Indo-Chic & Arabs, Islam and The Dogmas of The West

Said’s article was interesting and short. It gave a brief snippet of the perceptions of Asians (Arabs, Islam, and other minorities) and how Westerners had contribution to these perceptions of orientalism. One main thing I got out of this article is the dogma that Said presents that the fact that most biases towards these ethnicities is based on the cultural texts and not because they actually know of how the culture is like. I think this is something that could easily related to because even from reading articles I also need to understand that there is much more to the culture and not just what I read in the articles. I think that it was a very meaningful concept to keep in mind with everything that is also presented in the class. Along with the dogma that is presented in the article Indo-Chic, by Maira there is the spoken concept of cultural appropriation and cultural authenticity. These two themes were one of the main concepts spoken in the article, the idea of body art and Henna that allows for people to express themselves to their community. Henna has been seen throughout the cultures and in the article it speaks of the appropriation of the use of henna in western society to be acceptable. I feel like this topic is also something I could relate to because every culture has their lingo of what is deemed to be appropriate and what is not, in this article there was a lot of mention about the cultural appropriation of the use of Henna in western cultures. I feel like for me in my culture I had experienced doing something that is outside of the western culture, such as burning incense because it’s a part of our tradition but not in western cultures. I think that this article was meaningful in describing how it came about for Henna’s to be utilized in western culture an be accepted, it is seen now that even with western cultures more and more people are getting henna’s done and its more widely accepted in today’s cultures.