Clearly, a media alternative is needed – one that explores gender in Islam in all of its nuance and complexity rather than demonizing or simplifying it. Because media distortion happens both through biased reporting and exaggerated, selective images, the counter-response must be similarly multifaceted.
In these times, when Islam is under tremendous scrutiny, there is probably no more contentious issue than that of gender relations in Islam. With the media constantly spewing out images of oppressed Muslim women and angry Muslim men, the world looks on with both fascination and disgust. The Muslim gender dynamic – supposedly a singular, unchanging construct – has become a spectacle for everyone to gawk at, to comment on, and ultimately, to use to ridicule the larger Muslim community.
At the core of media coverage of Muslim men and women is a shocking over-simplicity. Men are invariably depicted as angry and violent; women are always portrayed as subservient, oppressed and silent. Lost amid the mainstream coverage are average Muslim men – the hardworking, loving father, brother, son and husband who supports his daughter, sister, parents and wife in both tangible and intangible ways. Lost in the public discourse are the Muslim men who explicitly reject hyper-masculinity and misogyny and are driven by their faith to deviate from a patriarchal model of gender relations. And perhaps even more important, lost are the truths that the vast majority of Muslim women are strong and successful, and that many are independent enough to defy male control over their gender identity.
By erasing the complexity of Muslim men, women, and their gendered interactions, mainstream media inevitably dehumanize and demonize them. Especially in the post-9/11 era, Muslim women in hijab, or the religious head covering, have become central to the construction of Arabs and Muslims as the ominous “other.” Saving Muslim women from these purportedly oppressive garments became a cultural theme used to invoke support for the U.S. war in Afghanistan, a war which was often justified through images of Afghan women wearing all-encompassing blue burkas, and sometimes being publicly beaten by the Taliban. The government’s construction of women in hijab as symbols of barbarism made them countercultural to American freedom. The localized effect of such a construction: Some Americans – self-fashioned “defenders” of American values – wanted to kick women in hijab out of their neighborhoods.
To be clear: The phenomenon of relegating Muslims to the “Other” did not begin after 9/11.“Orientalism,” a term coined by the late scholar Edward Said to denote a deprecating essentialism of the East by Westerners, was rampant long before then. However, the slippery slope between deprecation and demonization was most clearly and frequently realized in the immediate post-9/11 climate.
In the years since 9/11, media attacks on Muslim men and women have developed somewhat, but continue to revolve around the same simplistic conception of Muslims as belonging to a culture in which women are oppressed and incapable of exercising choice, and men are violent and misogynist (or, as Mona Eltahawy, an award-winning syndicated columnist, puts it: the “Angry Bearded Muslim Man” and his female counterpart, “Covered in Black Muslim Woman”). As more and more Muslim women have become publicly vociferous in their responses to such stereotypes, their religious devotion and commitment to things like the hijab have been co-opted into the stereotype of “devout Muslim woman as brainwashed and clueless about what’s good for her.” In many cases, defense of the hijab or burka, or even of Islam, by a strong Muslim woman is portrayed with an air of astonishment and a heavy dose of paternalism: The Muslim woman needs to be saved not only from Islam, but also from her own tragic naïveté.
Clearly, a media alternative is needed – one that explores gender in Islam in all of its nuance and complexity rather than demonizing or simplifying it. Because media distortion happens both through biased reporting and exaggerated, selective images, the counter-response must be similarly multifaceted.
Altmuslimah.com seeks to provide precisely this sort of in-depth coverage. Its mode of exploration is a combination of analysis and personal stories, as well as a visual campaign that highlights the literary contributions of empowered Muslim American women. Altmuslimah.com offers telling portraits of tenacious Muslim females, young and old; warm, loving Muslim men; the purity of spiritual devotion; and the dynamics of positive gender interaction in Islam.
By examining Muslim gender issues from various vantage points and through several modes of observation – ranging from the personal to the analytic, the journalistic to the academic, and the written to the visual – Altmuslimah seeks to give the whole picture.
Asma T. Uddin is Editor-in-Chief of Altmuslimah. This article was previously published at StopBigMedia.com.
