“Juxtaposing the “good” Muslim feminist with the “bad” Muslim terrorist helps us critique the broader frame of terror. Both these figures are, in fact, portrayed as dissenters in the War on Terror. One promotes a militant political “dissent” that is intolerable to the imperial state, and the other promotes an internal religious “dissent” that speaks in the multicultural state’s language of tolerance. Both are implicated in the notion of the native informant: the bad Muslim terrorist can be framed by an informant, and the good Muslim feminist is framed as one herself. In between and outside this binary constructed by the state and media are a range of positions that are more complex and nuanced and that would force us to take into account questions of imperialism, nationalism, gender, race, religion, and class.”
“Good” and “Bad” Muslim Citizens: Feminists, Terrorists, and U.S. Orientalisms [pdf] (via kawrage)
BADASS Muslimahs
I've had enough of the sensationalist, exoticised, demeaning portrayals of Muslim women seen all throughout the media, and this is my way of countering all the nonsense.
This is not an attempt at 'breaking stereotypes' or trying to enlighten people, if you're ignorant enough to believe that Muslim women are oppressed and subjugated by Islam then that's your own problem.
This is my way of giving recognition to all the women who inspire me, and hopefully sending out some positive vibes.
Peace.
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February142013
August262012
In the spring of 2011 I spent three and a half months in Morocco working with writer Sarah Dohrmann on a collaborative project about prostitution and the marginalization of women.
While in Morocco I began to work with collage, cutting up the photographs I was making and piecing them back together, layering and juxtaposing the images. I was spending time with and photographing women who were pushed to the edges of society – single mothers, divorcées, prostitutes. Many of these women did not feel safe having their faces photographed - some didn’t feel safe being photographed at all - but it was important for them to talk about their experiences. I began to use the collages as a way to protect the women’s identities (when necessary) while expressing what I understood about their lives and examining my own perceptions and experiences in the process.
Having worked for several years on long-term projects addressing the complicated and layered issues around prostitution, I had become frustrated with the limitations of straightforward documentary work or reportage. I felt compelled to take a more conceptual approach to exploring ideas around representation and perception, marginalization, sexuality, the idealization and/or demonization of women’s bodies and, specifically within the context of my work in Morocco, the legacy of colonization and the impact of Orientalist representations of North African women historically and currently. My goal with this work is to not only explore some of the perceptions and realities of women’s lives in Morocco, but to raise questions about the documentary process itself and the impact of visual imagery/representation on women’s relationships with power, choice and identity.
I titled this work Scènes et Types in reference to the colonial Orientalist postcards made primarily by French photographers in the early 1900’s. These postcards (often in series called Scènes et Types) featured staged portraits of nude or semi-nude North African women in highly exoticized postures, costumes and settings. It is documented that the models for these photographs were almost always prostitutes.
My collage work is comprised of photographs I made in Morocco in the spring of 2011.
August192012
“These women don’t make headlines for their religion. Is it because they don’t feel the need to wear headscarves? Or the fact that their countries have not discouraged their participation? The truth is that Wojdan Shaherkani fits much better into the western stereotype of Muslim women: uncompetitive hijabis labouring under patriarchal oppression. Runners who take gold and not scarves don’t get reported as “Muslim.”
Why I pretty much haven’t followed discussions on Muslim women’s participation in the Olympics. (via kawrage)
(Source: troymedia.com, via kawrage)
August132012
The Secret World of Saudi Women
A great photo essay from this week’s Newsweek International.
Photographer Olivia Arthur took on the job of seeing behind the barriers. During three visits lasting a month at a time, Arthur talked, laughed, and lived with Saudi women. She encountered hundreds of women and girls whose lively, outgoing personalities debunked the funereal stereotype of the black abaya. Jeddah Diary, a revealing collection of the pictures Arthur shot inside the kingdom, is available from its London publisher, Fishbar.
What is the fascination with folks wanting to “unveil” the Arab and/or Muslim woman? Not in the physical sense of removing their veils, but I mean the amount of curiosity that surrounds them is just astounding. And when an outsider gets an “insider’s look,” it’s like a major achievement or something. Then, when it becomes clear that they’re human, it’s turned into a headline.
Can mainstream media find a new fetish?
And note how the “unveiled” women invariably belong to a certain sociopolitical status
(via azaadi)
May272012
“It is no coincidence that so many in the West are affronted by Muslim women’s veils: they symbolise the last refusal of Islamic cultures to be stripped and consumed by the Western narcissistic gaze.”
An interesting piece by Rachel Woodlock
April262012
Dear Mona Eltahawy: You do not represent “Us”
It all started this morning when Kawlture suggested we feature the Foreign Policy issue cover on our blog, the Mainstream Media and the Orient. I was on my phone and could not see the cover clearly. At first, I thought it was blackface, but upon zooming in and reading the the featured article title by Mona Eltahawy, my eyes weren’t fooling me. It really was a woman covered in a black body-painted niqab.
