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Veiled, secluded, submissive, oppressed—the "odalisque" image has held sway over Western representations of Muslim women since the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Yet during medieval and Renaissance times, European writers portrayed Muslim women in exactly the opposite way, as forceful queens of wanton and intimidating sexuality. In this illuminating study, Mohja Kahf traces the process through which the "termagant" became an "odalisque" in Western representations of Muslim women. Drawing examples from medieval chanson de geste and romance, Renaissance drama, Enlightenment prose, and Romantic poetry, she links the changing images of Muslim women to changes in European relations with the Islamic world, as well as to changing gender dynamics within Western societies.
This book explores how stereotypes of “oppressed Muslim women” feed into the self-representations of women with a Muslim background. The focus is on women active in, and speaking on behalf of, a wide variety of minority self-organisations in the Netherlands and Norway between 1975 and 2010. The author reveals how these women have internalised and appropriated particular stereotypes, and also developed counter-stereotypes about majority Dutch or Norwegian women. She demonstrates, above all, how they have tried time and again to change popular perceptions by providing alternative images of themselves and of Islam, paying particular attention to their attempts to gain access to media debates. Her central argument is that their efforts to undermine stereotypes can be understood as an assertion of belonging in Dutch and Norwegian society and, in the case of women committed to Islam, as a demand for their religion to be accepted. This innovative work provides a “history from below” that makes a valuable contribution to scholarly debates about citizenship as a practice of inclusion and exclusion. Providing new insights into the dynamics between stereotyping and self-representation, it will appeal to scholars of gender, religion, media, and cultural diversity.
Representing diverse cultural viewpoints, Muslim Women in War and Crisis collects an array of original essays that highlight the experiences and perspectives of Muslim women—their dreams and nightmares and their daily struggles—in times of tremendous social upheaval. Analyzing both how Muslim women have been represented and how they represent themselves, the authors draw on primary sources ranging from poetry and diaries to news reports and visual media. Topics include: Peacebrokers in Indonesia Exploitation in the Islamic Republic of Iran Chechen women rebels Fundamentalism in Afghanistan, from refugee camps to Kabul Memoirs of Bengali Muslim women The 7/7 London bombings, British Muslim women, and the media Also exploring such images in the United States, Spain, the former Yugoslavia, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, and Iraq, this collection offers a chorus of multidimensional voices that counter Islamophobia and destructive clichés. Encompassing the symbolic national and religious identities of Muslim women, this study goes beyond those facets to examine the realities of day-to-day existence in societies that seek scapegoats and do little to defend the victims of hate crimes. Enhancing their scholarly perspectives, many of the contributors (including the editor) have lived through the strife they analyze. This project taps into their firsthand experiences of war and deadly political oppression.
The figure of the «Muslim» woman or girl performs a crucial role in far-reaching socio-political debates in Germany. Indeed, such figures challenge the boundaries of gender equality and secularism and contest notions of tolerance and integration. The (in)visibility of Muslim women's bodies and their apparent position in Islam function as ostensible indicators of their oppression and of Islam's supposed incompatibility with western values. This book investigates representations of «Muslim» women and girls in German popular culture from 1990 to 2015. The study analyses the discursive function of such figures in German popular culture via three key research questions: what representational practices surround the figure of the Muslim woman or girl in German life writing, young adult literature and film? How do such representations function to produce «non-Muslim» subject positions? What is the function of this figure within narratives of feminism and assertions of gender equality? This study understands itself as an intervention into contemporary racist discourses in Germany and operates within a transdisciplinary framework of intersectional feminism and cultural and German studies. Ultimately, the book aims to make visible and interrogate the underlying hierarchies and agendas that drive representations of Muslim women and girls. This book was the winner of the of the 2017 Early Career Researcher Prize in German Studies, a collaboration between the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham and Peter Lang.
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam. It offers a detailed, moving portrait of the actual experiences of ordinary Muslim women, and of the contingencies with which they live.
Family, Law and Politics, Volume II of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures, brings together over 360 entries on women, family, law, politics, and Islamic cultures around the world.
Minority Women and Western Media: Challenging Representations and Articulating New Voices presents research examining media portrayals of women from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. It provides qualitative and quantitative findings of how women are stereotyped and misrepresented not only because of their gender but also their race, religion, ability, physical attributes, and political status. Whilst their voices are frequently excluded, marginalized and misrepresented, the chapters in this volume show how minority women are creating and articulating new discourses and challenging assumptions and expectations about themselves. This book provides insights into how women are represented in different media, including newspapers, television shows, films, and online platforms. Scholars of media studies, women’s studies, and communication will find this book particularly useful.
This groundbreaking study examines Muslim female superheroes within a matrix of Islamic theology, feminism, and contemporary political discourse. Through a close reading of texts including Ms. Marvel, Qahera, and The 99, Sophia Rose Arjana argues that these powerful and iconic characters reflect independence and agency, reflecting the diverse lives of Muslim girls and women in the world today.
Early modern scholarship often reads the dramatic representations of the Muslim woman in the light of postcolonial identity politics, which sees an organic relationship between the West’s historical domination of the East and the Western discourse on the East. This book problematizes the above trajectory by arguing that the assumption of a power relation between a dominating West and a subordinate East cannot be sustained within the context of the political and historical realities of early modern Europe. The Ottoman Empire remained as a dominant superpower throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was perceived by Protestant England both as a military and religious threat and as a possible ally against Catholic Spain. Reading a series of early modern plays from Marlowe to Beaumont and Fletcher alongside a number of historical sources and documents, this book re-interprets the image of Islamic femininity in the period’s drama to reflect this overturn in the world’s power balances, as well as the intricate dynamics of England’s intensified contact with Islam in the Mediterranean.
Sara R. Farris examines the demands for women's rights from an unlikely collection of right-wing nationalist political parties, neoliberals, and some feminist theorists and policy makers. Focusing on contemporary France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Farris labels this exploitation and co-optation of feminist themes by anti-Islam and xenophobic campaigns as “femonationalism.” She shows that by characterizing Muslim males as dangerous to western societies and as oppressors of women, and by emphasizing the need to rescue Muslim and migrant women, these groups use gender equality to justify their racist rhetoric and policies. This practice also serves an economic function. Farris analyzes how neoliberal civic integration policies and feminist groups funnel Muslim and non-western migrant women into the segregating domestic and caregiving industries, all the while claiming to promote their emancipation. In the Name of Women's Rights documents the links between racism, feminism, and the ways in which non-western women are instrumentalized for a variety of political and economic purposes.