It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

by Mariam Khan

My mother knew that England could give me everything that would be denied to me in a wealthy but parochial rural community that dictated that girls remain in the home.

She was nineteen years old when she found the courage to leave the security of her parents’ home once again, and return to England so that she could give me a different life. Clutching her one-year-old baby in her arms, she waved goodbye to my devastated nannyma and boarded the plane on the Bombay tarmac for Heathrow.

As a curious teen, I once asked her about our early life together in the UK, and she reluctantly revealed the hardship she faced as a single parent divorcee in the 1970s. She spoke of the poverty; the small rooms she rented; the rats scurrying in the corners; the damp in the walls and the freezing cold of northern England winters.

A year later, my nannyma arranged her second marriage. It was to the man whom I consider to be my father, the one who gave me the book about Khadija.

My mother may very well have left the rural Indian village behind, but the label of ‘fatherless child’ did not delay in following us to our new home. That parochial mindset was in full evidence in the British Asian community of the 1970s and 1980s.

Sadly not unique.

as a child I completely absorbed the feelings of inferiority that adults put upon me as the child of a first, unsuccessful marriage. Looking back now, perhaps it was pity rather than disapproval that was being directed at me.

This left a mark on my self-confidence, and was one of the reasons why I gravitated towards the anonymity and safety of the public and school libraries. Then I turned twelve and I suddenly had this powerful book about Khadija bint Khuwaylid in my hand, given to me by a man who was not my biological father but who raised me proudly as his own daughter along with my new siblings.

Growing up with access to free books from my school and public libraries had raised my aspirations. Through reading, I explored worlds that were different and distant from my tiny bubble of the local high street, my school and the council estate.

Throughout my early teens, the security of a girls’ school and loving, supportive parents protected me from the misogyny that existed in the real world. But when I hit eighteen, everything changed.

I wish I had known at the time that the person credited for founding the oldest existing, first degree-awarding educational institution in the world, the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fes, Morocco, in the year 859, was a Muslim woman. Alas, I did not know about the founder Fatima Al-Fihri and so, although I walked away from the table with the last word, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the exchange had rattled me.

Khadija allowed me to believe that I had the right to be there, but I hadn’t yet joined the dots enough to allow me to believe that I alone was responsible for my success. For a very, very long time I believed that I owed it to stumbling along and hitting gold. There were many times when I felt that I had simply been lucky.

The worlds of advertising and Parliament are filled with white upper-middle-class men, many of whom boast Oxbridge on their CVs. They lived privileged childhoods that I only saw in my library books. Being self-deprecating came naturally to many of them and I soon picked up on the habit.

However, I discovered over a gradual period of time that when I was dismissive of praise, my colleagues accepted my denial of achievement at face value. It was almost as if they thought, ‘Well, if Sufiya says she doesn’t deserve the praise, then she probably doesn’t.’

Working within the walls of Parliament also brought me into closer contact with women’s rights activism. Different campaigns highlighted different injustices. Some were common to all women, regardless of race and religion, like rape and domestic violence. Others were more specific to different cultures, like forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

It irked me that some non-Muslims viewed Islam as oppressive to women, without any understanding of the patriarchal structures that allow such practices to flourish. It pained me further to realize that there were many Muslim women and men who were simply not aware of the gender equality that exists in the Islamic faith.

Imagine a woman stealing an apple. Now imagine a man stealing an apple. Theft is forbidden in Islam. The sin of stealing for both a man and a woman is equal. In no verse in the Quran, or in any hadith, is it written that a woman’s sin is less than a man’s. Islam is very clear that a woman’s capability to do wrong is equal to a man’s. How then is she not equal to him in all other matters?

To date, much of the conversation around Muslim women has its roots in othering and stereotypes. Remember David Cameron alluding to the fact that Muslim men are radicalized because Muslim women are traditionally submissive?1 Or headlines positioning Muslim women as stereotype-breakers for the smallest of deeds? Representation of Muslim women flip-flops between fitting a stereotype or breaking one, not the middle ground where most of us are.

When the Muslim woman is discussed in a political light or in reference to government strategy it seems representation is synonymous with a burqa- or niqab-wearing woman.

The default man is seen as ‘the reference point from which all other values and cultures are judged’; he and what he represents is the backdrop against which all other identities exist.2 Whether it is halal meat or the hijab, any deviation from the blueprint of the norms of the default man poses a threat to the standards society upholds.

I would extend Perry’s idea to assume that the default man is also one of secular ideology. If a ‘default’ existed within Muslim communities as a subgroup, it would probably be a South Asian, middle-aged, cis, Sunni man.

for Muslim women the default within both the Muslim communities and ‘mainstream’ communities is something they can never be: male.

We of course often refer to ourselves as one ummah, one body, but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that we are all the same without variations in practices and ideas. Therefore, in order for Muslim women to thrive in our current climate, we need to start from a point at which the default, if we must have one, is inclusive and mindful of the many intersections that exist, not predicated on white males being the standard.

When I first began considering the issue of representation, I didn’t go much further than wanting to see myself. In 2015, when we were creating Amaliah and entered the start-up scene, I saw an industry filled with the default man. It was overwhelmingly white men who held the keys to the doors that I needed to get through.

The campaign video included more than seventy individuals and it was clear that H&M was making a point about diversity, but the world’s attention focused on the two seconds featuring Mariah Idrissi, who then went on to be dubbed one of the first global Muslim hijab-wearing models.

