Can a veiled Muslim woman speak? A feminist analysis of Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s Love in a Headscarf (2010)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Women’s presence in public spaces frequently attracts public gaze. More than any other item of clothing, women’s usage of the veil in public has generated controversy. Though the practice of veiling has been commonly held to preserve feminine modesty (in Christianity, Judaism and Islam); in modern times it is distinctively identified as an Islamic practice through which Muslim women are stereotyped as bodies deprived of sexuality and femininity. This study, using the framework of Islamophobia theorized by Allen, has explored the causes and effects of Islamophobic victimization of a veiled Muslim woman in Love in a Headscarf, a memoir written by Shelina Janmohamed. As a practicing Muslim who veils as an act of love for God and commitment to modesty, and as an immigrant who is acquainted with Western modernism, Janomohamed alludes to the wide gap between the perception of the veil, as a symbol of oppression, and the experience of veiling, as an empowering activity. Building on her identification, this paper concludes that recognition of the feminine, and the feminist sensibility of Muslim women who choose to veil their bodies is needed to understand the nexus between the veil, Islamophobia and oppression.