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

by Mariam Khan

‘Did you feel guilty?’ was the first question asked, followed by, ‘did you pray after?’ The not-so-subtle message was that a sin had been committed and now was the time for redemption.

Even the interactions between family and friends send a message: men hug men and women kiss women, but everyone is careful never to touch anyone outside their own gender, no matter how much ‘like family’ they are.

Women are given information that is heavily informed by a patriarchal scholarship, and they believe it, internalize it, and begin to live their life within its narrow confines – because after all, who wants to be cursed by angels all night?

Then, of course, there are the women who were never spoken to about sex at all, their chastity and virginity glorified until their wedding nights, when they were suddenly expected to perform with the sexual prowess of an accomplished lover.

when she does her halawa for the first time, information is laughingly passed between women, and these gatherings take on a voluptuousness as older women offer advice, smiles and jokes, and the community prepares the bride for her wedding night and the start of the next chapter in her life.

The conversations that do see the light of day are normally within the context of wedding nights and halal encounters, and even then it can be argued that they centre on the act of a man coming to your bed and taking his pleasure, as

Muslim women are introduced to sex in ways that can be damaging, painful, unsafe and traumatic. In my own family, stories have been passed down from the days in the villages in Egypt when the new husband would enter the bedroom with his mother and penetrate his wife, and once the hymen was broken, the mother-in-law would come out with blood on a handkerchief as evidence of her new daughter’s virtue.

My first introduction to sex was via Google and watching porn, which – as we all know – is rarely about female empowerment or pleasure and more often about female submission.

I’ve loved and been loved but never found the right person to marry and make a life with.

The way our communities are dictatorial about marriage is also problematic. I fell deeply in love with a boy outside Islam and if I could have, I would have married him at the time.

When I replied furiously that we were related, I was told that ‘the rest of the mosque didn’t know that’ and therefore I couldn’t speak to him.

Thirdly, and most importantly, we must start having conversations about female pleasure. Both sexes are in desperate need of an entirely new education system so that Muslim men can unlearn the oppressive habits they’ve picked up from a world designed only to please them, and so that women can unlearn the silence that has been rooted in them for so many years.

Notions of female sexuality have so long been out of women’s hands that we are either sexually oppressed or hyper-sexualized, and those two narratives leave us torn between unrealistic dichotomies we can never live up to.

All faiths should be equal in the eyes of the law.

if her relationship breaks down she could be left homeless overnight as she is – in the eyes of the court – nothing more than a girlfriend.

I had seen a huge rise in the past five years in young Muslims not registering their marriages – in my estimation around 80 per cent of under-thirties – while most mosques seemed to have stopped registering marriages.

As no one has an accurate idea of how many Muslim marriages and divorces are taking place, we can only draw on small sample studies.

Complacency is commonplace too. It is all too easy to have a nikah marriage in the UK, plan to register it (‘we’ll get around to it soon’), then for things to go wrong before registration takes place.

On the other side of the coin, where the breakdown of a legally registered marriage would grant financial rights to both parties, many want to keep wealth in the family; an unregistered marriage will guarantee that.

Where a mobile phone contract might bind you in for twenty-four months, an unregistered nikah means you can simply leave at any time, with no repercussions.

The Truth about Muslim Marriage, aired on Channel 4, which had followed my clients and me for a year.

The ROM campaign has not met resistance from Muslims and has enjoyed widespread support. But hardliners still believe that Islam is all you need.

They endorse my view that a nikah is being turned into a purely religious ceremony, when in Islam it is a contract between two people in front of God, and not a sacrament (a Church ceremony).

me, ‘Women have never had these legal rights; English law is giving them too much.’ So, my campaign goes back to its source: Islamic justice.

quickly. It is a common misconception that a Muslim woman cannot be autonomous. In Islam, a woman can keep her property, her earnings, and even her own name after marriage.

It is incredible that Islamic marriage laws have been completely misinterpreted by Muslims themselves.

