I used to be part of a belly dance group. I was good. I spent about two years learning the ropes. Near the end of my time there, after some of our regular recitals, people would come up to me telling me how much they enjoyed my dancing.
I am the one "in focus" in the back row, far right
But the woman who ran the show, Hilary Shaw, who gave herself an Arabic name, Yasmina Ramzy, never quite liked me.
Perhaps it is because she knew I was an Ethiopian Christian. Or maybe because I never really behaved like a lackey - I was quiet and reserved.
Yasmina, despite her "Egyptian" name, was not really into Islam. She preferred the pagans of the pre-Islam cultures. She would dance to Ishtar and other goddesses.
Yasmina Ramzy in an invocation of the Moon Goddess
One day, I just up and quit. I had had enough: of being delegated to the back row, of dancing to godheads I didn't know, and of my final admittance (to myself) that this was an inferior dance: not like the ballet I spent years mastering during my pre-teen years, nor like the various American folk (square) and ballroom dances I performed in later years. And certainly not like the structured modern dances (where I also gained audience fans) while studying at the University of Connecticut in my mid-twenties and where I joined a community dance group.
Now, many years later, Yasmina Ramzy, aka Hilary Shaw, continues to genuflect to pagan goddesses, which my spiritual instincts had naturally abhorred and rejected.
Paganism is here to stay. It has been mulling around our culture for decades. Now "multiculturalism" and a covert dismissal of Christ are allowing it to germinate. It, along with its protector Satan, has (almost) come out into the open.
Which it will do unless we stop it.