Jarrar wrote an opinion piece called "Why I Can't Stand White Belly-Dancers", published in Salon in 2014. In this piece, Jarrar said she felt that white women who take part in the art of bellydance are engaging in cultural appropriation and "brown face."[4] Her commentary was widely criticized; UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh stated ironically "Maybe telling people that they can’t work in some field because they have the wrong color or ancestry would be ... rats, I don’t know what to call it. If only there were an adjective that could be used to mean 'telling people that they mustn’t do something, because of their race or ethnic origin'".[5] Atlantic writer Conor Friedersdorf pointed out historical inaccuracies in Jarrar's argument, citing an academic source: "[W]ith regional variations, something like Raqs Sharqi seems to have been known throughout the Mediterranean and certainly flourished in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean before the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century".[6] Novelist and comics writer G. Willow Wilson wrote in defense of Jarrar, "When you shimmy around a stage in a hip band and call yourself Aliya Selim and receive praise and encouragement, while the real Aliya Selims are shortening their names to Ally and wondering if their accent is too strong to land that job interview, if the boss will look askance at their headscarf, if the kids at school are going to make fun of their children, guess what: you are exercising considerable privilege."[7] Jarrar wrote a follow-up to her piece, titled "I Still Can't Stand White Bellydancers."[8]