This passage highlights the common denominator when it comes to contextual understanding of holy texts, whether it is Islam or other religions: the intentional misinterpretation of the texts to support the dominion of a certain group, in this case, relates to patriarchy.

information. It is clear ROM cannot continue to run as a voluntary body and has to formalize its structure.

With lawyers, activists, bloggers and more, we can together ensure the success of the ROM campaign and empower women all over the world, who look to the UK to show the way ahead for Muslim communities.

Becoming is something that I could have done without. On

My identity was unique to me but it was also familiar. I was normal. But on the night I landed at Heathrow airport, I became black.

In this new country, the people did not look like me or sound like me. The weather was playing havoc with my body and the displacement made me feel as though a few bones in my spine had broken free so that I instantly cowered and became smaller. A volcano had erupted inside me and I was dismantling.

They represented something far, far away. They were other. But now I was in England, my skin had caught fire, and I was aware of my blackness.

There is no doubt that Black culture and Black identity is commercially exploited and moulded to profit everyone who is not black: to be black in Britain is to see your life used as a prop in a pantomime that you cannot direct. Everyone wants to be black but nobody wants to live black.

On the other hand, being Muslim and black around non-black Muslims has always been much more uncomfortable.

We are brothers and sisters so long as we keep our distance. We are brothers and sisters so long as we do not marry into their families and bring our black culture and practices into their homes.

‘I am a Black Muslim Woman.’ But this is what others say of me, and in pre-empting the identity that the world gives me, I have internalized it.

But most importantly, when she is asked who she is, I’d like for her to respond with her name, her likes and her dislikes, I’d like for her to respond with the things that make her heart warm and the dreams she has for her future.

This ‘relationship’, however, exists on the basis of our own voices remaining absent. We are not part of the conversation. Make no mistake – our existence in British society is important, but the relationship is dependent on us being both visible and silent: on being talked about but never invited into the discussion.

Similarly, David Cameron’s criticism that Muslim women’s English language skills were not up to scratch allowed him to present himself as a defender of British values when he was put under pressure by the right wing of the Conservative Party and the growth of UKIP.

Muslims are considered guilty of criminal potential without demonstrating any criminal intent. The act of expressing oppositional political opinions or behaving in an (ill-defined) suspicious way is enough to make us guilty of (potential) crimes.

be. I was branded an anti-Semite, an ISIS supporter, and a terrorist sympathizer within hours of the result. Despite repeated statements, clarifications, and public explanations of my beliefs and politics, sound bites and selective quotes were played over and over again across the press for the duration of my presidency.

Again, Muslim women were being asked to choose between being ‘freed women’ and their community, always imagined as male, patriarchal, and repressive.

‘What are you?’ she asked, while other children skipped over ropes and hopped between chalk lines, the playground alive around us. ‘My mum’s Christian, and my dad’s Muslim,’ I replied, hoping in my childhood naivety for solidarity, an understanding, a bond, maybe a friend. ‘You can’t be both Muslim and Christian,’ she replied. ‘You can’t be nothing.’

the one I defined for myself as a woman from a mixed and multi-faith background – and the one others expected of me, the boxes they had in mind.

I was often deemed by other people to be either ‘too Muslim’ or ‘not Muslim enough’, ‘too secular’ or ‘not secular enough’, ‘too brown’ or ‘not brown enough’, ‘too white’ or ‘not white enough’. I

I had developed – like many people both inside and outside Islam – my own sense of spirituality which felt unique and personal to me. However,

and the stories they and their peers hear. They are often then quick to link this lack of positive representation with the discrimination they experience at school or out in the street, not to mention on a structural, institutional and political level.

There are so many tales missing in the world; consequently we need more storytellers to tell them. No one woman can speak for all Muslim women – for that rich and varied tapestry of experiences, practice, belief and ways of being. We need as many stories and storytellers as there are people, a greater cacophony of diverse voices and views, and listeners who welcome them.

To share strength and solidarity and stories. In doing so, in embracing storytelling, I am able to embrace not only my unique identity, but also to stay connected to theirs.