Message #18266

[N. Truth Seeker]

That's a fine write-up and a very revealing one.  Malicious propaganda like these  aren't known to many readers.   Westerners are never interested in spreading the word about intellectual Muslim women of good taste who excelled in poetry, literature, art, personal dignity and political astuteness.    But many Westerners are darn quick to manipulate the social status of sophisticated Muslim women, contorting their reputation as fourth-raters.   It's not possible to find any art images of the real alimas.  Alimas participated in their work of organizing, managing and carrying out the tasks required for indoor gatherings of respectable family homes (not in the streets or sidewalks) where outsiders would never be allowed.  No orientalist artist would be admitted in family-and-friends-gatherings inside residences .. just as no artist has ever painted the true picture of a family's recreational portion of the household for women as artists would never be permitted inside.  That would completely violate the privacy of women of that household.  For that reason just about all orientalists painted the so-called "harem life" with half-clothed women, a figment of their own imagination that grew from the western social propaganda of "Muslim men with 100 concubines" and the load of rubbish to spice up such fictions.  Similarly, the alima-turned-almey is painted as a tart and the Middle-Eastern version of a geisha.   

A packet of propaganda and disinformation that has gone on for centuries with no signs of being corrected because hardly any reader or watcher of such arts knows the level of inaccuracy contained within these stories. 

In modern times, some Jews professing to know a lot about the Arab society and the dom dancing culture, attempt to compare modern Middle Eastern dances with medieval dom performances and also try to portray that modern Middle-Eastern dance, music and art are inherited by the dom tradition.  Thoroughly false.    Dances can be lewd or decent, depending on the type of dance, atmosphere and gathering.  Some are dignified for the purpose of art, some not.  Raqs or belly dancing is never considered an acceptable profession in the Middle East nor anywhere in the world.  Many modern authors use the term ghawizya for dancers in general. Very incorrect portrayal.  Everyone knows that the medieval culture of ghwazi dances had nothing to do with art and dignity and neither was the field of art & culture ever influenced by this unscrupulous practice.  Dom dancing culture represented plain immorality and debauchery.  That's precisely the reason why many of those Dom minority still residing in the Middle East never speak of their decendancy.