The Arab Aesthetic Problem
The confusion, appropriation, and gendered contradictions behind a global and religious aesthetic.
From religious signaling to identity politics, Arab culture is increasingly used as a global aesthetic for Islam. The problem is not just confusion—it is a form of cultural appropriation that often ignores the voices of Arabs and especially Arab women.
I grew up half Arab and Muslim in the Middle East. Arabic was the language of my childhood, and Islam was the religious framework that shaped the world around me. As a young girl and later grown woman, with both Arab and European heritage, my relationship with Islam was always complicated. I struggled to practice it when it was imposed upon me, and disassociated form it once I left the region. I’ve become increasingly vocal about my criticism of Islamic fundamentalism, particularly because of the harm it continues to inflict on women in the region, but also around the world in families that are given a measure of immunity for religious freedom.
But stepping away from the religion never meant stepping away from my culture. Being Arab is not the same thing as being Muslim, even though those identities are constantly collapsed into one another—especially in social media and entertainment around the world.
In recent years I’ve watched Arab culture increasingly used as a visual symbol for Islam. Conflating culture and religion without any commitment on behalf of many to better understanding the difference. When I was growing up the image of the bedouin sheikh was representative of “rich Arab man in the land of newly-discovered oil”. As problematic as that “exotic” version was, today it has transformed into a far more political identity beyond the region itself. Clothing, Arabic phrases, calligraphy, and other aesthetics associated with the Arab world circulate on social media as shorthand for Muslim identity. It appears in activist imagery, in fashion trends, in identity signaling, and even in cultural debates. The assumption behind it is rarely stated but it is always present, especially for those of us who are Arab and not muslim: Arab culture somehow represents Islam.
One major point, however, is conveniently missed: Islam is a global religion practiced by more than a billion people, the majority of whom are not Arab. Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Turkey have enormous Muslim populations, each with their own languages, traditions, and cultural histories. Islam did not erase those cultures when it spread, not then and not today. It absorbed and interacted with those cultures. And yet, when Islam is visually represented in global discourse, the imagery almost always defaults to Arab aesthetics, specifically the Arabian Peninsula Arab men.
This confusion doesn’t just come from the West. It also appears among non-Arab Muslims themselves. In many parts of the world, Arab culture has become associated with religious authenticity. Arabic phrases are used symbolically. Arab clothing is adopted as a marker of piety. Cultural practices from the Middle East are treated as if they were religious norms, thus perpetuating more misunderstandings of the Arab people and concluding assumptions that more often than not harm Arabs. Over time, Arab identity itself gets pulled into the orbit of the religion, even though Arab culture has always existed, before Islam, and will exist beyond it.
Ironically, this dynamic produces a form of cultural appropriation in the name of religion—an act that would be widely criticized if directed at many Indigenous cultures around the world, but is often ignored when it comes to Arab culture. The esthetic people borrow to signal Muslim identity has in fact become the Arab one, even when they have no cultural relationship to the societies those symbols come from. It turns a living culture into a symbolic costume for a global religious narrative, when the only Arab element Islam truly carries is the language in which the Qur’an was revealed.
I see this dynamic in unexpected places too. In some queer and ex-Muslim spaces online, Arab aesthetics are used as tools for identity statements. Non-Arab individuals who identify as queer Muslims or ex-Muslims sometimes incorporate Arabic script, Gulf region clothing, or other Middle Eastern visual markers into their public identity. I have seen the “thobe” turned into a rainbow tutu as a sign of queer liberation by non-Arab (often non-white) ex-muslims. I suppose it’s meant to signal rebellion against religious authority, or a way of expressing complicated relationships with Islam. But because most of these individuals are not “white” they are given a pass by the identity police, even though the aesthetic itself is detached from the actual religion and ultimately perpetuates a disrespectful and harmful stereotype of Arabs.
What strikes me most in these spaces is how often the conversation ignores the lived realities of women from Muslim and Arab backgrounds. The aesthetics of Islam and Arab culture are used as symbols in ideological debates, while the voices of women who grew up navigating the actual religious and cultural pressures and oppressions remain peripheral and even silenced. The conversation becomes about identity politics rather than lived experience.
One of the most curious contradictions in all of this appears in the way men’s and women’s clothing are treated differently.
Clothing associated with Arab men—particularly styles from the Gulf region such as the thobe (long dress tunic) or shemagh (keffiyeh/headdress) —sometimes appears in aesthetic or symbolic contexts without much hesitation. These garments may be used in fashion imagery, cultural references, symbols of protest, or visual representations of Muslim identity.
Women’s clothing, on the other hand, is treated very differently.
Many people hesitate to wear garments associated with Muslim women out of fear of disrespecting religion. Head coverings or other garments are often viewed as inherently sacred or religious, which perhaps they are to those who practice the religion.
But here is where the misunderstanding becomes obvious.
Many forms of women’s dress in Muslim societies are tied to religious interpretation and practice, and are not associated with a culture, a people, or an ethnicity. Men’s clothing in Arab societies on the other hand is overwhelmingly cultural rather than religious.
And yet the cultural clothing is the one that gets borrowed freely, while the religious clothing is approached with caution.
The result is a paradox: religious symbolism is avoided out of respect, while cultural traditions are appropriated without much thought.
As someone who grew up inside that world, I find this conflation deeply frustrating.
Criticizing Islam—especially its fundamentalist forms—does not mean rejecting Arab culture. In fact, one of the things that fundamentalism has done over time is absorb and reshape Arab cultural identity in ways that make it appear inseparable from religion, when in reality there is so much the Arab culture has to offer outside the confines of Islamic restrictions. This makes it difficult even for those of us who are Arab to criticize Islam without being labeled Islamophobic or prejudiced.
But Arab culture is older, broader, and far more diverse than any single religious interpretation.
There are Arab Christians, Arab atheists, Arab secularists, Arab Jews, and countless others whose identities exist outside the boundaries of Islamic belief. Even among Arab Muslims, religious practice varies enormously.
Reducing Arab identity to a visual shorthand for Islam erases that diversity. It also turns a complex culture into a symbolic tool—one that gets deployed in global debates about Islam while the actual voices of Arab people, and especially Arab women, are often pushed aside. Another way Western societies have conveniently avoided the issue of women’s rights.
None of this means cultural exchange should stop. Cultures influence one another. Symbols travel. Ideas evolve. And I for one love sharing both my Arab and Italian cultures with the world as long as they are received and treated with respect.
But what we are seeing now is not simply cultural exchange. It is a strange mixture of religious symbolism, aesthetic trend, and cultural appropriation—a phrase I have avoided and been allergic to for its overuse in radical spaces in recent time—but this is appropriation, and it often treats Arab identity as a convenient visual language for discussions about Islamic empowerment or rebellion.
Arab culture is not a costume. It is not a shorthand for Muslim identity, good or bad. And it should not be reduced to an aesthetic prop in ideological debates.
For those of us who grew up inside these realities—especially women who have lived under the weight of both cultural expectations and religious impositions—the conversation cannot remain this superficial and, as I have personally experienced, dismissive.
There is a persistent lack of education and understanding about the difference between culture and religion when it comes to Islam and the regions where it is practiced. If people truly want to engage with Islam, its politics, its criticisms, or its reform, they should do so honestly and intelligently. And they should stop borrowing Arab culture as the stage on which to perform those arguments.
