Veiled Muslim Women Research Articles

Halal, le nouveau voile ? Représentation du désert alimentaire et vestimentaire façonné par l’universalisme républicain dans deux romans de Faïza Guène

Has halal food become the new headscarf revealing France’s hostility towards Muslims? From political discourse to legislative measures dictated by the so-called republican universalism, from aggressive policies aimed at Muslims’ diet to the reduction of public spaces for veiled Muslim women, the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity seem to shrink to simple mirages. In this article, I analyze how Faïza Guène’s novels Kiffe Kiffe Demain (2004) and La Discrétion (2020) engage with the stigmatization of Muslims due to their food and clothing choices. Based on DeSoucey’s work on gastronationalism and foie-gras I argue that, despite the cruelty of force-feeding, foie gras has its uncontested place on French tables while some politicians attempt to outlaw halal slaughter under the cover of animal cruelty concerns, thus reviving the cliché of the savage “Saracen.” Despite this food and clothing desert targeting a specific part of the French population, the development of social media and the creativity of chefs like Djamel Bouhadda are creating an oasis allowing Muslims to have access to haute cuisine and one day, perhaps, to add their halal cuisine to the French culinary heritage that Cohen describes as white and normative.

Negotiating submission. Pedagogies of coloniality in the everyday of veiled Muslim women in France and Switzerland

ABSTRACT Muslim women wearing simple headscarves (hijab) have been at the center of intense public scrutiny for several decades in many European countries, and they experience widespread ordinary forms of gendered and racialized discrimination. Our study of veiled Muslim women’s reported experiences of stigmatization in France and Switzerland identifies types of interactions that we conceptualize as pedagogies of coloniality. These interactions follow similar scripts in which interlocutors, who are members of the majority group, ask hijabi women to unveil or to veil differently even though it is not legally required in the context of the interaction. Our concept aims at analyzing more precisely how Islamophobia works at the intersection of race, religion, gender and age in everyday interactions aimed at disciplining visibly Muslim women. By identifying essentialization, scrutiny and mimicry as pedagogies of coloniality, we show that Islamophobia is a form of racism deeply shaped by coloniality.

A Surreal Relation with Otherness in Shirin Neshat’s Land of Dreams

Since her early photographic series Women of Allah (1993−1997), the Iranian-American artist Shirin Neshat has been either praised for her alternative representations of veiled Muslim women or criticised for practising self-Orientalisation. This article reflects on Neshat’s Land of Dreams (2019) where the artist turns her lens towards American people and landscapes, investigating how her aesthetic and dialogic search for the Other within a demographically diverse state in the US, New Mexico, challenge the pre-conditioned expectations of her works as art from the Middle East. Engaging with Neshat’s surreal interactions with her sitters in this photographic and video installation, the focus is how she becomes a mediator to show a dynamic of Relation, in Édouard Glissant’s sense of the term, and the complexity of the individuals’ minds and life experiences through blurring the lines between dream and waking life, fiction and reality, past and present. The analysis further explores Neshat’s viewpoint as a diasporic artist manifested in her visual strategies to facilitate a nuanced and fluid understanding of the artist’s own sense of identity, belonging and homeland.

Diskriminasi Perempuan Dalam Media Baru (Analisis Semiotika Roland Barthes pada Tayangan Eksperimen Sosial Channel Youtube Zavilda TV)

Zavilda TV is a YouTube channel created by a veiled Muslim woman from Surabaya named Vilda Rosandi, but commonly known as Zavilda. Zavilda's youtube has 211 thousand subscribers with a total of 179 contents that have been uploaded since April 2021. The content produced by Zavilda is social experiment content related to hijab. Researchers used primary data in the form of three videos on Zavilda TV's youtube channel. This research uses a descriptive qualitative approach with Roland Barthes semiotic analysis to reveal meanings (denotative, connotative, myth). The three women in the social experiment show on the Zavilda TV Youtube channel are the targets and objects of social experiments who experience acts of discrimination both directly and digitally by Zavilda, because these women receive psychological intimidation, digital objectification, and coercion / pressure to agree to wear the hijab. The targeted women are also not treated as humans who are in full control of their autonomy, as they are used as Zavilda TV's main commodity solely for profit. This can be seen from the selection of titles, thumbnails, and video content that focuses on women's bodies and uses sensual words. This is an act of discrimination against women because it violates their right to freedom of expression and religion and violates their right to privacy and autonomy. Therefore, the researcher has concluded that discrimination of women in new media is still a problem because it is not only done by the opposite sex, but discrimination can also be obtained from fellow women.

