Thread: What's the difference?

Seems there are some general reservations about the appropriate-ness of using face wraps that resemble a burqa/niqab in belly dance. Just wondering why there don't seem to be any such reservations regarding a "melaya leff" dance, considering the melaya is also a modesty garment?

Garments that are commonly used to demonstrate religious modesty or affiliation would not, in my opinion, be appropriate for secular entertainment, especially entertainment that is not also offering some other sort of meaning or message (say satire, or purposeful boundary pushing, ideally from within a culture or religious group). Also, since you mentioned niqab, it generally covers part of or sometimes all of the face, and facial expressions are such an important part of Oriental Dance! Burqa is a garment that covers the entire body, also not conducive to the subtle movements of our dance form. But the religious meanings of those garments are why I respectfully have never even considered using them in dance, and prefer not to see them used by my dance colleagues.

I haven't heard of any religious connotation around the melaya lef.

Or are you referring to people using a dance veil (tarha) around their head or face while dancing? I have seen it done well and appropriately and cleverly, and I have seen it done where it crossed a line, for me. I used to see it a lot (ie, done to death) when I worked in restaurants, and to be honest I find it a little...dated? Cheesy? It can work, though, but usually when it is fast moving and feels part of a larger veil piece, not a long time 'posing with veil wrapped around head' type thing. One of those frustrating 'I know it when I see it' situations!

Oh, I was picturing a veil wrap, not a performance in an actual burqa, sorry to be unclear. I've just heard a tongue clicking type of response in the dance community to a face wrap because it resembles a burqa/niqab modesty garment. But a melaya is also a modesty garment, correct? I never hear any type of tongue clicking associated with the 'oops there goes my modesty garment' melaya leff dance, is it perhaps because Reda did it first, or am I missing some kind of point?

ETA, I find it really interesting that you responded that a face wrap crosses the line for you, *sometimes*. I'd love to understand why or why not :)

The milaya dance has a specific cultural context ie it was developed to celebrate the bint el beled. That type of woman has specific characteristics - for instance modest and chaste but flirty and street-wise. It is the type of fliration that can be indulged in when the boundaries are well recognized and people know if the line is crossed the woman's brothers will sort it. When the dance stays true to this character most Egyptians (who are okay with dance) like it. Have a laugh. Smile at the old ways. But I have also seen an Egyptian lose his rag when the interpretation veered towards sleezy whore trolling for johns; he considered this a personal affront to his elderly aunts who had been bint el beled and worn the milaya.

Apart from characterization, there is also how the milaya is used. Somethings you could do with it which would cross the line. Personally, I'm old school and would never discard the milaya during the dance. That's either sleezy or preparing for violence (women used to throw their milayas on the ground as a challenge prior to a fight).

Further to what Kashmir said, the milaya is more like a coat than anything else, and dances with it are like character dances, where you're being a certain kind of person *who actually exists* and used to dress that way. Now, you can go so far as wearing a bur'a (like a niqab really) when doing your bint al balad milaya lef dance, because that is also part of the traditional outfit. It's outdoor clothing, albeit almost archaic outdoor clothing. I would love do do melaya lef with my bur'a on, but would only do it for an audience of bellydancers though, for a particular reason.

When we don a niqab or any other face veil while wearing a bedleh or other saucy number, we're mixing the messages - outdoor modesty coverage, indoor sexy outfit and moves - and our desire to do so is mostly about the orientalist imagery we've grown up with that says Hot Harem Chick Wears Filmy Face Veil and Undies. But in the wider, real world, these days, the only people who wear face veils are women who are very very VERY modest and segregated, and/or women who wear them for religious reasons. It's an outward expression of deliberate modesty which is often attached to religion. Ergo, I am cautious about wearing them in a dance context because I don't want to offend or be seen as mocking.

*pulls up old lady chair* Many years ago, my dance class was learning a sooo cuuuute dance to an Emad Sayyah piece, and our costume included cute little face veils. CUUTE. About that time, my best friend's then-little daughter had a birthday party at which she decreed guests should dress as fairy tale characters, so I went as Scheherezad, with my face veil on. Later in the afternoon some friends of her mum turned up. They are Algerian Muslim women and they cover. I had my veil down by then so I could eat but I felt BAD. I felt like I was mocking them with my cute face veil, even though I didn't intend it that way at all. From that day forth I have never worn a niqab.

