Recently Mara Brock Akil, creator and producer of one of my favourite shows, Girlfriends, was featured on the August 2008 cover of Domino magazine (pictured to right). The show, initially about four, but then after a few seasons three, Black girlfriends, gained much critical acclaim for its content and its willingness to focus on serious issues, all the time maintaining a comic appeal. Often referred to as the Black Sex and the City, Girlfriends, in my opinion, was much, much better than Sex and the City. MUCH better.

Unfortunately however, after eight seasons the show was canceled. The show was highly popular among Black audiences but not as much among White audiences. Hm...I wonder if that had anything to do with the cancellation. The role of racism in it's cancellation is for another analysis. At this time let's get back to Mara Brock Akil.

Reading up on Akil (pictured to left) I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Akil is Muslim. And a Sufi Muslim at that. Akil says that the characters of her show were based on her own friends. Reading this I began to wonder why she did not include a Muslim character on the show. Even as a guest every now and then. Muslim women living in North America face many of the same issues and challenges faced by the characters on Girlfriends - relationships, self-exploration, identity crises, racism, and sexism. By having a Muslim character on the show Akil could have addressed in the problem of Islamophobia, something so rampant today, as well as many issues relevant to Muslim women.

However, I can also see reasons which could have caused hesitation on the part of Akil. If there was a Muslim girlfriend how would she dress? What would her relationships be like? How would she relate to the other women? Could all this be done without making any moral judgments about the ways in which Muslim women live? Could this be done without creating more stereotypes? Could this be done without excluding some Muslim women?

Girlfriends (pictured to right) had a great run and was highly entertaining as well as educational. I still wish a Muslim woman had been introduced into the show, even if for one episode. Seeing more Muslims on television in "normal" roles can only help in normalizing Muslim people. However, I can understand the pressures of having just a few Muslim characters on television. They become representatives of all Muslims and many are hesitant to take on that immense responsibility. This can be seen in the example of Little Mosque on the Prairie, which, despite all the positive changes it has brought to Canadian television, I have found to present just one "type" of Muslim woman, leading to the exclusion of many Muslim women. (See here for a previous critique.)

But here's wishing good luck to Mara Brock Akil in her future endeavors. Whether or not she presents Muslim characters in her shows, it's a breakthrough that we have a Muslim woman with such creative power and initiative in American media. Let's hope that in the near future such women become more visible to everyone.

In 2007, hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez published a memoir of her experience in Afghanistan. Despite the cringe-inducing subtitle — An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil — the book itself, Kabul Beauty School, isn’t bad. (Interestingly, the book goes by a different subtitle in the U.K., The Art of Friendship and Freedom.)

Rodriguez is moved to travel to Afghanistan and help when she hears about the war and suffering of women. She has a second motive: to get away from her abusive husband. Surrounded by nurses and physicians, she soon begins to feel useless. A hairdresser, she has no extensive training for dealing with disasters. But skilled hairdressers, it turns out, are short in supply and greatly in demand. Rodriguez is greeted with excitement by Westerners and Afghans alike. (The book is rather stereotypical, not surprisingly, in its definition of femininity — nails, makeup, hair-dye — but even some men wish to get their hair cut.) Noting the lack, Rodriguez helps establish a school for training future hairdressers. Throughout the process, Rodriguez familiarizes herself with Afghan culture and customs and creates a new life for herself.

Rodriguez doesn’t turn to an East-West binary. She makes friends and finds an Afghan husband (in an arranged marriage). While the power men hold over the lives of some of the women she meets is more extreme than legally possible in the United States, Rodriguez can relate. She herself faced an abusive husband, and this background, which she retells, makes it easy for her and the reader to understand the women she meets. She shows the hardships they face with otherizing them — painting a respectful portrait of their emotional strength and endurance. She says, “I’ve been blessed with family, and I’m rich—especially rich—in sisters. I sometimes wonder if I’ve done as much for them as they’ve done for me” (269). She resists the tendency to conform Afghan women to American standards in an effort to help them. She notes that helping Afghan women is not as straightforward as Westerners think: “It takes a long time to understand how the complexities of these women’s lives differ from the complexities of ours. Sometimes she can’t help, even when understand these complexities” (259).

