“People Think Our Lives Are Dark.” Diasporic Resistance to the Metaphoric Darkening of Female Muslim Identity

Abstract

This chapter explores the role metaphoric enlightenment plays in representations of the identity of young Australian Muslim women that circulate in the public sphere. It examines how metaphors of enlightenment, understood here as the transformation from a negative, 'dark' female subjective state to a positive way of being associated with 'light' are scripted into the representation of female Muslim identity. This is achieved through focusing on how Muslim women chose to represent themselves, asking them to create and comment upon photographic self-portraits that expressed their own sense of self. Young Muslim women's use of the enlightenment metaphor to represent their identity can be read as a conscious struggle to usurp the Imperialist variant of the metaphor present within Islamophobic representations of female Muslim identity.