#Middle-Eastern cultures

[holidaysincambodia]

Lioness Devouring a Man, Phoenician Ivory Panel, c. 9th-8th century BCE. From the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, northern Mesopotamia, Iraq.

[rotzaprachim]

A list of household things which MANY ethnicities seem to think are specific to their culture:

a) a plastic bag stuffed full of other plastic bags

b) cultural/religious knickknacks which your grandparents will scream at you for touching

c) a set of items that are specifically for Company (often the relatives your parents feel the need to impress and/or secretly despise)

d) a very loud woman

e) a butter cookie tin full of sewing supplies

f) mass Tupperware collections and/or ice cream and yogurt containers filled with surprise cold vegetables in the fridge

g) relatives overly involved in the physical appearances, profesional, and reproductive lives of the young women in the family

h) arguing

anyway I think the really interesting cultural identifier is what b) and c) are, because those are a little more specific even if the impulses behind them are not

[nejjcollectsbooks]

Arabian Dark Academia

Practising Arabic calligraphy, retaping flash cards back onto the wall of notes, kohl-rimmed eyes, translated folklore and classics, layered tops and long skirts, homework assignments written on your palms, self-teaching the mother tongue, mint tea and spicy coffee, writing from right to left, then writing from left to right, ink stains on your hands and cheeks, henna painted hands, long to-do lists, gold on your neck and your hands, dual language notes, detailed diagrams, switching languages mid-speech, headscarves in muted colours, reciting prayers against stress and anxiety, bookshelves filled with western and eastern novels, forgetting words in one language but remembering it in another, chewing the tops of pens and pencils, reapplying roll-on perfume throughout the school day, highlighted lines in textbooks, loud rich laughter bouncing off the corridors where ever the group goes.

You are a student. You are a student descended from foreign parents. You do what you were brought to the West to do. You learn.

[baebeylik]

Fragment of a Woodblock Print on Linen. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

From the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. 1200s/1300s.

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

Iran just launched dozens of drones at Israel

This marks the first time Iran directly attacks Israel, after years of attacking through its terror proxies.

Ps this is the same weapons they supplied to the Russians in their attacks against Ukraine…

See you in the bomb shelters in 9 hours, I’m gonna nap now

[unbfacts]

Brazil hosts a Lebanese-descended population of 7 to 10 million, exceeding Lebanon's own population of about 5.8 million.

[folkdances]

what's your favourite food that comes from OUTSIDE of your culture

[quotidianish]

Jade Winglet (minus Umber and Carnelian 😢) designs and another Winter/Turtle doodle

[whywoulditho]

I really think we deserve a random panel of damian wayne going to the bathroom with a water bottle in his hand. just for fun

[lgbtqiamuslimpedia]

Boyah

Boyah (plural: Boyat) was subcultural identity of AFAB non-binary,tomboy,demi girl & trans-masculine folks of Persian Gulf. Boyat are asigned female at birth,but express gender atypical behaviour. The origin of this queer subculture is unclear, some boyat claimed that it was started through online forums & groups. [citation needed]

Boyah subculture was more visible in Gulf states (including Kuwait,Oman,Saudi Arabia,UAE,Bahrain). Boyah identity may fall under the modern Transgender and Non-binary umbrella. However some people may considered them as people of forth gender.

Sexuality

Boyat folk's sexuality can be confusing in various cultural contexts. Most of the Boyat had intimate and romantic relationships with cis-girls in their past life, but they do not consider themselves as homosexual.

The term Boyah itself does not mean lesbian in arabic.In later life many Boyat had to pursue a heterosexual marriage & had children.Because marriage is a obligatory in local arabic customs.In addition to this, some boyah were androsexual & interested in boys only.

Culture & Lifestyle

Trans-masculine/tomboys/AFAB non-binary/AFAB genderpunk took the “Boyah” cultural identity in their early adolescence. On the otherhand, some boyat took the male role to challenge societal gender norms and stereotypes in Arabic Gulf States.

In general, a boyah is characterized by no make-up, no feminine expressions, no feminine name,feminine pronouns.In boyah subculture, Boyat community may use a massive masculine watches.Boyat people worn loose-fitting male cloth with a touch of the military, vibrantly coloured dresses,shirts and boyah jeans(which are baggy with big prints all over them). Since the age of internet Arab's boyat community started informal groups,online forums.

Most of the boyat have to lead double lives because gulf states has strict cultural gender roles especially for womxn.Many of them are forced to get married.In general Boyah phenomena is considered a disgrace to an arab family's honour.Additionally atypical gender expression is seems to be indecent and deviant in GCC states.Many boyat face stigma for not adhering with rigid patriarchal gender roles.

After leaving home, many undergo a radical transformation,changing their clothes at school/college or a friend's house.While in transition ,they run no real risk of being caught because,while in public, Emirates women are required to wear the national dress - a long black over-garment called an abaya, which makes it easier to switch roles without drawing attention.