Sure, there's precedent in old Arabic movies but I think it's different when they do it.

What Monica, Kashmir and Zumarrad said. Also, please read Hala Fauzi's article about baladi, shaabi and melaya leff on the Gilded Serpent, "The Many Faces of Beledi" in which she thoroughly explains how the melaya leff character dance was conceived of and why by Mahmoud Reda for his troupe's shows. Gilded Serpent, Belly Dance News & Events , The Many Faces of "Baladi"

great question. great answers too.

A lot of the links for melaya leff in Arabic point to the idea that it's not quite viewed as an Islamic modesty covering so much as a folkloric shawl, or a theatrical prop and a dance associated with it. I believe it's more correct to translate "melaya leff" as "wrapped sheet" than "folk women garment" as it's done here, "Melaya Laf" Composition by Dr. Abdelwahab Abdelfattah - YouTube, but the captions in the video are still interesting.

I suspect there is an element that popular usage of the melaya leff goes back to a time when Egypt was not under quite as much pressure from Islamic hardliners (via oil money), and history has softened some of whatever overtones the melaya might have once had. In some ways, it might be a little like how older Catholic women laugh about how when they didn't have their scarves with them, they'd plop a handkerchief on their heads to go into church. There's religious modesty in the reasoning behind it, but it's not taken seriously as A Statement, more like "Hey, you can't go like that. You've got to cover up. Throw this on." The modern concept of hijab has become quite politicized, and how you veil can be more than just covering yourself for religious reasons. I think part of why Reda could get away with making a dance out of the melaya leff is that even back then, it had this quaint, baladi vibe to it, and he could turn it into a prop without challenging someone's piety.

Today, women over there who don't normally veil may put on extra coverage (e.g., an abaya) when they go out to avoid being hassled. (Depending on where in the ME you are, "hassled" might mean anything from lewd catcalls to getting arrested.) The way my teacher talked about it, it was very much, "Meh, if I had my druthers, I wouldn't bother with the extra layer, but whatever." In theory, it should be possible to artistically exploit the idea that there are women in the contemporary population who are not covering for some deep, meaningful, religious reason, but rather, because it's just easier to play along on a superficial level--but as an outsider to the culture, this would not be trivial to do well. Actually, I'm not even sure if Mahmoud Reda wanted to create such a dance today it would be received in the same spirit as the Melaya Leff was half a century ago. The fact that the Melaya Leff dance is sort of "a moment in amber" helps to offset the idea that using a contemporary modesty garment to flirt would be considered an insult to fundamentalist beliefs now.

I'm sure there are still a few women who wrap in a melaya to go out, but don't most women who are concerned about Islamic modesty wear whatever their locally preferred cloak/shroud/coatdress is now? List of types of sartorial hijab - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the spirit of the thread then, what are appropriate uses of veil facewrapping? I mean, if it's done in the context of a dance move - is that more appropriate than just wearing a faceveil of any sort? For example, Neilja Ates:

Nejla Ates (Son of Sinbad , 1955) - YouTube

Would that be pushing it?

Or, Aziza with a veil:

Aziza - Oriental Dance With Veil - YouTube

At the :23 second mark, she wraps it around her face. Would that be considered also in poor taste?

The Melaya Laff is a modesty garment in a *very* different sense from the niqab or burqa or hijab.

It has more of a secular national (Egyptian) connotation and less of a religious Islamic one.

No Sharia law has ever required the wearing of the Melaya Laff, and no government has ever considered banning the wearing of the Melaya Laff.

If they had, it would be just as politically and socially loaded as the others and I wouldn't dance with it.

Waving a Melaya around during a dance is like waving an umbrella around during a dance -- it's outerwear.

Waving a burqa, niqab or hijab around during a dance is like waving a cross or Star of David around. It has a loaded religious , social and political implication and if you're dancing with it I would expect it to be an interpretive dance exploring serious issues rather than a moment of cutesiness.

I helped Farida Fahmy do some research a few years ago, I found some books for her on Ottoman Egypt.

She told me a really sweet story (and I'm sure she's told it in classes) about, how when Reda had his first rehearsal for his melaya number, all the girls borrowed melayas from their aunts, older servants, etc. She borrowed hers from her laundry woman, and she described how thin and soft it was from years of use.

