The portrayal of Muslim women in the media
When I was nineteen (over two decades ago!), I entered an essay competition hosted by IPCI. I recently found the essay and thought I’d share it here with you since it is a topic that is still relevant today. The original essay was handwritten on 9 pages, and the web sources cited, although listed at the end, are not available today.
The portrayal of Muslim Women in the media
Since the height of the feminist movement in the late 70s, a remarkable amount of attention has been drawn over the status of Muslim women. Unfortunately, this attention by the media has distorted the image of women to such a degree that Islam is misrepresented and Muslim women are thought to be victims of a patriarchal and misogynistic religion. The media has great power that directly affects people. It is a propaganda machine of the highest order.
In television, films, books, newspapers and magazines, Islam is presented as being a backward and barbaric religion. It is seen as being oppressive and unjust to its women. These various forms of media misrepresent Islam in different ways, but overall achieve the same negative result: the demonisation of Islam and Muslims.
Western civilisation boasts about the number of women that it has ‘freed’ from the family and children, so that they could be employees. Contrary to this, Islamic culture has always glorified the mother. It made her a symbol, a mystery, a sacred thing. Modern civilisation has proclaimed (sic) motherhood to slavery, and has promised to free women from it.
Rasulallah (SAW) regarded the wife as “the best safeguard for the husband against sin; a lighthouse of virtue that saves the husband from shipwreck when tossed by the raging waves of passion.”
You would agree with me when I say that the most natural unit of society is the family. In order to survive, the family needs shelter, nutritional meals, clothing for all weather and, above all, foundation. These needs have to be seen to by competent adults, and in order to share these responsibilities, we have to consider each one’s natural temperaments.
Allah SWT created men and women equally, but not identically. This can be seen in physical strength. While the man possesses the strength to protect his family and work to earn a living, the woman is given the strength to raise a child in her womb. She is given the strength and means of weaning, comforting and educating the child. With these God-given qualities come God-given responsibilities: The man should use his strength and knowledge in protecting and providing for his family; while the woman should use her strength and knowledge in ensuring that she preserves a comfortable environment in the home so that the family’s physical and emotional needs are fulfilled.
Western feminists paint Muslim women as essentially oppressed. Juliet Minces, author of The house of obedience: Women in Arab society, wrote: “while women elsewhere gradually liberated themselves – to some extent- from the total supremacy of men, most women in the Muslim world continued to be subordinate.” Like other journalists, Minces wishes to present the Muslim woman as the oppressed, submissive, silent victims of Islamic patriarchy.
The Qura’an speaks of everything in the universe as being created according to a measure set by the Creator. The sun moves on path of its own “and may not overtake the moon”. People need oxygen to survive. A bee cannot live in the sea, nor a fish on land. Each lives in a state of submission. In order for society to prosper, there needs to be a state of submission among its members.
The Western gurus, who have made it their duty to judge right from wrong, and ‘free’ from ‘oppressed’, equate liberation with drinking alcohol, having pre-marital relationships, delaying marriage (or not marrying at all) and choosing not to have children. These critics proclaim that all things progressive, modern and superior are essentially Western practices; while segregation and backwardness are inherently Islamic. Even the essence of marriage is distorted.
Marriage, in Islam, is a solution aiming to answer the problem of “how to reconcile one’s spiritual desires and one’s physical needs; and of how to save chastity without rejecting love” (Islam, the Natural Way). Marriage, therefore, is a typical Islamic institute.
Since in pure church teachings there is no basis for marriage, the Christians of our world are confused as how to related to it. Islam regards marriage as a sacred bond between two people, each of whom have rights and responsibilities that suit their respective temperaments. Whereas Western materialism rejects marriage because it is regarded as the subjugation of one sex under the other.
According to Western fundamentalists, Islam holds women in particularly low esteem: A Muslim wife has no rights, while all men are polygamous! A Muslim woman is constructed as a passive figure: she is not allows to speak for herself. Being a Muslim woman, it is this misrepresentation that hurts me the most. With no insight into Islam, journalists and writers condemn Islam’s attitude to women.
I have read about a film called Hidden Faces, by Claire Hund and Kim Longinotto. The critics say that the film gives them a little more insight into how Muslim women are depicted in the West. They say the film “was originally intended to be about internationally-renowned feminist Nawal El Saadawi, but developed into a fascinating portrayal of Egyptian women’s lives in Muslim society.”
“This absorbing documentary broaches the contradiction of feminism in a Muslim environment; a startling unforgettable picture of contemporary women in the Arab world.”
An interesting excerpt from an article by Sairra Patel, entitled “The media and its representation of Islam and Muslim women:
Rana Kabbani, in the introduction to her book, discusses how a journalist from the magazine Vanity Fair came to her for material on an article about Islam. When the article was published, Kabbani was disappointed to say the lease – “It ignored any of the important debates within Islam about the rights of women. It distorted every sentence I had uttered.”