Media

In general, Gulf media portrays queerness in negetive ways. A Boyah named Abeer appeared on the Saudi TV Show “Ya Hala” where he/ze said that he/ze was attracted to women while still at school. He/Ze had a complete love relationship with a classmate for a long time. Another person named Hamood joined a show of Radio Sawa where he/ze explained ze was rebelling against social (gender) norms and his/zee family’s restrictions through this boyah phenomena.

On a national television of UAE, a boyah named Bandar openly spoke about his queer relationship with another girl and expressed the desire to marry her and have children with her through IVF. His statement on Abu Dhabi's national television shocked the whole nation.

Decline of Boyah Culture

In the Persian Gulf region, boyah identity became very controversial since 2007. In 2007, the Kuwaiti parliament amended Article 198 of the country’s penal code so that anyone “imitating the opposite sex in any way” could face up to a year in jail and/or a fine of 1,000 dinars ($3,500). A further problem was that the law made no attempt to define “imitating the opposite sex” So it was basically left to the discretion of the police. Within a couple of weeks at least 14 people had been arrested in Kuwait City & thrown into prison. Boyat made their debut as a public concern in 2008 when Dubai police denounced cross-dressing - its chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, called on the Ministry of Social Affairs to find out how widespread the practice is and what causes it.

In 2009, Dubai launched a public campaign under the slogan "Excuse Me, I am a Girl", which cautioned against “masculine” behaviour among AFAB queers & tomboys and aimed to steer them towards "femininity". The impetus for this was a moral panic which swept through several Gulf states at that time, regarding the Boyah phenomena. 2 months after announcing the campaign the police persecuted 40 people (for their gender atypical expression), imprisoned them for 3 years in jail.In addition, trans-masculine/trans males,trans women,gender-queers were also shamed & abused by the UAE's police team.

Public Attitudes

Many conservative patriarchal arab people see a greater danger in the Boyah subcultural practices; they fear it can become permanent and cause great distress for the women and their families.

Psychiatrist Yousef Abou Allaban says, "It can go extreme, where they change their sex and have an operation.'' Saudi journalist Yousef Al-Qafari said in an interview on Radio Sawa that family disintegration and lack of true love have led women to act like a man. Al-Qafari said education was the best way to tackle this phenomenon.He called on the Ministry of Education to take up this role.

Social worker Nadia Naseer said, “Families play an essential role in such cases. Families should monitor their female members, especially when they start acting like men by cutting their hair short, wearing men’s clothing, or refusing to wear women’s accessories”. She also said, when a girl or woman does this,she is looking for attention & sending a message that she is a boyah.

Saudi writer Randa Alsheikh, in one of her columns, said that she attended a social gathering where she saw a group of females who appeared almost completely like men.“I would not be exaggerating if I say I could not tell the difference between them and men,” she wrote.She said that they looked, talked and walked like men & “even worse” some appeared to be in their 40s. We need to quickly address this phenomenon to contain these girls so that they are able to build good families and a healthy society,”

[bijoumikhawal]

hello! i hope it's alright to ask you this but i was wondering if you have any recommendations for books to read or media in general about the history of judaism and jewish communities in egypt, particularly in ottoman and modern egypt?

have a nice day!

it's fine to ask me this! Unfortunately I have to preface this with a disclaimer that a lot of books on Egyptian Jewish history have a Zionist bias. There are antizionist Egyptian Jews, and at the very least ones who have enough national pride that AFAIK they do not publicly hold Zionist beliefs, like those who spoke in the documentary the Jews of Egypt (avaliable on YouTube for free with English subtitles). Others have an anti Egyptian bias- there is a geopolitical tension with Egypt from Antiquity that unfortunately some Jewish people have carried through history even when it was completely irrelevant, so in trying to research interactions between "ancient" Egyptian Jews and Native Egyptians (from the Ptolemaic era into the proto-Coptic and fully Coptic eras) I've unfortunately come across stuff that for me, as an Egyptian, reads like anti miscegenationist ideology, and it is difficult to tell whether this is a view of history being pushed on the past or not. The phrase "Erev Rav" (meaning mixed multitude), which in part refers to Egyptians who left Egypt with Moses and converted to Judaism, is even used as an insult by some.

Since I mentioned that documentary, I'll start by going over more modern sources. Mapping Jewish San Francisco has a playlist of videos of interviews with Egyptian Jews, including both Karaites and Rabbinic Jews iirc (I reblogged some of these awhile ago in my "actually Egyptian tag" tag). This book, the Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, is avaliable for free online, it promises to be a more indepth look at Egyptian Jews in the lead up to modern explusion. I have only read a few sections of it, so I cannot give a full judgment on it. There's this video I watched about preserving Karaite historical sites in Egypt that I remember being interesting. "On the Mediterranian and the Nile edited by Harvey E. Goldman and Matthis Lehmann" is a collection of memiors iirc, as is "the Man in the Sharkskin Suit" (which I've started but not completed), both moreso from a Rabbinic perspective. Karaites also have a few websites discussing themselves in their terms, such as this one.

