The fascination with Muslim women in the West is as persistent as it is negative.

Western observers have explicitly associated Islam with the oppression of women since the eighteenth century. As Lord Cromer, the British Consul-General to Egypt (1883-1907) announced, “I am here to liberate Muslim women, I am here to liberate them from Islam” – a view that demonstrates the desire to rescue the Muslim woman, even if against her will.

Even today, the treatment of Muslim women bothers Westerners considerably. A 2005 Gallup Poll of American households found that “gender inequality” was among the top responses American women gave to the open-ended question, “What do you admire least about the Muslim or Islamic world?”

But while Muslim women have been a hot topic of conversation in the western media for hundreds of years – and, indeed, seen as little more than objects to be discussed – Muslim women in the West are now contributing to the discussion about them in a variety of media.

I began to wonder about the experiences of these women because I myself have had many media engagements as a Muslim woman commentator and received an interesting range of responses. I was also keen to document these cases, because the little research that has been done on Muslim women in the media seems to focus almost entirely on their appearance and the stereotypical portrayal of everyday Muslim women by the Western media, as opposed to engaging with Muslim women who are media players themselves, actively contributing to, and helping to shape, the public discourse. As Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone observes:

“Throughout the Muslim world, women are making their voices heard: documenting the realities of their own lives, exploring their changing identities, and insisting upon greater participation in the public sphere … In the West, however, these dynamic realities have often been rendered invisible, or obscured by stereotyped representations of Muslim women. Even among Western feminists, Muslim women are too often seen as passive victims, rather than as agents who are actively engaged in efforts to reshape their individual selves, their cultures, and their societies. Islam is generally viewed, through Western eyes, as static, traditional, antimodern, and misogynistic.”

Given the perception of Muslim women that still seems to persist – of their absence from the public sphere and their oppression – I was eager for the experiences of these women to be recorded herunterladen.

While the women I spoke to reported some positives about their experience as commentators, there was a personal cost to some of the Australian Muslim women who do speak out regularly in the media, due to abuse they have received from within the Muslim and wider Australian community. Indeed, as I found out in the course of interviewing them, some had received personal threats – including death threats – because of their media appearances.

The personal abuse these women faced, however, turned out to be more of a symptom than a cause of the underlying issue at play. After talking with the women commentators, it became apparent that in various ways their audiences and the media in which they operate, either wittingly or unwittingly, were using different techniques to try to silence them.

These experiences form the basis of my discussion as I investigate the experiences of five Australian Muslim women who regularly feature in the Australian media, interwoven with my own regular experiences in the media.

The participants

The five women I spoke to all appear in a variety of media – including television, radio, print and online – and feature as respondents to, and also creators of, content (such as through writing opinion pieces or as columnists). Between them, they have written dozens of op-eds, appeared in countless radio and print interviews, and participated in more than forty television interviews/appearances.

All are intelligent, university-educated, articulate and successful women. Some cover their hair, some do not. At the time of interviewing, they were in their twenties, thirties and forties, from a variety of backgrounds, and most are bilingual.

The women I interviewed are those who most frequently appear in the Australian media in their capacity as Muslim women, either as spokespeople or simply presenting unique voices on the experiences of Muslim women easy and legal to music. I would classify them as commentators.

Although, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Muslims make up less than 2% of the Australian population, they are a highly scrutinized minority. As one participant said, “even though we’re a small part of the population we have a disproportionately large share of the focus.” (In order to protect the women’s privacy and to give them greater scope for disclosure, especially given the negative reception many of them already receive from the public, I have used pseudonyms and masked their identities.)

Thus, these same few women are all called upon repeatedly for interviews and statements to the media.

What motivates them?

All of the women I spoke to said their involvement in the media was at least in part due to a desire to challenge stereotypes of Muslim women, either by presenting as articulate Muslim women, or by countering some of the less-than-ideal male Muslim spokespeople featured in the media.

All the interviewees were acutely aware of the negative ways in which Muslim women are perceived by mainstream society, and saw being visible in the media as a powerful way to counteract misperceptions of Muslim women. As Nora told me:

“I did it initially because I was growing weary of Muslim males representing Muslim women on issues such as why Muslim women wear the hijab and why women have the right to wear the burqa. I also felt a strong need to dispel the negative stereotypes about Muslims and Islam which I felt were being reinforced by certain male spokespeople.”

Iman said she did it as a way to try to be proactively engaged in the media, as opposed to simply grumbling or just reactively responding to the issues that were presented to her:

“My main motivation is to try and counter the stereotypical reporting of Muslim women, and provide an alternative voice. I also want to engage with the media beast as opposed to just complaining. I’m trying to have some input, not just reactionary, but show that we’re also producing new ideas.”