Revisiting the Veil Ban during the COVID-19 Epidemic: The Shift in the Social Context

Objectives: This study aims to re-evaluate the veil ban in a new era. For many years, the prevailing belief was that covering the face obstructed successful communication between society members, thus eliminating cohesion, provoking peace, and endangering public security. However, when masks covered faces during the Covid-19 crisis, this belief became questionable, leading societies to renegotiate face politics and other social concepts.
 Methods: The study analyzed social and media contexts to discuss how societies coped with face masks, even applauding individuals for covering their faces, while laws still rejected veiled Muslim women.
 Results: The preliminary results of the study indicate that social structures exhibited high flexibility and adaptation to changes imposed by Covid 19; people managed to reshape rules of social interaction.
 Conclusions: Surprisingly, the epidemic improved the social experience for Muslim women wearing a veil. The study also carried a practical advantage; it offered a new perspective on Muslim women's social future in the post-Covid-19 world

Unveiling Hatred

Although anti-Muslim hate crimes have been on the rise in most Western nations for decades, according to influential hate crime scholar, Barbara Perry, little attention has been given to the particular vulnerability of veiled Muslim females to such crimes (Perry 2013), thereby potentially disregarding a sustained source of human rights violations (Perry and Olsson 2009). This paper delves into Danish sociolegal reality to delineate the scope of such concern, attempting to ascertain any specific hate crime vulnerability among veiled Muslim women in Denmark. It identifies a number of preliminary empirical indications that resonate with Perry’s claim, reasoning that the hate crime vulnerability of veiled women be more thoroughly scrutinized in a Danish context. However, it also argues that such hate crime vulnerability is most productively addressed, at least prima facie, as a tangible and principal human rights issue (Brudholm 2016) rather than in the terms of human rights violations.

Navigating Stigma through Refashioning Islamic Veiling: Muslim Women’s Sartorial De-Stigmatization Strategies in Contemporary United States

This article examines Muslim women’s de-stigmatization strategies in everyday urban interactions in contemporary United States with a focus on their sartorial choices geared toward navigating stigmatization. It is particularly interested into how intersubjectivity, emotions and materiality work together in navigations of the quintessentially hybrid and unstable meanings of Islamic veiling. Within this frame, it demonstrates that Muslim women’s socio-spatial relations in the context of rising public hostility initiate socially creative processes of self-representation that are navigated through a broad range of sartorial practices. The article pays significant attention to the dialogic-material aspects of Muslim women’s self-presentations in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump. It concludes that experimentation with sartorial styles provides veiled Muslim women a productive site to navigate the tensions between self-identifications and hegemonic other-identifications imposed from outside and experienced as powerfully stigmatizing. Yet, at times of political crisis marked by a striking rise of anti-Muslim hostility, the productive aspects of their sartorial management become obscure and futile.

Control over Muslim Women's Bodies: A Critical Review

Struggling between the contradictory demands of colonial and neocolonial forces, Muslim women have been constantly at the center of ideological, political, and religious discourses and subjected to surveillance at multiple levels. More specifically, Muslim women's bodily practices, particularly the veil, as an embodied marker of difference that challenges the Western ideals of femininity and signals the “Otherness” of Muslim women, have been at the center of debates on Muslim women's bodies and embodiment. This thematic review of feminist scholarship on regulating and controlling Muslim women's bodies suggests that postcolonial and postsecular feminists have tried to alter narratives portraying veiled Muslim women as “victims” of patriarchal oppression and have disputed representations of Muslim women as “Others.” However, important nuances of Iranian Muslim women's multidimensional and complex decisions, informed by multiple matrixes of power, whether in the form of self‐regulation or through the constant control of the surveilling gaze of dominant “Others,” remain to be explored.

