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

by Mariam Khan

sexuality. I found myself being ignored in queer spaces, having to be overtly queer to be noticed – dropping hints in conversation and wearing anything rainbow coloured because otherwise people assumed I was in the wrong room. I was constantly told I didn’t look queer enough and that I couldn’t possibly be queer.

I didn’t fit the stereotypes of what a queer woman looked like. I had to drop my use of alhamdullilah and mashallah and inshallah from my speech, exchanging those words for partial lies, introducing myself as ‘culturally Muslim’.

Reclaiming Islam as a queer woman has been hard. Islamist terror attacks across the globe mean people shrink when they see brown skin.

The catch? There wouldn’t be a bacon-flavoured sex toy in sight.

I was hoping to shed light on the limited opportunities for Muslim women in the UK to explore their sexuality when most mainstream sex shops – which often have sexually explicit store fronts – could be intimidating for them.

reasons: I hadn’t seen any journalism reflecting the lived experiences of British, liberal,

educated and unapologetically Muslim women like me and, to be quite frank, I was tired of waiting for anyone else to do it. I’d also started to notice how acceptable Islamophobia had become in casual conversation.

Celebrating these women’s defiance in the face of Islamophobia and harmful policies that have only served to other them and isolate them from the mainstream is the only thing I can think of doing. Journalism, I’m increasingly realizing, has the power to build bridges between communities in the face of hate and hysteria.

I manage to catch all of our conversation on my recorder and tuck it away safely so I can file a piece tomorrow morning.

‘Is this what everyone else thinks about me?’ I ponder. Her vile words are circling around my brain. The next morning, I have to relive it all again as I transcribe the recording at my desk. In the background I can hear the Brexit euphoria, the ‘taking back our country’ screeches, and it feels as though they are enveloping my senses.

‘Or you’ve riled them and you’re about to be the latest object of performative Twitter rage,’ I laugh. The Uber’s here.

I talk about how Muslim women like me aren’t in desperate need of liberating. Believe it or not, we have as much choice as other British women, I remind viewers. Ironically, these conversations are forced on us, yet our opinion isn’t once sought, I add. ‘Enough is enough,’ I end with.

Nonetheless, he flashes up on my DMs, saying how proud he is of me.

job. When I talk to a friend about it later, she says my journalism is too provocative for a fashion magazine.

shock, intrigue and concern. Some labelled it a dangerous pursuit, but others were amazed by how I’d gone out to find these people and speak to them, as though there wasn’t a Muslim next door or in their office that they could have struck up a conversation with.

upcoming art exhibitions, photography collectives, new zine launches and profiles of women revolutionizing the food and wellness worlds.

The message is from a woman I don’t know and says, simply, ‘You’re killing it.’

humility. Humility is knowing that in the grand scheme of things you are not that important. It grounds you and allows you to grow emotionally. Men who are built up by their parents to be the golden child, untouched by dishwater or manners, tend to be emotionally stunted. They lack self-awareness and respect for women.

They weren’t taught to drown in shame, whether theirs or mine.

Being a good Muslim was implied because there was no distinction to them. According to my mum and dad, it’s simple: if you’re not a good person then the foundation of any beliefs you may hold is corrupt.

Hearing the word ‘no’ and taking it at face value. And, no, I don’t hate my community, I just know it can do better, and until we stop mollycoddling Muslim men there won’t be any substantial change. There is a way to be proud of your faith without relying on misogyny and shame.

Depending on the narrative, my words will either be used to

signal that I am guilty by association or that I am a whistleblower who is finally revealing ‘the truth’ about my own community.

Despite being a Muslim woman of colour I know that I am fairly privileged. I spend most of my time living in a bubble in London where everyone I know, men and women, is a progressive intersectional feminist.

See, the thing is, once you unlearn the internalized misogyny that is presented to you like a curse at birth, the misogynists stop having power over you.

In some families, a daughter even expressing an interest in a potential husband is frowned upon, and in almost all families divorce is considered bad.

is ‘the most disliked of all permissible things in the eye of God’, is often twisted to make it seem haram, or forbidden.

I read somewhere that if you’re not embarrassed by who you were ten years ago then you’re not living life deeply enough.

My husband never made any attempt to reconcile or resolve, and I never got back on the plane to the USA.

The public nature of the proclamation of nikah and the divorce that followed meant that everyone knew my business, and in a society that prizes virginity, my ‘value’ had fallen.

her husband was impotent. For a culture that shies away from talking openly about sex, it is nevertheless often blamed for the end of a marriage.

My family felt that the best way to repair the situation of my divorce was to marry me off again as soon as possible. I was reticent but they convinced me to meet someone, telling me that once I was happy I’d forget all about the past.

Why was I so afraid? I can only say that I thought my elders knew better. I was raised as a people-pleaser; I was raised to put my own feelings aside for the sake of others.

My husband told me later that his father had an aversion to skirts and saw my wearing one as a personal affront. He had an aversion to and an opinion on many things, it would turn out.

In Islam there is no ruling about changing one’s name, and in fact my own grandmother never changed hers, but cowed by pressure I gave in.

Though well intentioned, this cultural teaching does us a huge disservice, and countless women find themselves slowly being worn down as their silence is taken for weakness. Islam gave women a voice; cultural interpretation took it away.

whom I had given a Christian Dior compact before I left, the sister I had hugged, for whose birthday I had bought a huge bouquet, for whom I was expected to cover when she spent

She's given a Christian Dior compact, and she's being UNGRATEFUL?

Islam states that daughters are blessings, that the man who treats his daughters kindly and educates them will be with the Prophet in heaven.

What a fool I was, to allow a man such power over me, to almost beg for a relationship that should never have happened.

But a woman who can read the Quran soon learns that her subjugation and oppression is a man-made construct, very much against the law of Allah and his prophet.

‘I don’t need your permission,’ I said coldly. It was the first time I had felt such resolve. ‘She’s right,’ the qadi said. ‘She doesn’t need your permission. ‘But I don’t want to give it!’ My husband’s voice was rising, his discomfort writ large across his face.

A stunned expression spread across his face. He had assumed me to be weak, that a woman who was already divorced once would be oppressed and beaten into submission, that I would be so cowed by the reaction of the culture that I would do anything to avoid the shame again.

‘It is about two things,’ she said, ‘loving God and loving

his people.’

‘Times have changed and our women have changed with them, but our men have yet to catch up.’

Culture had condemned me despite my having done everything according to the laws of Islam, so I had decided to reject culture’s rules.

They didn’t know it was my father who had found the cottage in the heart of Bradford, made the viewing appointment, and arranged for me to see a mortgage broker.

‘Saima Mir, BBC?’ the imam said, on hearing who his intended was. ‘Are you sure you want to marry her?’ And there it was.

Islam sees women as practical in matters of divorce; we think deeply before leaving a man. Men can be hot-headed. Women, less so.

I am an emancipated Muslim woman. There is no contradiction in this.