All the women I interviewed participated as a form of agency, fully aware of the negative stereotypes that exist of Muslim women, and eager to use the megaphone of modern-day media to challenge such misconceptions.

Positive responses

(a) From non-Muslims

Given that most of the women I interviewed said that, at least in part, they participated in media engagement as a way to break down the stereotypes that exist about them, I was interested to know how non-Muslims would respond to them pdf kostenlos herunterladen. Was the response what they hoped for?

Interestingly, the women I spoke to said that there were many responses they received from non-Muslims that were either “very positive” or “overwhelmingly positive.” They reported often receiving letters, email, or personal contact (such as being approached on the street) from individuals saying how much they appreciated what the women had done, and also how they had often negated some of the stereotypical images the non-Muslims held of Muslim women. Iman said:

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly when I’m perceived to be breaking down a common misconception or stereotype, or providing an alternative viewpoint.”

Daria stated:

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive. The feedback has been that I’ve made a difference, that I’ve changed their viewpoints, about Muslims, about young people, and especially about Muslim women. So it’s been really positive. I’ve had journos tell me my voice needs to be heard and even more so they’ve encouraged me along the way. I’ve had people email me admitting they had really bigoted anti-Muslim views before they heard me, that they’d get their info from newspapers or TV, but after an interview of mine their views had changed.”

I could relate to what these women said and had similar experiences myself. However, the response from the wider Australian community was by no means an exclusively warm embrace. Nora told me:

“Sadly there have been quite a few non-Muslims who have responded quite negatively. I have my fair share of hate-mail which I have had to report to the police. Recently I received hate mail that was sent to my home address which was quite unsettling.”

I have had similar experiences to Nora, receiving hate mail at my home and work, having alarming encounters with strangers on the street who recognized me from television and wanted to make me aware of their disgust, and a decent volume of unsavoury emails. Even my parents received nasty anonymous messages left on their answering machine about me.

The women I interviewed received a range of responses from the wider Australian community, as Zia succinctly described:

“A combination of genuine appreciation at hearing from an ‘actual’ Muslim who sounds ‘Australian’, through to the overt critics who believe my comments are nothing short of a genuine conspiracy to impose Shariah by stealth kostenlos screenshot programm downloaden. And everything in between.”

(b) Response from other Muslims

Whether these women like it or not, they will be perceived – at least by some, and likely by many – as spokespeople for the Muslim community, and with such a role comes an unattainable expectation, neatly captured in this statement by Daria: “you bear the responsibility of representing what two billion Muslims think.”

Couple this with the hope from other Muslims that the women will contribute in a way that non-Muslims find palatable. I know this is a common expectation because I have faced it myself on numerous occasions when I have been featured in the media.

It is, of course, understandable on some level. The Australian Muslim community is, by and large, frustrated by the way it is portrayed in mainstream media and desperately wants someone there presenting Muslims in a way that makes them proud. The women I spoke to reported that the Muslim community was indeed often happy with their efforts, as Nora told me:

“The response from Muslims has been quite positive. Every now and then I am contacted by a Muslim who states they do not agree with my stance which is understandable as the Muslim community is not a homogenous group. They are usually quite civilized and often simply ask for an explanation or clarification.”

Iman shared:

“It’s been very positive, because there’s a recognition of the need to get a Muslim voice in the mainstream media, so on one level just being able to counter the usual rubbish is seen as good.”

And Zia stated:

“Overall, I’d say the younger demographic respond positively to seeing a ‘hijabi’ spokesperson represent them, who sounds like ‘them’ and who can articulate against the hype. By comparison, the elders in the Muslim community have been more apprehensive about praise, believing that the media and the Jews are part of a collective conspiracy to ‘catch me out’ at any chance they can, so better say nothing than risk a scandal.”

Zia’s comment reveals the delicate point of Muslims not being happy with the women’s media engagements. As some of the interviewees pointed out, Muslims’ reactions could be just as, if not more, nasty than the wider Australian community.

Negative responses and silencing

(a) Using appearance

Daria explained:

“Muslims liked what I had to say until I started talking about controversial issues in our community, and it’s been rather negative since then, even when I try to make clear repeatedly that I’m not coming from an Islamic perspective, but from a human rights perspective herunterladen. I think Muslims have been really threatened by this, and I’ve received hate mail and death threats from other Muslims. I’ve had people contact my parents and tell them to shut their daughter up, and when family members see comments about me on Facebook, it upsets them. So it’s not just me – it affects my family. It’s really personal and it intrudes on my private sphere. There’s a lot of focus on my appearance – how I wear my hijab, that my breasts are too ‘prominent’, that I’m wearing too much make-up, etc. A Muslim leader once said to me that I’m an easy target because I’m a young single Muslim woman, so that’s to suggest if I were married I wouldn’t get that response.”

