Veiled Treats

Despite the recent heat on people of Middle Eastern cultures, the veil-wearing Rahman ir Raheem hasn’t had too many “less-than-enlightened” responses to her attire. In fact, she says, “people are going out of their way to be politically — and maybe even spiritually — correct.”

She did have one negative experience when someone told her, “By wearing the veil, you’re identifying with the most violent people in the world.” She takes that kind of ignorance in stride, though. “Tell it to the nuns,” she jokes.

Raheem hopes to dispel some of the myths surrounding the veil — as well as those involving another Middle Eastern cultural phenomenon that’s little understood in the United States — when she combines a lecture titled “The Veil as Sacred Space” with a belly-dancing workshop this weekend. Raheem is a practicing Muslim who teaches belly-dancing workshops at the Kansas City Art Institute through her company, Bint Abd’ameen Productions. Just as not all Muslim women who choose to wear veils feel oppressed by the garment, Middle Eastern belly dancers are not glorified strippers.

“Women who wear the veil can be naughty and spunky, just like other women,” Raheem says, explaining that when women start belly dancing at celebrations, some will spontaneously begin banging on cooking pots for percussion. At traditional events — at which men and women remain separate — the dancers will use brooms and other tall objects as dance partners. The purpose of the dance is not seduction; it’s not intended to be performed so much as experienced, instilling a mesmerizing joy in the dancer herself.

Varying interpretations of the veil’s meanings have been debated in academic circles over the years. Some scholars argue that Western religions internalize sexual constraints by discouraging desire and lustful thoughts, while Eastern religions externalize those prohibitions, hiding from view what should not be touched. But many women who wear the veil by choice say they feel empowered by the fact that they can see others while others can’t see them. For her part, Raheem says, “I’d like to begin deculturizing the veil.”

By presenting some alternative ways of looking at the veil, Raheem hopes to defuse some of its negative political connotations. “If people could see the beauty and warmth that’s right in the marrow of that culture, they’d be shocked,” she says. “Those women are the gem of creation to the men: ‘Not a drop of rain will touch the head of my woman.'”

An umbrella might work just as well, but there’s never been anything evil about that. Belly dancing has been considered scandalous since repressed Americans attending a World’s Fair in the 1890s freaked out at the sight of women who could freely move their abdomens. But now that cheerleaders jump up and down in midriff-baring uniforms at high-school football games, maybe we should just get over it.