One may conclude that the article was dishonest, but isn’t the whole Western debate about Muslim women a dishonest one? With solid proof such as this, it is obvious that the media is intentionally representing Islam as a misogynistic religion.
“The veil is one of the key symbols of women’s position in the Muslim world,” writes Minces. According to her, “all Muslim women are hypocritical, deceitful and duplicitous” and all of these traits are masked by the veil. These hostilities stem from widespread misconceptions and the negative image build up around the Muslim way of life.
“Much of Western feminist writing … has essentialised veiled Muslim women as the ‘oppressed Other’. This is achieved through a prior assumption … in which Western women are presented as liberated by virtue of their freedom … and Muslim women are essentially oppressed … by use of the veil.” (web source no longer active)
The question posed here is: Is the hijab forced?
Has Allah SWT commanded that women cover her hair and wear loose garments as a means of torturing and punishing her? Has He done it to make women subservient and to oppress her (sic)?
If we analyze the situation through the narrowminded kufaar eyes of the media, then that is precisely how we will view hijab. We will insist that it is a means of regression and restriction, designed solely to make us feel miserable, backward and old-fashioned. But, if we take the same situation and reflect upon it beyond our narrowmindedness, ignoring the biased views of magazines and television shows, we will don our abaya and scarf with pride, happiness and dignity. For the media fails to enlighten us on the thousands of Muslim women in the States, the UK, Germany, Turkey and France who all fight to wear the Hijab. They fail to inform us that Islam is the fastest-growing religion – instead they attach negative stigmas to this, too.
Jemima Goldsmit, wife of ex-Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan and daughter of British millionaire, Sir James, said in an interview entitled, Why I chose Islam: “The media present me as a naïve, besotted twenty-one year old who has made a hasty decision without considering the consequences, thus effectively condemning me set in a life of interminable subservience, misery and isolation.” Note the words she uses in the media’s depiction of her – naïve, besotted, misery, isolation.
Another similar story that caught my eye is titled “Why I embraced Islam – the inner cause gave Maimuna tranquility” in which Sister Maimuna, formerly Joan Dixon, born into a Christian family, accepted Islam and found peace. She says, “What little I knew of Islam focused on media portrayal, satire, and stereotyping.”
The slightest excuse is used to turn the wheels of propaganda and form ideas in a few gullible minds that to be a devout Muslim women, practising her Deen with dignity, is simply not tolerated. What have the liberalists been fighting for all along, they say?
Judging by the content of the articles appearing in Western magazines, it is apparent that the liberated woman’s happiness depends on her access to nightclubs, alcohol and revealing clothing; and the absence of such entertainment is considered an infringement of her basic rights.
We are bombarded with the lewdness of the Western world, whose women are free to wear as little and show as much body as she desires. This is what we’re missing, they tell us – liberation, enjoyment, sex, music, stares from sexually-charged men and the sweetness of choice to bed as many men as she likes.
And, sadly enough, these tactics have been working wonders on our chaste, gullible minds. The Muslim woman begins to ask herself who she wants to be like: the pathetic veiled woman, or the liberated immoral woman?
Do these Western women enjoy all the attention? The dirty thoughts, sick desires, stalking and disrespect? The rapes, beatings, ill comments in an equally sick society? Perhaps these are the rights they have been fighting for.
Over 1400 years ago, Islam gave rights to women which were superior to the rights of their Western counterparts.
Anne Besant, a Christian writer in the ’30s observed that “it is only in the last twenty years that Christian England has recognised the right of women to property, which Islam has allowed it from all time. It is strange to say that Islam preaches that women have no souls.” Other such rights [which have been awarded to Muslim women from all time] are the right to inherit, and the right to make a contract in her own name.
The media distorts the truth about women in Islam, misrepresents the rights of women in Islam, and in so doing, portrays Muslim women as backward and subservient. It is fascinating to note that the media claims that Islam is backward and barbaric basing their judgement simple from the way Muslim women are dressed. Few understand the respect a concealed woman holds. Women in Islam are so treasured that no strange man is even allowed to glance at her, no stranger can lay a hand on her, and she should stay indoors like the treasure that she is.
In saying this, I do not attempt to change the perception of the non-Muslim because it is an established fact that no ignorant person will ever be able to understand the complexity and beauty of Islam – the true religion.
References:
- Juliette Minces, The House of Obedience: Women in Arab Society, Zed Press, London 1994
- ‘Alija ‘Ali Izetbegovic, Islam between East and West, American Trust Publications 1994
- Hammudah Abdalati, Islam in Focus, Abul-Qasim Publishing House
- Abdul Wahid Hamid, Islam, the natural way, MELS 1993
- Web sources which are no longer available – (1) www.islamtoday.com/media2, (2) www.thetruereligion.org/distorted, and (3) www.maryams.net/articles
Stay well, inside and out
Waheeda, a.k.a Waydi
P.S. If you appreciated this post, then sign up for my emails where I share more fabulous resources, mental health tips and wellness reminders.