For the pre-modern but post-Islamic era, the Cairo Geniza is a great resource but in my opinion as a hobby researcher, hard to navigate. It is a large cache of documents from a Cairo synagogue mostly from around the Fatimid era. A significant portion of it is digitized and they occasionally crowd source translation help on their Twitter, and a lot of books and papers use it as a primary source. "The Jews in Medieval Egypt, edited by: Miriam Frenkel" is one in my to read pile. "Benjamin H. Hary - Multiglossia in Judeio-Arabic. With an Edition, Translation, and Grammatical Study of the Cairene Purim Scroll" is a paper I've read discussing the Jewish record of the events commemorated by the Cairo Purim, I got it off either Anna's Archive or libgen. "Mamluks of Jewish Origin in the Mamluk Sultanate by Koby Yosef" is a paper in my to read pile. "Jewish pietism of the Sufi type A particular trend of mysticisme in Medieval Egypt by Mireille Loubet" and "Paul B Fenton- Judaism and Sufism" both discuss the medieval Egyptian Jewish pietist movement.

For "ancient" Egyptian Jews, I find the first chapter of "The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD” by Simon Schama, which covers Elephantine, very interesting (it also flies in the face of claims that Jews did not marry Native Egyptians, though it is from centuries before the era researchers often cover). If you'd like to read don't click this link to a Google doc, that would be VERY naughty. There's very little on the Therapeutae, but for the paper theorizing they may have been influenced by Buddhism (possibly making them an example of Judeo-Buddhist syncretism) look here (their Wikipedia page also has some sources that could be interesting but are not specifically about them). "Taylor, Joan E. - Jewish women philosophers of first-century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae reconsidered" is also a to read.

I haven't found much on the temple of Onias/Tell el Yahudia/Leontopolis in depth, but I have the paper "Meron M. Piotrkowski - Priests in Exile: The History of the Temple of Onias and Its Community in the Hellenistic Period" in my to be read pile (which I got off Anna's Archive). I also have some supplemental info from a lecture I attended that I'm willing to privately share.

I also have a document compiling links about the Exodus of Jews from Egypt in the modern era, but I'm cautious about sharing it now because I made it in high school and I've realized it needs better fact checking, because it had some misinfo in it from Zionist publications (specifically about the names of Nazis who fled to Egypt- that did happen, but a bunch of names I saw reported had no evidence of that being the case, and one name was the name of a murdered resistance fighter???)

[folkaesthetics]

Traditional Bahraini attire

[nyiibat]

This TikTok video pissed me off so , Unfriendly reminder mixed babies, POC babies, and mixed people aren’t your fucking accessories! We’re people.

Actively seeking out a POC or a mixed person to have a mixed baby with is fucking weird, same for only dating a brown person in hopes of having a mixed child or adopting mixed kids.

Y’all are so fucking weird when it comes to “wanting a mixed baby” that y’all will sit back and day dream about “how pretty our features will looked meshed together” news flash mixed comes in all different forms, what’s your plan for that child if they don’t look the way you imagined them huh?! 🤔

Being a mixed person is just that much more harder especially when you’re a POC and don’t have a white passing privilege. We’re not your fucking accessories, we deserve parents that actually love us and not ones that just wanted a mixed baby to fetishize.

[baebeylik]

Incident in a Mosque/Divan of Hafiz.

Persian. Safavid Period. 1530.

Gifted to the Harvard University Art Museums.

[thebrightestwitchofherage]

April 7th, six months into the war

Since I woke up terrified, and had to run for my bomb shelter. I had to barricade myself in my house in case terrorists came.

I’ve never imagined that this war could happen let alone go on for so long.

People I know died, people I know were kidnapped (and thankfully rescued).

Thousands of rockets were fired, and I’ve had to run for my life countless times. For months my house was rattled by rockets, airplanes and bombings. Even my dogs are scared of random loud noises by now.

I also can’t recall a time *in my life* when so many foreign armies/ terror groups attacked us at once. There was a rise in violence and terror attacks.

Yet people here seem to have lost it: I’ve never saw so much antisemitism and bigotry. I’ve personally been sent death threats and slurs, and been harassed. All from seemingly peaceful and educated people, fuelled by misinformation, antisemitic rhetoric and blood libels.

The new trend is hating & harassing every Jews and Israeli in sight . Calling us Nazis and telling us we deserve it, and then having the nerve saying it’s about Zionism, not antisemitism.

There are currently 133 hostages still kept in captivity by Hamas, along with dozens of bodies

Bring them home now. Silence is unacceptable.