Claiming our Space: Muslim Women, Activism, and Social Media

Faiza Hirji

doi:10.13169/islastudj.6.1.0078

Abstract

This paper addresses the ways in which Muslim women seek to employ online media, particularly social media, to reclaim narratives around space, embodiment, and power. I argue that digital space is, like any other form of media, structured essentially by racism and patriarchy, but I also note the crucial potential for resistance exhibited by Muslim activists such as political leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Instagram influencer Ayesha Malik, and the largely anonymous women who participated in #MosqueMeToo, encouraged by the journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy. I draw upon a post/anti-colonial feminist framework and the tools of critical discourse analysis in examining specific instances where such women perform acts of resistance that, in turn, trigger a gendered and raced reaction. I note the ways in which some Muslim women, such as Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed, are constructed as media heroes, given that their stories can be co-opted to validate notions of the white colonial savior, while others directly challenge narratives of colonialism and oppression and are thus subjected to backlash. I point to the ways in which some of this vitriol continues to refer back to the notion that Muslim women should be silent, and to the fetishized Muslim woman's body: how it should look, where it can/should go, and what can be done to it.

Highlights

Digital media were expected to free the female, the queer, the raced, the disabled, and the aged from the expectations that come with embodiment, but the reality has fallen short (Ali 2020; Noble 2018)
In the examples discussed here, there is a form of online activism that could serve as proof that Muslim women resist, as they have for many centuries
Bill 21 has been invoked frequently by politicians, scholars, and religious leaders as a contravention of human rights and of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, yet federal party leaders have all shown reluctance to challenge the law, arguing that their legal right to do so is limited (Bryden 2019). This unity of opinion seems to confirm the notion that the state has the right to control expressions of personal devotion, but perhaps more to the point, it affirms that the obsession with Muslim women’s bodies—whether they are covered, how they are covered, what those bodies are capable of—never seems to go out of style, as it were, and the obsession is held by many different groups that feel they should control these bodies in some way

Summary

Introduction

Digital media were expected to free the female, the queer, the raced, the disabled, and the aged from the expectations that come with embodiment, but the reality has fallen short (Ali 2020; Noble 2018). I focus on the ways in which social media, Twitter, can allow for the amplification of some Muslim female voices and their allies, while acknowledging that such an act carries consequences.

Results

Conclusion