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

by Mariam Khan

Having identified us as a consumer market with considerable disposable income, retailers are lining up to make clothes that fit into the guidelines and framework of our scripture. And you’d think that was fantastic, wouldn’t you? But Muslim women are being lobbied for representation in an industry that, as it turns out, continually does nothing to address the class, race and gender inequalities plaguing society and from which Muslims suffer.

In a bid to be included and represented by the fashion industry, Muslim women are increasingly sexualized and objectified, and the tenets of our faith have been both appropriated and commoditized.

Islam is a religion that empowers women. And yet, for many young Muslim girls, their understanding of Islam comes entirely from a series of cultural interpretations of their faith dictated by the patriarchy. With this and the lack of conversation within their communities about women’s rights, the first time many Muslim girls in the West will encounter female empowerment is likely to be from a White Feminist perspective. But there is a problem. This perspective disapproves of the hijab, the burqa, modest culture and other key elements of the Muslim female identity. Mainstream feminism suggests that my choices and values can’t exist within its framework – if I make the decision to dress for my faith then I must be oppressed or submissive.

White Feminism (which is still the mainstream) centres the agenda and needs of white, straight, middle-class, cis, able-bodied women while making claims that it speaks on behalf of all women. White Feminism doesn’t recognize that my identity as a Muslim and a person of colour (PoC) cannot be set aside in the pursuit of equality for ‘all women’. So when I say White Feminism or White Feminist in this essay, I’m not simply pointing out the colour of someone’s skin (if I’m doing that, I won’t be capitalizing the ‘w’ of white) – a White Feminist is someone who furthers that ideology no matter who they are.

There was a label that I could use which allowed me to act on the things I believed women should have: the right to an education, to equality, to having a choice and agency.

The feminism I saw would only stand up for a specific group of women. Women like me, who were beyond this core group, were on their own.

The problem with White Feminism is they don't understand about what is intersectionalism and everyone has different background. Islam is not about the oppression, the culture and the pathriachy agenda are.

Every White Feminist I have come across will argue until they are blue in the face that women should have the right to decide how to dress themselves. And then those same people are unwilling to stand up for a Muslim woman who wears a hijab or burqa because they ‘don’t believe in it’ or ‘feel like Muslim women are oppressed’.

The term ‘intersectionality’, originally conceived by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, discussed the multiple systems of oppression marginalized people faced. In its inception Crenshaw centred race and gender because Crenshaw was a black woman writing about black women. I believe we should all exclusively identify as intersectional feminists; in doing this we are allowing ourselves to recognize how power structures overlap and reinforce each other and how feminism today is dominated by white, cis-gendered, middle-class, able-bodied women who refuse to acknowledge the multiple layers of oppression women of colour have to go through.

Eight Notifications Salma Haidrani

I’m tempted to remind him that this isn’t a religious issue – it’s a cultural one – but realize that it’ll only spur him on if he elicits a reaction. To think someone dedicated time to my TV appearance via an email rant!

How far have we come when we still don’t really accept the multiplicities and the diversity of Muslim women – be they conservative or those that might have a more casual relationship with faith?

Humility is knowing that in the grand scheme of things you are not that important. It grounds you and allows you to grow emotionally.

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. As they like to say: you can fool yourself but you can’t fool God.

do not believe Islam and feminism clash, but due to the unavoidably fickle nature of humanity it’s hard for many people to make the distinction between Islam as a religion and Muslim culture.

Honour is the strongest currency in South Asian families.

That divorce – according to the Book of Divorce (Kitab Al-Talaq) in the hadith collection Sunan Abu-Dawud – is ‘the most disliked of all permissible things in the eye of God’, is often twisted to make it seem haram, or forbidden. It is not forbidden. It is liked the least.

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

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

Silence is not golden and it hasn’t been for some time now.

The UK’s Marriage Act 1949 is nearly seventy years old and has never been updated. It still states that only Church of England, Jewish and Quaker marriages must be legally registered.

without a legally recognized marriage, people become caught in a ‘double whammy’: under the impression that their marriage protects them, but in fact living in a union that provides no legal protection.

Most imams had no idea of the legal impact on couples. Some imams were resistant to becoming registered to perform legal marriages because of their fear of being forced to officiate same-sex marriages (I told them there is an exemption under the law for faith-based objections to this and they were reassured).

Muslims say to 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. Once you strip away patriarchal culture and tradition, you get back to this fundamental point very 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.

If ‘social evolution’ means only the fittest survive, then (a) it favours the secular White Man due to the societal infrastructures that support him and inevitably leave the Black Muslim Woman at the back of the queue, and (b) it allows whiteness to be perceived as transient, as something that can be achieved or improved; and so a competition ensues between those who are not the White Man.