Discrimination unveiled: a field experiment on the barriers faced by Muslim women in Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain

Abstract We examine the penalties faced by veiled and unveiled Muslim women when applying for jobs in three European labour markets: Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. We rely on recent literature comparing public opposition towards Muslims in general and opposition to Muslims’ religious practices, such as the wearing of the hijab. Based on a cross-nationally harmonized field experiment on hiring discrimination, we use two different signals of Muslimness (volunteering activities in a Muslim community centre or wearing the Muslim headscarf) to identify whether employers discriminate against Muslims as a group or against Muslims adhering to specific Muslim practices—in this case, wearing the headscarf. We present robust evidence that veiled Muslim women are discriminated against in Germany and the Netherlands, but only when applying for jobs that require a high level of customer contact. In Spain, however, the level of discrimination against veiled Muslim women is much smaller than in the other two countries. The high level of discrimination we found in the Netherlands, where the institutional context has traditionally been open to the accommodation of religious minority rights, is particularly surprising and points to the possibly stigmatizing effect of recent policies geared towards the cultural assimilation of immigrants.

Dismantling gendered Islamophobia in medicine.

KEY POINTS The image of the oppressed, veiled Muslim woman has long been used to justify ongoing Western colonialism.[1][1] In December 2021, the Letters pages of CMAJ gave voice to a familiar trope: that of the Muslim woman wearing a hijab, or Islamic headscarf, as an “oppressed” figure. Such

The Practitioner's Bookshelf: Review of Lila Abu-Lughod's Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Abstract This review considers Lila Abu-Lughod’s Do Muslim Women Need Saving? and reflects on the book’s key implications for human rights practitioners. Through discussions of topical concerns such as veiling, honour crimes and forced marriages, the book critiques the global project of ‘saving’ the Muslim woman in the name of human rights and gender equality. The author reviews the book from the perspective of a human rights educator and a veiled Muslim woman living in the liberal West.

La Vie en Rouge

La Vie en Rouge

Beyond the Veil: Exploring Muslim Women’s Multidimensional Identities in Laila Aboulela’s The Translator and Mohja Kahf’s The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf

The article presents a critical analysis of two novels by contemporary Arab Muslim women writers, Leila Aboulela and Mohja Kahf. The article examines how these authors critique, resist, and disrupt the hegemonic discourse that presents Muslim women as a monolithic and homogeneous category. In The Translator and The Girl in Tangerine Scarf respectively, the female protagonists’ religious experiences and identities are studied with reference to resistance narratives and disruptive postcolonial strategies. The unsettling of the monolithic image of veiled Muslim women is hereby pursued through providing an analysis of the cultural imagery of Muslim women, to deconstruct the image of the veil in today’s world.

Mode pudique : entre marketing éthique et influence virtuelle

The growth of Muslim population throughout the world, the development of social networks as well as the emergence of a new type of thought leaders are all factors that have led to an increasing demand for clothing items so called We are now seeing the development of a real product-market set in which clothing businesses from different ranges target a particular segment: that of veiled Muslim women. Clothing brands and in particular luxury brands are working to create and offer clothing items that meet tastes and new trends while being in line with the Islamic values of modesty. This is a very complex market situation and which is of increasing interest to researchers. However, French research on modest fashion is very limited. In this article, we highlight the marketing concepts that intervene in a complex market: that of clothing worn by veiled Muslim women. We want to show the multidimensionality of the phenomenon and understand the dynamics linked to brand ethics and virtual communities in this growing market. On the basis of a global search for articles in the reference lists of newspapers and electronic databases, we have drawn up a critical assessment of the main theoretical contributions related to Islamic fashion, better known in Anglo-Saxon literature under the name of Modest The contribution of the analysis is on two levels: First, we found no theoretical consensus on the concept of Second, it is worth emphasizing the importance of online influencers as a fundamental part of any study that deals with the subject of modest fashion. As for the main research perspectives, the review of the literature has made it possible to orient them, on the one hand, on deterministic approaches and the proposal of explanatory models for the adoption of modest fashion and, on the other hand, on interpretive approaches based on the anthropological dimension of the Hijabista phenomenon and which includes the concepts of culture, identity and symbol. JEL Classification : M31, L67 Paper Type: Theoretical Research.