Despite the political context of the situation — an American woman in Afghanistan at the start of an American-led “War on Terror” — the book is free of politics. Rodriguez takes no sides. There is a mention of the war in Iraq, but only because it relates to the delayed shipping of supplies to Afghanistan. Focusing on the lives of women, the book leaves political discourse for other books to take on. It’s fortunate, because comments like this — “I still wonder if that videotape will show up on Aljazeera television someday, as evidence that American hairdressers are torturing Afghan men” — make me think Rodriguez wouldn’t be the best person to analyze the political backdrop.

Similarly, Rodriguez does not spend much time on religion. She notes Islamic practices and her Christian faith when they come up, but they are not a large part of the book. She never colors Islam as the source of all problems, but some comments are questionable. She writes, “Even though Roshanna’s parents weren’t deeply conservative Muslims, they wanted to see their country return to normal, and the Taliban seemed determined to make this happen.” Is being a “deeply conservative Muslim” equivalent to supporting the Taliban? That’s troubling.

The writing is straightforward and readable, although somewhat disjointed and not terribly sophisticated. At 270 pages, it’s easy to read in a day or two. Overall, it’s an worthwhile read, portraying Afghan women from a rare angle.

Note: The story may not be all it appears to be; see criticism here.

TIME magazine released its “100 most influential people” list this week. Of the 100 people, only one is a Muslim woman.

Madeeha Hasan Odhaib of Iraq (pictured right) carries the honor of being the only influential Muslim woman of the year. An Iraqi seamstress-turned-district council member, she employs 100 women, and is cited as an activist and heroine in the mini-profile written by previous winner Queen Rania of Jordan.

Odhaib is accompanied by 10 other Muslims, all male, who span categories such as leaders, builders, and thinkers.

On one hand, it’s unfortunate that the academics who compile the list only considered one Muslim woman influential in all of 2008. (This list, remember, America-centric as it is, considers Miley Cyrus and Mariah Carey among the top 100.) Then again, it may be a good thing that the woman chosen for the list — which considers “influential” a neutral term, including both positive and negative influence — is a woman decidedly in the “positive” camp. Odhaib is praised as the symbol of “all of Iraq's courageous women, whose resilience and resourcefulness hold the promise of a new dawn.”

Compare that to women included in years past. I hesitate to describe them all as “Muslim women,” because although some identify (or once identified) as Muslim, they are best cited by critics of Islam as examples of where Islam needs to go. 2005 featured Ayaan Hirsi Ali, (pictured below) an ex-Muslim who went from denouncing Islam to be the source of human rights violations to working for a neoconservative American think tank. The profile was written by Irshad Manji, a controversial figure in the Muslim community. Manji, another critic of Islam, differs by her self-identification as a Muslim. (See some of her other work for TIME here.) The list for 2006 included Wafa Sultan, yet another outspoken critic of Islam, whose inclusion contributed to this petition accusing the magazine of an anti-Islam bias. In their profiles, both Hirsi and Sultan are praised for their activism. Here’s a sample, from Sultan’s profile:

Sultan's influence flows from her willingness to express openly critical views on Islamic extremism that are widely shared but rarely aired by other Muslims. … "I even don't believe in Islam," she says, "but I am a Muslim." By so sharply voicing her beliefs, Sultan crystallizes the mission for the rest of us who want to take the slam out of Islam.

Both profiles are written by women who have not stepped out of Islam, like Ali and Sultan have. Sultan’s profile was written by Asra Q. Nomani, a Muslim reformer, still controversial but less so than Manji. Nomani and Manji note their disagreements with the subjects of the profiles but nevertheless praise the work they have done. As they hold “Muslim membership cards,” their support, I suspect, is meant to hold more weight, affirming Islam critics that Ali and Sultan bring the change Muslims need.

Hold on, you might argue, “influential” doesn’t mean you have to like the person. After all, Osama bin Laden was listed amongst “top leaders and revolutionaries.” While people often think of “influential” in a positive light, it’s true that TIME considers influence “for the better or for the worse.” Managing editor Richard Strengel described what the magazine looks for as “people whose ideas, whose example, whose talent, whose discoveries transform the world we live in. Influence is less about the hard power of force than the soft power of ideas and example.”

This is what the Western non-Muslim media seems to miss so often. Anti-Islam commentators aren’t that influential. Sure, they get interviews on all the news channels and neoconservatives revel in their every quote, but that’s not change. People who hate Islam continue to do so. Muslims who don’t see Islam as the hateful monolith they portray it to be get angry. Sorry, but Ali-types aren’t bringing on the Islamic revolution of secularism. Their influence lies instead in convincing the non-Muslim masses that Islam is the evil they fear. But that kind of influence isn’t what the magazine recognizes.