I think of the melaya like when you go out on a fancy night on the town, you might wrap a shawl around you to ward off the chill and not stick out in your sequins quite so much. You look a little more modest and feel a little more comfortable walking down the street but it's not so much a religious thing.

Originally Posted by Lauren_

The Melaya Laff is a modesty garment in a *very* different sense from the niqab or burqa or hijab.

It has more of a secular national (Egyptian) connotation and less of a religious Islamic one.

No Sharia law has ever required the wearing of the Melaya Laff, and no government has ever considered banning the wearing of the Melaya Laff.

If they had, it would be just as politically and socially loaded as the others and I wouldn't dance with it.

Waving a Melaya around during a dance is like waving an umbrella around during a dance -- it's outerwear.

Waving a burqa, niqab or hijab around during a dance is like waving a cross or Star of David around. It has a loaded religious , social and political implication and if you're dancing with it I would expect it to be an interpretive dance exploring serious issues rather than a moment of cutesiness.

My, yes. I love what everyone has said so far about the nuances of this!

Just to add (maybe): saying it's a "modesty garment" is a bit unnuanced. Most things intended as outerwear in Islamic-majority cultures are inherently modest, for pragmatic as well as theological/ideological/sociocultural reasons (pragmatic, e.g.: if you pray five times a day, it helps to be already wearing something -- or have it readily to hand -- that follows the fiqh of hijab for prayer; on a more secular note, these garments are something that shields from the sun, etc. etc.) While all such modest outergarments fit those guidelines for hijab, they're not inherently religious. And as Lauren says, things become different when a garment is politicized, as often as not because of outside pressures (like hijab headscarves/niqab) -- it takes on other dimensions.

Can I ask for a moratorium on the word "burqa," please? It's so over-used and misused. Niqab is not a burqa. The Afghan chadri isn't seen outside Afghanistan much, and it's such a flashpoint, such a symbol for Westerners of "the oppression of Muslimahs" to be used in all kinds of ways (many problematic) that it's really uncomfortable. That's it's original name, chadri. The name burqa originally referred to this, which bears little resemblance to the chadri: *

People so overuse this word ("Whoa! You're wearing makeup with a burqa! Are you supposed to be doing that?" when you have a headscarf on); maybe it's a pet peeve of mine.

As for the actual Afghan chadri/burqa, I recently was looking at a troupe's site where they had a folkloric/fakeloric performance that was apparently themed around the dances of women across the Islamic world and through history, and among the photos in the photo gallery of this piece was an image of a dancer onstage wearing the full-on chadri. Without me actually seeing the performance, that bothered me.

And to add:

Taheya Carioca, Fairouz, Melaya Leff - YouTube

This is not only a charming performance in an old film, it also makes a statement about the melaya leff and social class, not piety.

Originally Posted by Minajen

In the spirit of the thread then, what are appropriate uses of veil facewrapping? I mean, if it's done in the context of a dance move - is that more appropriate than just wearing a faceveil of any sort?

For me, the issue comes down to whether you and the audience are on the same page. There's a certain leeway for peek-a-boo veil moves in AmCab, because that's what dancers did back then, but you have to be careful. Not all audiences are going to recognize that you're representing a specific era/style, because some of these moves also look awfully similar to being uninformed and perpetuating a stereotype. Avoid looking like you don't know better in front of ethnic audiences, and avoid reinforcing Orientalist misunderstandings in front of GP audiences when they don't know better.

I wouldn't say you can never make an illusion to face covering, though. To me, it's more of a coy, lighthearted moment. In the midst of a character piece, or if the song lyrics reference shyness, it might make perfect sense to do a short covering gesture. I think where you run into problems with Middle Easterners getting insulted is when you present the harem girl stereotype as any sort of serious, culturally representative thing. IIRC, some years ago, Laurel Victoria Gray choreographed an interpretive piece about women's rights in Afghanistan that involved the dancers being completely veiled, but that's a totally different artistic direction.

Originally Posted by Tiziri

Can I ask for a moratorium on the word "burqa," please? It's so over-used and misused. Niqab is not a burqa. The Afghan chadri isn't seen outside Afghanistan much, and it's such a flashpoint, such a symbol for Westerners of "the oppression of Muslimahs" to be used in all kinds of ways (many problematic) that it's really uncomfortable. That's it's original name, chadri. The name burqa originally referred to this, which bears little resemblance to the chadri: *

People so overuse this word ("Whoa! You're wearing makeup with a burqa! Are you supposed to be doing that?" when you have a headscarf on); maybe it's a pet peeve of mine.