Daria’s experience, while extreme, is not unique. I have received correspondence – normally via anonymous email – from outraged Muslims after my media appearances, infuriated about everything from my appearance (many of my fellow Muslims seemed outrage that I wore makeup on television, seemingly oblivious to the fact that men also had to wear make up!), to my manner, to the very fact I was there in the first place. One impassioned Muslim man demanded to know if my husband knew I was on television, certain that if he did, he would put a stop to it immediately.

Some such responses can be laughed off and dealt with by the click of the “Delete” button, but others, such as with Daria’s death threats, are far more serious and have far greater impact.

The appearance of Muslim women in the media was often used as a weapon against them, something that Muslim men did not have to face. The dress of the women, the way they wore their hijab (and especially if they didn’t wear one at all), their makeup, their weight and their clothing in general were all seen as fair game. As Aida said:

“Muslim females who are friends of mine have really copped it. No one says to the men, ‘your pants are too tight, your beards are too short’. They will attack their ideas but no one says to them they shouldn’t be in a public role, like they do with Muslim women.”

The technique of trivialising or silencing women commentators primarily by criticising their appearance is nothing new, although with Muslim women it takes on additional religious dimensions (criticisms over veiling, tightness of clothing and the wearing of makeup) hördatei zum herunterladen mit sieben buchstaben. Such sexist ad hominem attacks that are used to obfuscate the message women commentators are addressing was described by Danielle Miller, who called it:

“The tendency in our culture to demean women based on their sexuality or for their looks rather than to engage with what they have to say … too often, when women raise their voices, they are criticised not for what they say but how they look.”

Doing so also implicitly serves to remind women that their most important asset is their appearance, as it is used as the ultimate trump card to shout down and shut down women commentators. As Miller asks, “is that the currency of a woman or girl – her looks? Is a female’s Achilles heel still her appearance? If you strike there, do you take away her only power?”

(b) Being ignored

Here’s how Jane Caro put it recently on Gruen Planet:

“One of the problems that Islam has, serious problems, is that way it’s seen in its attitudes towards women. So going down the road where all you have is male spokespeople, male sports teams, male emphasis. That ad has a male voice over. The only woman in it is an elderly frail thing that has a blanket put over her. The first thing they should be doing is getting female spokespeople, feisty Muslim women getting up there and talking about their experience of their faith. That would do more than all the male spokespeople in the world, quite frankly.”

One could be forgiven for thinking that there are no Muslim women present in the Australian media, and that if only women would speak out as Caro suggests, things would change and Muslims would be received differently – more positively.

I was first made aware of Caro’s remarks when one of the regular commentators I interviewed for this research emailed me about it, herself having been tipped off by another prominent Muslim woman in the media I interviewed. They were outraged at the implication that there are no Muslim women appearing in Australian media – especially, as they pointed out, given the fact that there are really only one or two consistently prominent Muslim men.

I was intrigued by Caro’s perception that there are no “feisty Muslim women getting up there and talking about their experience of their faith,” given that I know that is not the case – as demonstrated by the significant amount of media work the women I interviewed had done, as well as my own experiences 99 luftballons herunterladen. (I have honestly lost count of all the media appearances I have done, and at least 95% of those were solely because I am a Muslim woman and was invited to discuss some aspect of the Australian Muslim experience.)

Nevertheless, it appears that public perception has us pegged as silent non-players. That Muslim women are relatively present in the Australian media and yet the audience insists we aren’t there is a phenomenon reflected by Homa Hoodfar, who had similar experiences in her personal encounters with people:

“Frustratingly, in the majority of cases, while my conversants listened to me, they did not hear, and at the end of the conversation they would reiterate their earlier views as if our discussion were irrelevant.”

The wider Australian community feels it is not seeing or hearing Muslim women because they are blind to them, not because they do not exist. This technique of bemoaning the lack of Muslim women speaking out in the media, and then ignoring them when they do, serves the double purpose of silencing women in a very absolute way (it is literally as if they are not there), while still giving the impression that the audience is eager and open to hearing from them if they should ever wish to speak.

(c) Being kept in a box

As I spoke with these women, I started to detect a sense of ambivalence in some of them about being in the media as Muslim women. While they were fully aware of the positives that came with the opportunity and eager to change the discourse, they also recognised that there were hidden negatives.

Apart from all the enthusiastic emails and personal comments these women received (along with the less than pleasant ones), the responses from their audiences as well as professionals working in the media often seemed to smack of condescension and a kind of “Orientalism” that understandably annoyed the women.