When campaigns like the Nike sports hijab and the hijabi Barbie came around, for some it felt like independent Muslim business owners were getting elbowed out. Hijabi dolls and sports hijabs already existed, created by Muslims; however, it was only when global brands came up with the same concept that the world applauded.

I sometimes found myself annoyed when I saw a campaign featuring a Muslim woman, because I have walked into brands, into agencies, and seen virtually zero diversity. It seemed as though ‘seeing Muslims’ was being over-indexed by those in the mainstream.

Thinking about how Muslim women were temporarily being cast made me realize that the whole representation process often employs the short-term labour of minorities, and I can’t help but compare this representation frenzy to a puppet show in which we are not permitted to construct ourselves on our own terms.

We cannot deny that there is a cookie-cutter model of a Muslim woman that is seen in campaigns, movies, the media and amongst brands. The current cookie cutter is light skinned, wears a hijab and is normally a fashion or beauty influencer.

If we match up to agency briefs, if we fit into the existing set-up, then perhaps we can have equality – but an equality that feels increasingly superficial and lacking in authenticity.

Khan was part of a haircare campaign which broke the internet, with the media claiming she had made history and broken barriers as the first hijabi model to star in a global mainstream hair campaign.6 But Khan stepped down from the campaign within days after tweets of hers from 2014 surfaced, which ‘lamented the killing of Palestinians and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land, and praised some world leaders who had spoken out against Israel as it waged a brutal war’, according to Al Jazeera.

the message was clear: We want your hijabs but we don’t want your thoughts; we only want diversity for the pictures.

As I’ve thought more about this, I’ve also found myself questioning the use of the term ‘influencer’. While we refer to these people as influencers, due to the financial model through which they tend to make an income – i.e. working with brands – influencers themselves inevitably become influenced.

Amaliah also makes money by collaborating with brands, but time and again, we have had to turn down work with certain companies due to a clear clash in values. There is no doubt this is all a learning process, and we will not always get it right, but that is part of why I feel we must stop to critique and learn from what has happened.

Abdel-Magied believed that she could outperform her identity. She thought that if she followed the right social cues, if she behaved like a ‘model minority’, in a way in which her banter was understood amongst white men, and if she ensured that she contributed to society and her country, she would be celebrated and accepted. But one seven-word Facebook post out of line and her theory failed.

Yassmin wanted to ‘make my sentiment more inclusive than just those who fought in that war’, and extended her post to others that she felt we should not forget. Her post read, ‘LEST. WE. FORGET. (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine . . .)’. She took it down almost immediately (a friend had seen it and thought some may find it offensive) and issued an apology, but within days she was on the cover of national newspapers, and receiving messages saying she should self-deport.

as an immigrant Muslim woman of colour, her opinions were not welcomed. They were not judged as the opinions of any other intelligent, thinking Australian citizen, and she was deemed ‘ungrateful’.

In the same way, Stormzy, the UK’s grime artist sensation, was hailed as British homegrown talent until he decided to criticize the government, at which point he was aptly reminded by the media that he was in fact born to Ghanaian parents who had benefited from this country’s generosity.

just because I find myself running a business as a Muslim woman, it does not mean that every Muslim woman is now afforded the pathway to do so.

Foster draws on a study which shows that, when companies hired individuals from minority backgrounds who were then in a position to hire, they were in fact less likely to hire other people from minority backgrounds as it was detrimental to their own credibility and standing.

The right consumer choices allow us to reach the potential that our religion has set out for us. It may not bother anyone that halal food, finance or children’s books with Islamic values aren’t always easily accessible. But when your consumer decisions are separate from the default options available, it can be hard to feel you are anything but other.

Halal meat has time and time again been used as a political tool. But there is a bigger issue at hand, and it is to do with the brands seeming to cater to Muslim needs: Muslims are only seen as worthy when we are producing wealth.

Make no mistake, the wealthy Muslim consumer is one that brands (be it Selfridges or Harrods) and governments have always courted and recognized.

Whether it is Abdul Haqq on Channel 4’s Muslims Like Us or Saira Khan speaking about extremism, Muslim communities have had clear markers as to who isn’t the right person to be speaking about our issues. But who is right is still something that lies in murky waters.

But the truth is, I cannot expect that everything Muslim women in the public eye do will resonate with my own ideals of what I want to see in the world.

We must realize that the critique of Muslim women in the mainstream is often an extension of misogyny and Islamophobia. We all know that if a Muslim woman took part in some of the scenes that Muslim actor Riz Ahmed appears in, she would not be afforded the same treatment and heralded for her acting in the way he has been by the Muslim and wider communities.

Nadiya Hussain is frequently the subject of Islamophobia, but it’s a very particular gendered Islamophobia.

Someone like Stormzy, who shares my values and my belief that we should seek to speak truth to positions of power, does more to represent me than a Muslim fashion blogger, despite the fact that others might assume that I would have more in common with the latter.

It increasingly feels as though the representation of Muslims has been relegated to an identity devoid of faith. That identity is assumed by people like Saira Khan or Amina Lone when it is in their interest to speak on issues that ultimately pit them as ‘the good progressive Muslim’.

Javid implied that, because he had a Muslim-sounding name, it meant that there were no barriers to entry into the party. Suddenly the Conservative Party was apparently being absolved of Islamophobia by a man who had previously been on record saying he was not a practicing Muslim.

The fact that someone who is not Muslim feels that they can use Muslim identity as a political means to combat accusations of Islamophobia is highly problematic. And let’s not forget, stripping the faith out of Muslim identity is also why brands feel that they can muscle in and represent Muslims, as well as have an influence on what Muslim identity should look like.