Brazenly exhibited through the broad stroke of bigotry of President 45’s Muslim Ban last year, the political climate post 9/11 continues to complicate the lives of Muslim people.
Islamophobia, however, is not only evident in such dehumanizing policies but is also rendered through Western media representations of Muslim people.
Whether in film or television, both Islam and Muslim people are represented as culturally backward, unable to be integrated into the modern era due to these supposed cultural differences, and ultimately are discursively positioned in opposition to the West.
The discourse on Islam, however, figures differently in Europe and in the United States as a result of different church-state relations. In the United States, the discourse on Islam is framed by citing a difference between Islam and Christian-Judeo values.
In contrast, European nations like Germany and France advance the idea of secularism as a means of critiquing Islam and life for Muslims in nations under Islamic rule.
Nonetheless, both Western regions essentialize Muslim people as violent, intolerant and antagonistic to other religions and cultures.
It’s an ideological position upheld across the political spectrum, in which both the left and right, claim that Islam presents as a serious threat to the Western way of life and liberal democracy.
It is a worldview that has to an extent even been absorbed by the feminist movement, in which Western feminists adopt a level of paternalism when it comes to discussing the lives of Muslim women.
Muslim women are repeatedly represented as victims, submissive and powerless and are thus figured in Western thinking as always in need of saving from their patriarchal religious oppressors.
The Sisters Project
In response to Muslim women’s identities and experiences being perpetually co-opted in media representations, Egyptian-Canadian artist Alia Youssef created and founded The Sisters Project; a photo series that aims to challenge negative stereotypes of Muslim women and demystify the narratives of their everyday lives.
Youssef employs portraiture and storytelling as a mode to spotlight and celebrate the underrepresented stories and experiences of Muslim women across Canada.
Since beginning the project a year and a half ago, Youssef has encountered Muslim women who are engineers, scientists, artists, Ph.D. researchers, doctors, and more. The Sisters Project shows the diversity of fields and professions Muslim women participate in.
The project highlights the important work Muslim women do in their local community and wider society. In doing so, these challenge dominant representations in film and TV of Muslim women as devoid of agency, voiceless and submissive to their dominating male counterparts.
In speaking to CBC News, Youseff notes how the project has reaffirmed to her that there are so many ways in which Muslim women express and interpret their faith and live their lives.
There are women who choose to wear a hijab and others who don’t. There are Muslim women who are queer and some who identify as heterosexual.
The Sisters Project returns autonomy back to Muslim women to tell their story and foregrounds that Muslim women are not a monolithic group, for there is not just one way to be a Muslim woman.
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