Discrimination against Veiled Muslim Women in Switzerland: Insights from Field Experts

Although the hijab has recently attracted much attention from social scientists, the discrimination experienced by hijabis has been insufficiently investigated. Data are difficult to obtain, partly because surveys usually do not have items on this practice and victims are difficult to reach. However, field experts, namely active agents in governmental racism-prevention institutions and in Muslim associations, can provide rich insights into processes of discrimination. Based on an analysis of semi-structured interviews, I answer the following question: how do governmental and non-governmental experts describe discrimination against hijabis in Switzerland? The results reveal that, according to the experts interviewed, the hijab is the most important marker leading to processes of discrimination; this discrimination takes a variety of forms and affects a wide range of life domains and profiles of hijabis; such discrimination leads to a segregation of the social space of hijabis; many women are unwilling to report discrimination to governmental services for different reasons.

Prejudice against veiled Muslim women: The role of right-wing authoritarianism and intergroup anxiety

A series of terrorist acts involving women in various parts of the world, including in Indonesia, allegedly perpetrated by radical Muslim groups, has reinforced stereotypes and created prejudice against veiled Muslim women. This study aims to explain the role of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and intergroup anxiety as antecedents of prejudice against veiled Muslim women. Using a cross-sectional survey design, the study sample (N = 403) were residents of Surabaya, selected using accidental sampling. RWA, intergroup anxiety, and prejudice against veiled Muslim women were measured using a questionnaire, while the research hypothesis was analyzed using multiple regression. The results show that RWA and intergroup anxiety play significant roles in explaining prejudice against veiled Muslim women (R = 0.826; R2 = 0.682; F = 428.68; p 0.001), with the relative contribution of RWA and intergroup anxiety being 34% and 66% respectively. The results and implications of the study are discussed in detail. The theoretical implication of the research is that RWA and intergroup anxiety play roles as antecedents of prejudice against veiled Muslim women.

Turbans, Veils, and Villainy on Television: Stargate SG1 and Merlin

In this article I investigate why two shows from different television genres in two different countries resort to nearly identical costume choices to convey villainy. I argue that that the directors, writers, and costume designers for the US science fiction showStargate SG1and BBC'sMerlinuse orientalist tropes of the veil as exotic, oppressed or threatening as costumes for their non-Muslim characters because of the centuries-long association in Western culture between Muslim veiling and the Other, while differentiating between acceptable and unacceptable headgear and face coverings. I draw on Said's Orientalism, Hall's Encoding/Decoding, medievalism, and the theory of the ethnonormative viewer to make this case. The “veil” has become an iconic negative sign in the West wholly distinct from meanings given to it by veiled Muslim women themselves. I suggest that anti-veiling ideology in Western publics stems in part from negative connotations given to it in television shows likeStargate SG1andMerlin.

Pengungkapan Diri Muslimah Bercadar melalui Instagram: Pendekatan Fenomenologi

Nowdays the hijrah culture is becoming a trend. Not a few Muslim women who emigrated by wearing the veil as a face covering, but then it became a challenge for them when they get discrimination, which is linked to terrorism. The phenomenon of veiled Muslim women in Indonesia continues to increase until it has become a trendy outfit as evidenced by the number of veiled Muslim women who are increasingly open on Instagram in expressing themselves. This study uses a constructivist paradigm with qualitative methods and a phenomenological approach. The subject of the study is five Muslimah Instagram users. This study found that there was expressive self-disclosure with enlarged open areas (open self) and Islamic self-disclosure with enlarged hidden self areas. There are functions of expression, self validation, social control and relationship development experienced by veiled Muslim women, and there is no function of self clarification. This study concluded that Muslims on Instagram can influence the community in removing the negative stigma of muslims and giving direction to other muslims to stay open and not shut away from society.

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

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.

FENOMENA KOMUNIKASI MUSLIMAT BERCADAR MELALUI MEDIA SOSIAL DI PEKANBARU

This study aims to describe the phenomenon of veiled muslim woman communication in Pekanbaru in using social media. This research reveals the communication experience, self-concept, and motives of veiled muslim women through the use of social media, with qualitative methods and phenomenological approaches. The results showed that the experience of veiled muslim women communication using social media from various aspects, with the best experience of meeting new fellow Muslims, to the unpleasant experience was considered a terrorist. Their self-concept in the use of social media is to create a positive self-concept with a friendly nature because the Islamic religion teaches creating good relationships among muslims as the Prophet of Allah exhorts. Other motives, veiled muslim women use social media as a means of promotion for businesses, obtain religious studies, and communication for understanding religious beliefs.