Except that it's the *correct* word to use for the Egyptian face veil worn with the Melaya in the Melaya Lef tableau. Admittedly, with a glottal stop instead of the Q, so as Zumarrad used it "bur'a", or "bor'a".

Originally Posted by beafarhana

Except that it's the *correct* word to use for the Egyptian face veil worn with the Melaya in the Melaya Lef tableau. Admittedly, with a glottal stop instead of the Q, so as Zumarrad used it "bur'a", or "bor'a".

Good point, but I'm not sure it's really quite the same word? AFAIK q isn't a transliteration of/interchangeable with a glottal stop (my Arabic outside of prayer is rudimentary. If you're an Arabic speaker, you probably know way better than me if this is the same word.) Then again, what I have seen looks more like that Khaleeji burqa. Or maybe a yashmak.

And unfortunately the way the word burqa has become (over)used in the West, what people associate it with is the Afghan chadri or full-on Salafi-style niqab.

Originally Posted by Tiziri

Good point, but I'm not sure it's really quite the same word? AFAIK q isn't a transliteration of/interchangeable with a glottal stop (my Arabic outside of prayer is rudimentary. If you're an Arabic speaker, you probably know way better than me if this is the same word.) Then again, what I have seen looks more like that Khaleeji burqa. Or maybe a yashmak.

And unfortunately the way the word burqa has become (over)used in the West, what people associate it with is the Afghan chadri or full-on Salafi-style niqab.

I have always tried to use the correct words for anything connected with Egyptian dance. I do take your point, but I'd still use the term "bor'a" for the face veil in Melaya.

That's the way I've heard the letter "qaf" pronounced, by Egyptian people.
Wikipedia says: "In Egyptian Arabic, as well as Levantine Arabic and forms of Moroccan Arabic from around Fes, the letter is often pronounced as the hamza or glottal stop [ʔ] but is approximated to [k] or preserved in several Modern Standard Arabic loanwords."
Qoph - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not saying Wikipedia is right. We all know how fallible it is. But it ties in with the way I've heard Egyptians use the "Q" sound.

OK, I'll take bor'a.

My dislike of the use of the word "burqa" stems from its overuse, its connotations (it's so politically loaded and oft-used by people with a bigoted agenda), and its misuse (I hate being asked about my "burqa" if I'm wearing hijab, I know other Muslimahs who do the same, and I know niqabis who visibly cringe when they hear the word.) So my hackles are automatically raised when it enters any conversation. I kneejerk dislike it because of most people's usage. As I said it's a pet personal peeve.

FWIW I will not use the word burqa for anything but the Afghan one and I, too, hate it being misused.

You actually do see burqas in NZ occasionally, up north, I am told, but I haven't seen anyone wearing one; there are a lot of Afghans here but the ones in my town just wear headscarves. I have seen full on chadors with niqabs though.

As for burqa onstage: I did once see a really amazing dance in one, performed by Mary Lynn Buss who used to be one of the Oasis Dance Camp organisers. It was a contemporary dance piece about the silencing and oppression of women and it was very powerful. But there was no flirting, stripping out of it, anything like that. The burqa was more a means of anonymising, and of course it had fairly powerful implications at the time, when the US was still warring pretty hard on Afghanistan. One thing she did do was spin in it, showing off the beautiful fabric and its self-embroidered edge. Burqas are actually really beautiful if you look at them as objects; all those tiny pleats.

The use of the Melaya by Mahmoud Reda came at a time in which Egypt was very much more liberal and secular than it is now. If you look at some of the Egyptian magazines and movies from the 1950s and 60s I think most people would be shocked at the short skirts and skimpy bathing suits. Reda's choreographies represented a variety of different aspects of Egyptian society and the melaya is something most people would have immediately recognized as belonging to a certain element of society. Mahmoud once told me though that alot of people misinterpret the melaya now and think it's just about being really flirty and aggressive - they chew gum and go overboard on the flirtiness, which he says women wouldn't have done, and that wasn't what the dance was about.

