Rare Sites and White Saviours? Gendered Orientalism, Radicalization, and the Construction of Muslim Women Soccer Players in TSN’s Radical Play

Abstract

In 2016, Canada sports broadcaster TSN aired a documentary, Radical Play, which focuses on the players of football team Diverse City FC, many of whom are Muslim and wear hijabs. As posited in the documentary, following the lifting of FIFA’s ban on the wearing of the hijab, soccer became the women’s vehicle for gaining more confidence and agency, which they use to become social media “crusaders” who fight the online radicalization of girls and women. Utilizing theories of gendered Orientalism, I analyze Radical Play by exploring how Muslim sportswomen are constructed in relation to sport, radicalization, and empowerment. I argue that Radical Play frames Diverse City FC’s story through Western rescue discourses and construct a modernizing process where Muslim girls are said to be empowered by the power of Western sport. The constructed transformation of the women into radicalization informants that keep their communities’ safe acts as a preferred outcome of colonial benevolence and acceptance towards “development subjects.” While the main narrative of Radical Play is leveraged by gendered forms of Orientalism, a critical reading shows how the players voices create cracks in this overarching story that help unsettle dominant understandings of Muslim sportswomen.