For example, more then one of the women I interviewed spoke about being asked to adopt religious dress that wasn’t their normal attire (most notably covering their faces), as the media they were dealing with thought it would create greater impact for their audience. This ensured the perception of Muslim women as weak was maintained. It was also made clear to the commentators that they were only welcome to challenge stereotypes and buck against the norm when they were saying things that the wider community wanted to hear – for instance, if they spoke about sexism occurring within the Muslim community – and didn’t challenge perceptions about Muslims too greatly netflix serien im ausland downloaden. But they were discouraged from venturing outside certain boundaries. Iman said:

“It can be patronising, as I’m seen as a cultural and religious whistleblower and I’m seen as exposing the dark secrets of my community. So it’s uneasy as you want to speak honestly and candidly but non-Muslims will only credit your opinion because they see you as a whistleblower. So if you talk about issues that aren’t specific to Islam or Muslims, your authority is questioned. I’ve read about this happening with film-makers, where white film-makers are allowed to make stories about any culture and race and be respected, but if, say, a black person does that, they’re only respected when they make a film about black culture or community. So if they want to do something about white people or power, it’s viewed with suspicion. We’re only respected and given space when it’s about a very specific topic, but if we want to part of the wider conversation it’s not always welcome.”

Daria saw the compliments she receives for her work in the media, as often little more than condescension, as they come from people who expect so little from Muslim women. I have had similar experiences many times, being told ad nauseum that I “challenge the stereotype of Muslim women,” in a manner that suggests I should be grateful for them not viewing me in the negative way that is all their own creation in the first place.

This is doubly problematic when it comes from professionals working in the media, because, as Daria points out, they are the gatekeepers to the public platform these women recognise they need. To be overtly critical of journalists and media professionals could jeopardise much-needed opportunities:

“You can also be fetishised – they marvel and find it remarkable that I can string a sentence together. Now if a Muslim woman goes on air or stands up for her rights, she’s treated in a patronising way. You know, give her a pat on the head for doing that netflix schweiz herunterladen. So you can get the genuinely positive response, and you can also get the patronising, fetishising one. And it’s hard to respond to that because you can’t say ‘I don’t want to be patronised or seen in that way’ when they’re giving you a platform that we need.”

In this sense, some of the women felt they were in a bind – having to accept and work within a system that viewed them patronisingly, in order to participate in that which could ultimately lead to changing such a view.

Thus, while ostensibly giving Muslim women an opportunity to speak, Muslim women commentators were given such narrow parameters in which to operate, and often treated condescendingly, that they were used to consolidate an image of Muslim women that Western media wants to maintain.

From my own experience, I know that I have had a love/hate relationship with my media experiences as a Muslim woman. On the one hand, I have been grateful for the opportunity to present my opinions on issues where I know Muslim women’s voices are not being given adequate, or even any, airtime. This has been especially crucial for me in areas directly relating to Muslim women – such as the issue of banning the burqa, or even the perception that Muslim men never let women speak.

On the other hand, I have grown increasingly frustrated having to answer an almost identical set of interview questions in nearly every appearance. After more than a decade of such interviews, I sometimes despair that the conversation about and with Muslim women has not progressed at all, and still seems to be obsessively focussed on the piece of cloth on my head.

While the ways Muslim women dress is of political relevance for issues such as the burqa-ban, that it has been so consistently the main topic of conversation in my interviews feels infuriatingly superficial, and seems to reinforce the idea I have been trying to negate: that Muslim women are defined by and reduced to what they wear.

The ambivalence about media engagements is ultimately tempered by a recognition of the nature of the media game, and the greater good. As Iman addressed:

“Sometimes it can be frustrating because you need to feed a media machine, and have it packaged in the way they want it vtech kidizoom foto'sen. You have to engage by their rules. But if you don’t engage with the media the way they want, you lose an opportunity which I think you’d be silly to walk away from.”

Perhaps this best encapsulates the sentiment of all the women I spoke with: that even with the potential for negative responses from both Muslims and non-Muslims, and problematic nature of Muslim women engaging with the media due to persistent misperceptions and stereotypes, ultimately their continued engagement was something neither they, nor the community they cared about, could afford for them to abandon.

“Muslim women like all other women are social actors, employing, reforming, and changing existing social institutions, often creatively to their own ends.” Here Homa Hoodfar is talking about the hijab. But she could just as easily have been discussing the media.

For just as the hijab has been both a tool to control and silence Muslim women, it has also been appropriated and used by Muslim women for their own goals, aspirations and liberation. From the comments made by the women I interviewed, I feel that the media could be viewed similarly.

While the media and its audiences have certainly used different techniques to silence Muslim women, the confident and savvy women with whom I spoke were quite capable of using the media for their own ends and to achieve their own pre-determined goals. They were aware of the many challenges associated with being a Muslim woman in the media, and yet still actively engaged with the media to further their cause.

In the end, both media and hijab are just tools. And to suggest that Muslim women are the victims of, or controlled by, either of these tools, is to completely negate any sense of agency and insight these women clearly have.