Today's Arab Revolution

One of the most interesting and first of its kind music videos, released in 2002, is that of an extremely popular Lebanese singer by the name of Elissa. Since the launch of her musical career, Elissa has been the first, and one of the few Middle Eastern artists to test the boundaries and push the limits of traditional Arab culture. Through her music and videos, Elissa, among many others, has greatly helped in driving people to pursue and push for the westernization and open-mindedness needed to move forward in today’s world, that is seen and being acquired in several Middle Eastern countries today.

Ellissar Khoury, the Lebanese singer famously known as Elissa, first started her singing career in the early 90’s on a Lebanese talent show called Studio el Fan on Lebanon’s leading television station, LBC. Throughout her career she has sold close to 18 million albums, making close to $31 million in her career, thereby making her one of the most popular Lebanese and Arabic singers in history.


In the music video above of her song “Ayshalak” Elissa, an attractive brunette is involved in a risqué rendezvous in a Parisian hotel. Throughout the video, which follows the story of this forbidden meeting, an illicit relationship is portrayed between her and the male figure featured in it. Most of the filming takes place in the hotel room, at times she’s in the room alone, as if waiting for her man, while the man is also with her there at times. The video is dripping with promiscuity and eroticism, and her outfits are relatively revealing and skimpy. In one scene she’s wearing tiny silky lingerie, and in another she’s lying down moving suggestively as if fantasizing about the man in the video. The camera picks up different perspectives throughout filming jumping from the perspective of an audience member, to that of the man with Elissa staring up and moving erotically, to scenes where she is being filmed performing.

The promiscuity is not only portrayed through the visual aspects of the video, thereby appealing to the audience's pathos, but that sex appeal is also apparent in the lyrics of the song. I realize not too many of you understand Arabic, so I’ve provided a translation of some of those lyrics. They read:

And the gleam of my eye shows
Desire in my heart for you, my dear
And passion that’s been there from the day we met
My dream was to be with you
Even if only one day of my life to spend with you
And dreams upon dreams have I had about you my love
...
My heart is waiting for you
Come closer to me my dear
My longing for you has grown
Fill me with the world’s desire
...
I adore you and no matter what I say
My soul will be with you always
...
My heart is waiting for you
I’m living for you
Come closer to me…

Elissa’s videos establish a new level that needed to be reached in order to legitimately be “extreme” and testing the limits of what is publicly acceptable in Arab culture. Promiscuity, attraction, and seduction are all very much private things that is Arab culture, are only supposed to occur between a man and his wife and behind closed doors; this is greatly due to the instructions in the Koran:

"And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts, and display not their ornaments, except those which are outside; and let them pull their kerchiefs over their bosoms and not display their ornaments save to their husbands and fathers, or the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or the sons of their husbands, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or what their right hands possess, or their male attendants who are incapable, or to children who do not note women’s nakedness; and that they beat not with their feet that their hidden ornaments may be known. But all turn repentant to God, O believers! May you prosper." (Koran, Light 24:31 p216)

Now, although the Koran offers guidelines by which Muslims are expected to live their lives, Islam’s prevalence in the Middle East for the past 1400 years has lead to a point where Islamic laws have govern not only Muslims, but people of all other religions residing in the area. This thereby poses the same expectations of conduct from Christians and Muslims alike. So although most of these female artists that display themselves so iconically are indeed Christian Arabs, the social and cultural expectations of modesty are there.

A significantly large portion of female singers are Christian, largely due to the fact that Christian-Arab families tend to be much more liberal and easy going than their Muslim counterparts, thereby allowing more Christian women the chance at the spotlight than Muslim women that are usually governed by more traditional and conservative families that would be much less inclined to allow their daughters the freedom needed to be a pop star.

Although at the time that Elissa’s video was released, her suggestiveness seemed especially daring, even for a Christian singer; this is a trend, increasing exponentially in popularity, becoming almost typical of the now contemporary Middle Eastern music scene. Every year, more female Arab singers emerge presenting themselves as provocative, erotic sex symbols; asserting themselves through their movements, voice, dress, and all over image; some of the most famous and popular of them being Nancy Ajram, Haifa Wahbeh, Dana, Nawal Zoghbi, and numerous others.

The eroticism like that coming from Elissa in her music videos may be all too common and familiar to the westerner’s eye, but in the Middle East, this is a completely different story. What would seem in western culture to be outdated and cliché is exactly what makes these music videos, so gripping to a Middle Eastern audience, it is the notion of something being “forbidden”. Unlike western culture, Middle Eastern culture approaches the forbidden in a much more artistic form. It is part of human nature to long for what one cannot have, and the vastness of things that are forbidden in Arab and Muslim culture only contribute to making them seem all the more appealing.

Ultimately it comes down to that people in the Middle East have been suppressing their attractions, urges and sexuality for so long that Muslim law can no longer rein it. There is a revolution happening, and it’s happening through popular Arabic music. The social and cultural boundaries and norms are being tested, pushed around and trodden on on a daily basis. Remarkable social and cultural changes are just around the corner, and although sex may seem to be the most prominent and striking facet of these little rebellions, it is in fact the least important one of all. Sex is simply the window of opportunity through which people are being presented with the vast possibilities and opportunities that will become available upon people’s demand for and acquisition of the freedom they all deserve. These videos, these small acts of courage, courage to stand up and demand freedom, freedom of speech, and of expression, provide a world in which Arabs can freely mold, shape, and assert their identities in whatever way they choose, regardless of whether or not they are an accurate indicator of social, cultural, and political change that allows them to do so in the real world. What matters is that they are all small but sure steps in the right direction. Thomas Jefferson said, “Every generation needs a new revolution,” if that’s the case, this one is about a millennium and a half past due.





Women of the Revolution. (clockwise, Nancy Ajram, Nawal Zoghbi, and Haifa Wahbeh)








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Works Cited:
1. The Koran, translated by Dawood, N. J. Penguin Books Limited, 1985.