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queried my own decision to squeeze all that I am into this trinity of labels. Black. Muslim. Woman. Surely, when people ask me who I am I simply say, ‘I am Raifa.’
We serve both as targets of official Islamophobic policies – helpfully depicted in turn as dangerous, refusing to integrate, or allowing extremism to fester within Muslim households – and as props in dominant Islamophobic discourses, in which the British state moves to police, survey, or discipline Muslim men in order to ‘save’ us from the dangers of a supposed specifically Muslim patriarchy.
In 2015, it became a legal duty8 for all public-sector employees to report on their ‘service users’ (students, patients, etc.) for any signs of radicalization, including critiquing British foreign policy, supporting Palestine, an apparent ‘desire for change’, changing groups of friends, or – unbelievably – criticizing Prevent.
The message, once again, is clear: 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.
When Muslim women choose to take a stand and vocalize our opinions, there are always consequences to our dissent – especially because it flips the orientalist caricature of a passive, repressed woman being held hostage by the men in her community.
It was all well and good to celebrate migrants, women of colour, or Muslims in the NUS until one became its president and had opinions that the establishment did not agree with.
The message is clear: a non-hijab-wearing right-wing Muslim woman who demonizes both critical and left-wing Muslims, and Muslims who seem ‘too religious’ or at least not religious in the right way, is acceptable in the public sphere.
Contemporary British practice remains highly reminiscent of this colonial approach. It sees Muslim women as the key entry point for the repressive apparatus unleashed against our community under the cover of fighting terrorism, radicalization, and ‘non-violent extremism’.
The recent Ofsted decision to target schoolgirls who wear the hijab is a further reminder of this trend.12 It turns out – once more – that ‘freedom to choose’ is limited to making the right kind of choices. And it also reminds us of the point about silence I’ve already made: whichever of these different approaches the state is taking at any given time, the Muslim woman is required to remain the silent object of policy,
The state as an institution cannot be an effective ally for our struggles or our campaigns, let alone for our liberation, as long as it deems Muslim communities to be suspect, dangerous, and in need of control and surveillance. It cannot develop constructive relationships with communities that it homogenizes and represses, nor can it offer a route out of oppression to women who bear the brunt of its oppressive policies.
The bedtime stories I was raised on were not of blonde princesses, waiting for a man to save them, but of Ma and Aunt: two resourceful and resilient Muslim matriarchs from whom I was descended.
Sometimes, speaking someone’s story is the only way to keep them with you. When my father told my brothers and me stories about Ma and Aunt, he was also telling us about Zimbabwe, about what it meant to be Muslim, about family, about a whole other life and way of being which existed across the gulf between the UK and Zimbabwe.
Spearheaded by Ma and Aunt, Islam gave my family a shared identity of faith and understanding, as well as heritage, belonging and cultural practices in a society marked by racial divides into which they, like many, didn’t easily fit.
Depending on the context, 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 felt as if I had been unwittingly placed in the middle of a tug of war, and was trying desperately to hold on to myself.
My identity seemed constantly up for negotiation by everyone else but me, as if I were forever trying to navigate an in-between space into which others projected their questions about my body, my family, my beliefs:
These stories were tools of resilience and survival, and they helped me navigate climates of prejudice and challenge by drawing on the strength and lessons from those gone before.
wonder what would have happened to me, had I not had those stories. I often find myself considering the impact of a lack of stories celebrating women like Ma and Aunt – Muslim women, mixed women, cheeky, entrepreneurial, brave women – not only in our homes, but also out in the world.
But, if you cannot find stories about those like you in the first place, or when the stories you are told about those like you are harmful and limiting – not filled with joy and pride like the tales of Ma and Aunt were for me – it can make it difficult to speak in the first place, whether out of a fear of how others may react, or fear that you, as the speaker, won’t be listened to.
No one woman can speak for all Muslim women – for that rich and varied tapestry of experiences, practice, belief and ways of being.
