Muslim Women's Struggle - Islamophobic Media Has Made Communities Distrustful
By
Nesrine Malik
15 Feb 2021
Zesha
Saleem is a young, hijab-wearing freelance journalist at the start of her
career. Like all young journalists, she has developed a tough exterior in order
to be able to weather the unpredictability of work and the sting of rejection.
But when she is successful and her work is commissioned and published, she has
to contend with another obstacle: online abuse.
Zara Mohammed, first female secretary general of the Muslim Council of
Britain. Photograph: MCB/PA
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“Whatever I
write, there will always be people forcing me to justify things that have
nothing to do with the piece,” she says. She is frequently asked if she has
been forced to wear the hijab, questioned on what her views are on women being
arrested in other countries for not wearing it, and told that she can’t be
taken seriously on matters of science if she believes in Allah. Her parents
worry about how long she can carry on in her chosen field if this is the
reception that accompanies her hard work.
Or take
Lena Kamal (not her real name), a screenwriter, who told me of an experience
she had with a broadcaster that burned her badly. “I took part in what I was
told was a comedic piece about micro-aggressions,” she says, “and the way it
was edited and distributed left me open to horrific online hate, which has put
me off interacting with media for life, really.” Saleem and Kamal are among
many British Muslims who may feel cautious, sceptical or even hostile to the
idea that there is value in participating in Britain’s mainstream public
sphere.
These
experiences are part of a longer story about Muslims in this country, who have
for decades been portrayed not as ordinary people, as fallible as anyone else,
but as a problem, a threat, an enemy within. In some cases, British Muslims
have been described as part of a “Trojan horse”, as in the confected and
debunked claims that Muslims were planning to “take over” schools in Birmingham
in 2014. But we could also think of the deep social and psychological effects
of the Prevent programme, which tried to effectively criminalise young Muslims
for talking about politics in certain spaces, or the paternalistic debate about
“banning the burqa” during the “war on terror” in the 2000s. All of this
conspired to make Muslims avatars in the national consciousness for something
other: an indulged and disruptive group who were privileged by a cowed liberal
establishment.
The result
is a breakdown in how British society communicates with and about Muslims, one
exacerbated by a Conservative government that has established a regime of
impunity – if not actual reward – for Islamophobia. But it is in parts of the
British media that the breakdown in trust is most evident. The truth doesn’t
need to get in the way of a good story: from a white Christian child supposedly
forced into foster care with Muslim families, to Muslim bus drivers said to be
kicking passengers off a bus so they could pray, to successfully portraying
child-grooming as if it were exclusively associated with Muslim men, the
onslaught is relentless. Sometimes, months later, publications may print
corrections or apologies, and even pay damages, but it’s too late.
This
breakdown played out last week, in a more subtle but nonetheless revealing
episode, after the Muslim Council of Britain elected its first female secretary
general, Zara Mohammed. In an interview with Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 4’s
Woman’s Hour, Mohammed was asked, among other things, about the number of
female imams in the country. Mohammed clarified that her role was not a
religious or spiritual one, but Barnett still pressed on with the line of
questioning, which Mohammed continued to assert was outside her remit. It made
for uncomfortable listening.
To some, it
will have sounded like a legitimate question asked of a Muslim woman in a
senior leadership role, one that she evaded. To others, it sounded like the
familiar test that Muslims are subjected to when they participate in the public
sphere: the implication was that Mohammed’s appointment meant little – even
when progress is made, it’s never good enough.
The
“gotcha” element was exacerbated by another invidious feature of today’s media
landscape: the editing of these moments for social media, which eliminates
context and provokes reaction. To me, the Woman’s Hour interview sounded like
two parties sitting on either side of lines drawn over many years, a division
that has made healthy discussion about certain issues so difficult. How do you
answer a question such as that, when at the back of your mind is the anxiety
that any answer will give yet more ammunition to a media machine that takes
pleasure in savaging Britain’s Muslims?
Because
that’s one thing that Islamophobia does: it closes Muslim communities up and
makes them defensive, distrustful, afraid that any public reckoning with issues
within those communities will be used against them. Kamal told me she now
refrains from “criticising or engaging with debate about the Muslim community”.
It has
become popular to claim that Islamophobia is a fiction to “shut down” debate.
But the reality is that we have now been living in such a hostile environment
that we are unable to create a clearing within which the things that we all
care about – women’s rights, radicalisation, social and economic exclusion –
are discussed without fear. With so many years of suspicion bearing down on
every exchange, a conscious effort needs to be made to create that space, one
in which conversations are longer, not optimised for viral social media buzz,
and in which Muslims are playing a role behind the scenes so they can point out
when content is inflammatory and editing unhelpful. If we want to talk about
chilling effects on free discussions, let’s start here.
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Nesrine
Malik is a Guardian columnist
Original
Headline: There's a reason Muslim women
struggle to make their voices heard
Source: The Guardian, UK
URL: https://newageislam.com/muslims-islamophobia/muslim-women-struggle-islamophobic-media/d/124306
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