ARTICLE: Rihanna’s Arabic Tattoo

Rihanna’s Arabic Tattoo

By J Mayhem
Edited: Friday Jan 13 2012

It was only just a handful of decades ago that tattoos were popularly considered to be socially unacceptable, juvenile, and even the mark of a someone of questionable character and values by most of Western society and its ruling institutions which trickled down. This pervasive anti-tattoo mentality was the historical result of the Catholic Pope Hadrian’s prohibition of tattooing altogether within the borders of the former Roman Empire and Christendom, in 787 C. E.

The relatively new and sudden surge in the popularity and acceptance of tattoos in Western society was largely due to the influence that the media had on people and how popular society icon-icized and emulated pop-culture icons, icons such as Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger as just two examples. Young Americans in post Vietnam America did not look up to their politicians , their parents or their religious leaders as examples of who they wanted to emulate, they looked up to the stage of their favorite rock star or on screen at their favorite movie star. In retrospect it was quite a logical and predictable progression of historical events, the more people saw tattoos on their icons in the media, the more the demand for tattoos and tattoo artists rose in direct relative proportion. Tattoos have become so extremely entrenched into all social levels of Western society that everyone from police officers to judges to clergy are tattooed, and to find someone who is not tattooed is becoming rarer and rarer.

A natural result from the increased popularity of tattoos over time has been emergence of trends and sudden increases in the demand for certain types and styles of tattoos, which happen in direct proportion and relation to a pop culture icon getting a particular type or style of tattoo the medias broadcasting it. One of the biggest recent trends of popular tattoo designs has been Hebrew lettering or Biblical phrase tattoo designs very much because of pop icons such as David Beckham and his wife Victoria Posh Spice Beckham, Madonna, and Britney Spears getting them.

The latest celebrity to take a tattoo plunge with a new kind of tattoo is the sexy pop music star Rihanna and she had an Arabic lettering tattoo done on her body. Rihanna got her fifth tattoo inked on her body inked by an anonymous tattoo artist in 2008. The tattoo is located on her ribcage/side area just below her left breast. The tattoo is an Arabic phrase which reads “Al-Hurria fi Al-Maseeh,” and translates approximately to “Freedom in God” or “Freedom in Christ.” Some people have speculated that Rihanna’s Arabic chest tattoo may be misspelled, similar to the incident of her Sanskrit prayer tattoo the Barbados-born babe had inked on her right hip in 2007, but this so called tattooed textual error not been confirmed yet. Whether or not Rihanna’s Arabic tattoo is spelled correctly we still love her music and her good looks.

Sure enough though, tattoo studios all over the world have seen a sudden increase in the demand for Arabic tattoos and they can all thank Rihanna for this and also write checks out to her for the referrals. A natural result of this increased demand for Arabic tattoos is that both customers tattoo artists who are not fluent at all in Arabic are going to collide in some epic incorrect language tattoos without a doubt and we will all be seeing some of these on the Internet sometime soon. Another natural result of the increased demand for Arabic tattoos Worldwide has been the emergence of Arabic translation services and online websites that will translate and create art, but buyer beware.

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