They tell you don’t judge a book by its cover. But I, as an Arab-American Muslim woman, could not get that image out of my head long enough to even begin reading Mona’s article. I kept thinking about how the image degraded and insulted every woman I know that wears or has ever worn the niqab. The face veil is rooted in pre-Islamic history, and I’m not going to delve into it. If you want a more comprehensive read, I recommend Leila Ahmed’s Women and Gender in Islam.
Today, those who are fixated on the niqab believe that focusing on what a Muslim woman wears is what defines her thought, her intellect, her capabilities, her sexuality, her gender, her very existence. It’s a narrative that’s been framed by the West and fed by the likes of Qasim Amin and even Hoda Sha’rawi. FP’s decision to choose this photograph of a naked woman with a body-painted niqab embodies this problematic narrative in more ways than one:
- This inherent sexualization of the niqab through the pose and exposure of the female form revives the classic harem literature and art, presenting the Arab and/or Muslim woman as “exotic” and “mysterious,” but still an object. An object lacking the agency to define herself, thus defined by others.
- All of the women close to me who wear the niqab do so for different reasons. One friend only wears the niqab when she goes protesting because she feels comfortable in it. Another friend has worn the niqab, against the will of her family, since she was 14 out of her own free will. The representation of the niqab as splattered body paint on a naked woman degrades the decision of women who wear the niqab as a choice.
- The feature of an Arab woman’s article on the front cover does not justify the editorial choice to use the image. Mona Eltahawy was notoriously owned during a debate over the niqab ban in France, where she took the position in favor of the ban. Her stance on the niqab is convenient to the narrative being perpetuated by the problematic image.
But I digress. On to Mona’s article, titled “Why Do They Hate Us.” As a writer, I’m aware that editors sometimes propose titles, but they usually inform writers of that change. At least, that was my experience with Foreign Policy (it was a piece they never published). However, immediately, the title sets off an alarm: the use of the first-person-plural. The first-person-plural can be appropriately used when the speaker has been elected to speak on behalf of the group they are speaking on behalf of. In this case, the “They” being Arab societies and “Us” being Arab women. Mona’s self-appointed representation of Arab women is neither professional nor accurate. While I sincerely value the freedom of self-expression and have not one problem with her expressing her views, but to do so on the behalf of all Arab women is enraging.
Her article presents a summary and background of the treatment of women in the region, paired with statistics and specific examples of cases from countries throughout the region, fluffed with emotional rhetoric, ending with a call for fighting against injustices. Every now and then, a different image of the nude woman with the body-painted niqab interrupts the commentary, fueling the rage all over again.
She includes bits like:
“I’ll never forget hearing that if a baby boy urinated on you, you could go ahead and pray in the same clothes, yet if a baby girl peed on you, you had to change. What on Earth in the girl’s urine made you impure? I wondered. Hatred of women.”
And,
“The Islamist hatred of women burns brightly across the region — now more than ever.”
Also,
“But at least Yemeni women can drive. It surely hasn’t ended their litany of problems, but it symbolizes freedom.”
Concluding with,
“We are more than our headscarves and our hymens. Listen to those of us fighting. Amplify the voices of the region and poke the hatred in its eye.”
The entire article is framed in a way that portrays Arab women as helpless, and in need of rescue and protection. It’s a convenient narrative for FP’s mostly Western-based readership. No mention of Tawakul Karman, Zainab and Maryam al-Khawaja, etc.—women who rose through the revolutions and were present in the public sphere during protests and demonstrations, standing alongside their compatriots demanding change and an end to injustices of all kinds. These women stood up as individuals and not as self-proclaimed representatives of Arab women.
Mona points to “hate” as the source and cause of the injustices committed against Arab women. She scapegoats the rise of the Islamists, but Maya Mikdashi debunked that argument a couple months ago:
“Gender equality and justice should be a focus of progressive politics no matter who is in power. A selective fear of Islamists when it comes to women’s and LGBTQ rights has more to do with Islamophobia than a genuine concern with gender justice. Unfortunately, Islamists do not have an exclusive license to practice patriarchy and gender discrimination/oppression in the region. The secular state has been doing it fairly adequately for the last half a century.”
Yet, she entirely neglects the socioeconomic roots of gender inequality, the rise of authoritarian regimes in a post-colonialist context, the remnants of dehumanization and oppression from colonialism, the systematic exclusion of women from the political system or those who are used as convenient tools for the regime. There is more to gender inequality than just “hate.”
The true fight should be against the monolithic representation of women in the region, illustrated by an over-sexualized image of splattered black paint over a nude body. This does nothing to rectify the position of women in ANY society.
December212010
“First, we have to ask what Western liberal values we may be unreflectively validating in proving that “Eastern” women have agency, too. Second, and more importantly, we have to remind ourselves that although negative images of women or gender relations in the region are certainly to be deplored, offering positive images or “nondistorted” images will not solve the basic problem posed by Said’s analysis of Orientalism. The problem is about the production of knowledge in and for the West. (…) As long as we are writing for the West about “the other”, we are implicated in projects that establish Western authority and cultural difference.”
Lila Abu-Lughod, (2001). Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies, Feminist Studies 27 (1), p. 105. (via umnica)
(via almaswithinalmas)
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