As Tiziri said, the melaya leff dance for many people represented a lower class of society, but in a cute way, and also an older, particularly beledi way of life (although many lower class women still wore it back then). Films of the era always represented the bint el-balad in a melaya and pom pom head scarf (there's actually academic research about this out there ;), and they're usually a complicated mix of tough and sweet, flirty and modest, so Reda using the melaya would have been in keeping with all the films and such that use the melaya to represent a certain class of women. The niqab, on the other hand, definitely has a different connotation than the melaya, as it is meant to represents a woman's piety. The niqab is not something people take lightly, unlike the melaya.

Furthermore, President Gamal Abdel Nasser utilized the national dance troupes as a means of promoting national identity, so Reda's dances had the added bonus of being state sponsored and promoted, making them more socially acceptable. Nowadays, although the troupe still has state sponsorship, they dances are not about contemporary, nationalistic events (or else we'd be seeing them performing the revolution on stage instead of Reda's old choreographies...)

As for the pronounciation of "q" or "qalf" in Egyptian Arabic, I studied Masri in Egypt and was told to drop the "q" - hence why Egyptians always sing about al Amar and Amarain instead of al Qamar and Qamarain ;)

Oh, and I once saw a lovely and respectful Bedouin dance while in Winnipeg, Manitoba done by a girl wearing a traditional Sinai style bedouin costume and burqa - I believe she was with a troupe from Saskatchewan that had Denise Enan choreograph for them. It was an amazingly gorgeous dance and the expression was all in her eyes and movements. I wish I could remember the dancer's name! It was fantastic.

Originally Posted by Tourbeau

In some ways, it might be a little like how older Catholic women laugh about how when they didn't have their scarves with them, they'd plop a handkerchief on their heads to go into church. There's religious modesty in the reasoning behind it, but it's not taken seriously as A Statement, more like "Hey, you can't go like that. You've got to cover up. Throw this on."

Yes, one Egyptian once said something like, "You'd be at home in your house clothes and need to pop out to the market. Covering with the milaya was sufficent to be respectable - and there would be somewhere to store the groceries!"

Originally Posted by Tiziri

Can I ask for a moratorium on the word "burqa," please? It's so over-used and misused. Niqab is not a burqa. The Afghan chadri isn't seen outside Afghanistan much, and it's such a flashpoint, such a symbol for Westerners of "the oppression of Muslimahs" to be used in all kinds of ways (many problematic) that it's really uncomfortable. That's it's original name, chadri. The name burqa originally referred to this, which bears little resemblance to the chadri: *

People so overuse this word ("Whoa! You're wearing makeup with a burqa! Are you supposed to be doing that?" when you have a headscarf on); maybe it's a pet peeve of mine.

Actually the correct name for the face veil in Egypt is bur`a (that is burqa with an Egyptian accent). It is a totally different thing from what many call the Afghani Burqa - which covers the whole body. The only point of similarity is that it covers. (The root is to drape - doesn't say what)

Originally Posted by Tiziri

Good point, but I'm not sure it's really quite the same word? AFAIK q isn't a transliteration of/interchangeable with a glottal stop (my Arabic outside of prayer is rudimentary. If you're an Arabic speaker, you probably know way better than me if this is the same word.)

Raqia - Ra`ia (or in some parts of Egypt Ragia)

Originally Posted by kashmir

Raqia - Ra`ia (or in some parts of Egypt Ragia)

Thanks for the clarification; what conversational-type Arabic I do have is not Egyptian (a smattering of Darija is what I have).

I just react badly to the word "burqa"

Originally Posted by Tiziri

Thanks for the clarification; what conversational-type Arabic I do have is not Egyptian (a smattering of Darija is what I have).

The only real Arabic you can (could - I think the University pulled it some years back) study here was standard. I got a bit of a shock when I first went to Egypt. Worse than pronunciation differences which your ear can attuned to - although your mouth takes longer to adjust - is that much of the colloquial language is quite different

If we're splitting hairs, the Ajeeb/Sakhr dictionary shows the noun burqa as بُرْقُع(baa+Damma+raa+sukuun+qaaf+Damma+ayn). Ayn is sometimes transliterated with an apostrophe. (I would avoid "accent," since accenting may be interpreted as long vs. short vowels.) Qaaf is also frequently transliterated with an apostrophe in Egyptian Arabic, since Egyptians replace the qaaf sound in most words with a glottal stop.

