of people are calling for something to be done beyond putting out the candles and teddy bears once more or creating caring hashtags on social media; some are even calling for an act of reprisal not just against the Islamists, but the wider Muslim community itself. 

Such an act would, of course, not only violate international law, but effectively mark the end of how we in the West morally define ourselves; as Christians who forgive and turn the other cheek; as liberals who subscribe to notions of due process and human rights; as modern individuals who pride themselves on being such and having abandoned ancient notions of collective responsibility and collective punishment.  

This has nothing to do with Islam means, among other things, that we - as ideal individualists - find it barbarous to associate causal responsibility and guilt with an impersonal and collective form of agency. We want to hold individual terrorists to account, not blame an entire religion, because we need to believe in the autonomous subject who exercises moral choice and free will.  

But perhaps we should examine more closely the group mindset of a people who identify (and act) primarily as Muslims, unconditionally submitting to a faith in which God's will matters a whole lot more than free will. This is not to incite hatred or provoke violence. It is merely to raise the crucial question whether a whole community can be held - at least in part - responsible for the harms produced by particular members. It seems unfair, but that doesn't necessarily means it's illegitimate.

I have a Jewish friend, for example, who insists that it's entirely appropriate to hold all Germans responsible for the Holocaust, not just those who were high-ranking and fanatic members of the Nazi Party. Like Karl Jaspers, he's not really concerned with who did what, but with assigning Kollectivschuld on the basis of what one is.*

And, like Jaspers, he argues that if you belong to a group - be it a race, a class, or a religion - that is committing atrocities in your presence or with your knowledge - though not necessarily with your approval or support - then you too are tainted by association and, at some (metaphysical) level, responsible.  

I have to admit, the above argument is deeply troubling to me; where can it lead other than to a principle of Sippenhaft, i.e. group liability and brutal collective punishment? I know that some philosophers argue that punishment might take the relatively mild form of reducing the strength of group bonds or de-institutionalizing group norms, but I also know that it can become terroristic in its own right and lead to acts of genocide.

So ... what to do then, after Nice?

Well, I don't think we should simply mourn and then carry on regardless. And I certainly don't think we should resign or even accustom ourselves to such events. If we choose to reaffirm the values of the Enlightenment that France embodies - including, let us not forget, laïcité - then let us do so actively ...        

* See: Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, trans. by E. B. Ashton, (Fordham University Press, 2001). 

Submission (On Christianity, Islam and the European Migrant Crisis)

Cover of the Hungarian edition of 

Michel Houellebecq's novel Soumission (2015)

These are strange times indeed! 

So strange, that one even finds oneself in agreement with Peter Hitchens - yes, the slightly younger, much less lovable brother of Christopher Hitchens - on an increasing number of questions, including the European migrant crisis. 

For he's right, surely, to argue that we in the West will not solve this apparently insoluble problem, or be in a position to help anyone, if we destroy our own continent with its own unique history, culture and system of values in the process, or simply give it away, as he writes, "to complete strangers on an impulse because it makes us feel good about ourselves". 

Unfortunately, Hitchens doesn't examine this emotional spasm gripping the political leaders of Europe, the media, bleeding-heart celebrities, and, apparently, large numbers of the British public who were moved by a single photo. And, of course, the reason he doesn't examine it is because it's rooted precisely in the Christian moral tradition of which he is such a vocal exponent. Thus Hitchens is on tricky ground and his analysis of current events is compromised ultimately by his own faith. 

In other words, what I'm suggesting is that it is our own idealism - particularly the ideal of self-sacrifice - that is at play here; we are still attempting to imitate Christ hanging on the Cross and commit one final auto-da-fé en masse so that we too can whisper with our dying breath and face turned towards heaven consummatum est. 

It is finished; meaning, our time as a people is finally over; we give up, let those who are younger, stronger, more devout, more numerous, have a go at running things. Michel Houellebecq understands this suicidal and sentimental fatigue and how our will to love has effectively undermined our will to survival. In his novel, Soumission (2015), he writes perfectly convincingly of how a near-future France easily transforms into an Islamic society.   

It's a book that Hitchens has read and admires. But, again, I don't think he quite understands the work or sees why it is Europe has adopted this submissive position; how what he describes as weakness and cowardice is, in fact, the result of our corrosive and toxic virtues including: pity, charity, and humility.

The sad and terrifying fact is that we would rather turn the other cheek and love our enemies, even when they want to murder us, than be seen to be unkind or unjust in any way. Just as Jesus died for our sins, we want to die for the sins of others. And so we hold open the gates and meekly smile and clap hands as hundreds of thousands of migrants push past and give thanks to Allah for the soft stupidity of the kuffar. 

          

Notes: 

Peter Hitchens's recent Mail on Sunday piece entitled 'We won't save refugees by destroying our own country' can be read here. 

Michel Houellebecq's novel has been translated into English as Submission, by Lorin Stein, (William Heinemann, 2015). 

Obviously, Nietzsche - not an author I suspect Peter Hitchens has much time for - identified Christianity as more harmful than any vice over a century ago and predicted what would happen to Europeans as a result of adopting this slave morality and attempting to put it into practice. That we have not repudiated this creed once and for all not only does us no credit, but it brings down a curse upon us. And if Islam despises the Christian West, writes Nietzsche, "it is a thousand times right to do so: for Islam presupposes men ..." [The Anti-Christ, section 59.]

Can't We Talk About This?

John Keane, The Death of Theo Van Gogh (2007)

www.johnkeaneart.com

In November 2004, Dutch filmmaker and provocateur Theo Van Gogh was brutally slaughtered on an Amsterdam street for his part in the making of a short film entitled Submission; a film which, primarily, examined the relationship that exists between Muslims and their God and asks how necessary reform of Islam might be possible when Allah demands absolute obedience to his laws, with no room for doubt or critical dissent amongst his worshipers.   

Having shot his victim multiple times, Van Gogh's devout assailant then cut his throat and attempted to decapitate him in front of horrified witnesses, before finally plunging the knife deep into the dead man's chest. Apparently, among the last words spoken by Van Gogh to his killer were: Can't we talk about this?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Van Gogh's friend and collaborator on Submission - writes: 

"It was so Dutch, so sweet and innocent. Theo must have thought there was some kind of misunderstanding that could be worked out. He couldn't see that his killer was caught in a wholly different worldview. Nothing Theo could have said to him would have made any difference."

- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel, (Pocket Books, 2008), p. 321   

I recount this deeply depressing incident by way of a response to a presentation recently given by John Holroyd on the topic of Islam.

Holroyd, a Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens hating crypto-theologian, teaches philosophy and religious studies at a London college and is a man for whom these subjects are perfectly compatible, if not, indeed, one and the same thing. His paper, in essence, called for still greater dialogue between the West and the militant forces of Islamic extremism, thereby strangely echoing Van Gogh's naivety in the face of those who hate us, hate all that we love and hold dear, and mean to do us mortal harm.

Now, whilst I concede that it might be good to talk - and that loving one's enemies might be the Christian thing to do - sometimes, unfortunately, there's really nothing further to discuss and inasmuch as this loving of enemies can lead to a reluctance to actively combat the forces of murderous and reactionary violence, then Jesus's teaching might be said to result in immorality and risk the triumph of evil.   

Thus, rather than listen to Jesus, I'd sooner heed Michel Foucault who argued that fascism - whether it be political or religious in nature and whether found in the hearts and minds of others or, indeed, in our own acts and pleasures - must be vigorously resisted as an essential aspect of living an ethical life.