Umm Ibraheem

Dancing is so common within women that some people might even find it ridiculous that I’m talking about this. I probably would’ve found it ridiculous a few years ago. I mean, sure, I always get uncomfortable when a woman belly dances at a party for everyone. I’ll sit there in the corner and avert my eyes, wondering if it’ll seem strange if I just stood up and went to  the kitchen. I always seemed to be the only one who felt that way. It just never made sense to me - why should everyone just sit and watch as one woman performed this very provacative dance?

Forget about belly dancing – what about just women dancing all together? And we’re obviously not talking folklore or ballroom dancing here; we’re talking hip hop, belly shaking, shoulder shimmying dancing. It is clearly haraam in front of men – but what about within women?

I tried to look up dancing in hadith, etc, but I came up dry. My guess is perhaps that dancing is a rather new phenomenom. This topic did crop up in the Fiqh of Love class (more…)