Part of the problem with transliterating Arabic is that English doesn't adequately represent all of the linguistic differences. If you want to account for variations in dialect pronunciation, qaaf could be written as nothing, an apostrophe, "q", "k", "g", or even "2". Then again, writing an apostrophe could mean an Egyptian qaaf, ayn, or hamza; "g" might mean a Levantine qaaf or an Egyptian jeem; "k" might mean kaaf or a localized Mashriq or Khaleeji pronunciation of qaaf...and then your head explodes, so "burqa" is okay for writing about that covering in English no matter what dialect you're trying to represent. Egyptians don't always take the Arabic qaaf out of their transliterations just because they don't pronounce it. They're used to adapting on the fly, and sometimes the qaaf needs to stay to eliminate confusion with another word. The Internet isn't an academic journal where everybody agrees to follow the same, explicitly specified transliteration protocol to represent script or dialect. Learning Arabic means learning to roll with letters that get represented more than one way in English.

As far as rants about misusing "burqa" to mean any Islamic veiling, yes, it's horrible to be ignorant, especially willfully ignorant, but let's be honest. Most of us would not like to be in a situation where someone was holding a gun to our head and making us sort a pile of slightly varying black garments into "Iranian chador" and "Khaleeji abaya," and we're interested in learning. It's unrealistic to assume everybody should be adept at recognizing differences in clothing in a language they don't speak, for a religion they don't follow, from cultures where they've probably never befriended anyone who wears these garments well enough to examine their closet. Yes, some people are bigots who intentionally try to insult and ridicule Muslims, but most people don't choose to make mistakes in a forum where they're trying to improve their understanding. It's easy to hear a foreign word, think you know what it means, and misuse it because the issue is more complex than you guessed. I can imagine how frustrating it is for Muslims to be constantly absorbing the brunt of all this un-knowledge, but making non-Muslims feel bad when they misunderstand just reinforces the stereotype that Islam is a religion for people who spend way too much time worrying about fulfilling some letter of the law regarding women and modesty--and I'm sure nobody here wants to perpetuate that idea. Pictures and explanations are worth more than a thousand rants.

Ah, no, and I apologize if it came off that way or made anyone uncomfortable -- it is a bit of a rant. It's just one of those words that the common use of makes me leery (like "jihad"). Since the issue is what veiling is OK and what isn't, I assumed some hair-splitting on what veiling is what wasn't inappropriate.

Originally Posted by Domina

As for the pronounciation of "q" or "qalf" in Egyptian Arabic, I studied Masri in Egypt and was told to drop the "q" - hence why Egyptians always sing about al Amar and Amarain instead of al Qamar and Qamarain ;)

Ohh that explains SO much! Thank you.

Tiziri, I didn't want to sound like I was ranting back at you, either. When Islamic terms get misused on Bhuz, it's usually because they're coming from someone fumbling to understand, not rampant Islamophobia, you know? It's very hard to be on the outside and sorting through conflicting information. Remember the recent jilbab thread? People were juggling two ideas: what's the difference between clothes a Muslimah wears around to do everyday stuff vs. "mosque clothes," and how do you know what's a "galabeya" and what's a "jilbab" when some online vendors seem to throw the terms around interchangeably? This is the same problem. How do you identify these garments from looking at pictures (that may have some of the same terminology confusion as "galabeya"/"jilbab"), when some of them are black (so the pictures don't show good resolution), and you may not have ever had a chance to compare them in person? How do you figure out regional naming variations? I linked the Wikipedia page on sartorial hijab upthread because it had pictures, but who knows how accurate that is?

A few years ago in a store I saw a woman wearing what looked like Afghani blue chadri/burqa, only it was beige. I've no idea if that would still be called a burqa or where that style originates (it's the one and only time I've seen anything like it), but it seemed impolite to go up to a stranger in the canned goods aisle and say, "Hey, whatcha wearin'?" This woman was trying to do her grocery shopping with two little kids in tow. I'm sure she wasn't looking for an interfaith dialogue, and generally speaking, it's not a great idea to randomly engage strangers in conversations about something as personal as religion anyway. Add to that the heightened sensitivity between Muslims and the rest of the US, and it's no wonder there's more awkward silence than information floating around. Non-Muslims are afraid to ask for fear of saying the wrong thing. Muslims are afraid of getting drawn into an argument where they have to defend their beliefs to someone whose opinion is irrelevant. Both sides are afraid to reach out.