If TIME wants to look at Muslim women who are making a difference within the Muslim community, it should turn to women who are still within the Muslim community (instead of using them to praise Islam-bashers). TIME has to realize that influence can come in many forms, and Muslim women activists don’t always take the image it imagines them to. Can a conservative Muslim woman be influential? Certainly. Look at Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America. She’s made waves for being the first woman, convert, and non-immigrant to head the mainstream Islamic organization — not for denouncing her religion. Muslims who work within the framework of Islam are far more influential to Muslims than those who turn against Muslims and Islam altogether. And let’s not forget Muslim women can be notable for reasons other than their religion (like the Hindu and Mormon women on this year’s list). Were she still alive, Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, for example, should have made the 2008 list. Odhaib is yet another example.

TIME has some good examples on its record. In 2004 it featured Shirin Ebadi (pictured left), an Iranian human rights activist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts towards democracy and human rights. Ebadi has spoken about her faith and challenged the idea of Islam as inherently misogynist. Queen Rania of Jordan, also noted as a human rights activist and spokesperson against stereotypes of Islam, was profiled the same year. These women do in fact deserve to be called “influential.”

Don’t get me wrong — being influential doesn’t have to mean making Islam look good. I acknowledge that winner-of-Islam-distortion bin Laden has definitely made an impact on the world. But when it comes to Muslim women, I don’t know of any famous bin Laden female counterparts. It’s the women like Ebadi and Odhaib who make an appreciable difference in the lives of Muslim women. That’s influence. TIME would be wise to take note.

Photo credits TIME magazine.

Last week, I was introduced to Chay magazine - a brand new Pakistani magazine (just about to publish their first issue) that covers the topics of sex and sexuality in Pakistan. The first of its kind in the country. Their mission statement states:

The latest issue of TIME features a photo essay and article on American Muslims. From a magazine that featured a cover “Should Christians Convert Muslims?” (June 30, 2003) and headlines like “Does the Koran Condone Killing?” (Sept. 13, 2004), this latest coverage is markedly different. There’s nothing shocking, and it gives a hint to why TIME might make the rest of its coverage of Muslims so inflammatory. These new pieces are, frankly, dull.

A personal essay on being a Muslim woman accompanies a series of photographs of Muslims in the New York area. The essay, titled “What It Means to be American — and Muslim” — yes, the two identities can coexist; get over it — outlines the pillars of Islam, explains why the writer wears hijab, and references an incident of harassment in response to the hijab. As far as coverage of Muslim women living in Western countries goes, this is as basic as you can get. For anyone who knows anything about Islam, these pieces offer nothing new. That doesn’t mean they’re not valuable — surely and sadly, there are still people who don’t know that non-violent Muslims exist. Additionally, it was fascinating to see that the writer of the piece, Shireen Khan, is a producer for time.com. (They actually hire Muslims?) Still, TIME could have and should have done a better job.

The fact that Muslims aren’t all terrorist fanatics seems to be such news that TIME hasn’t reached the point of portraying Muslims as real people. Take a look at the collection of 15 photos, which feel more decorative than anything else.

The photo essay opens with a photo of a Palestinian-South Korean college student working on a design for fashion school. Yes, a Muslim woman can be interested in fashion. Even if she wears hijab. Old news. (Points for including a Muslim of East Asian descent though.) But at least this Muslim woman is doing something. Other women do absolutely nothing unless wearing hijab and looking at the camera counts (example #1, example #2). It’s even more exciting when the lighting is dramatic or there’s a window involved. Children are featured for being children (example #1, example #2), or being children — get this! — near a mosque. With another mosque photo, a Muslim chaplain, Islamic classes, an Islamic school, and the standard “Look at them pray” shot, you’d think that the Muslims never ever leave the mosque — unless it’s to do something else stereotypically Islamic. Wait, there is something else they do: gather. And this is something across the board: women gather, men gather, and even children gather!

And there’s the Muslim existence, summarized. Nonthreatening perhaps (but I don't know about all that gathering...) but completely uninteresting. Photographer Ziyah Gafic was born in Bosnia and is based in Sarajevo — you’d think he’d have seen enough Muslims by now to be able to show them as real people with real and complex lives. He does, however, nod to ethnic and racial diversity. On the other hand, he shows little diversity in dress. Little girls are the only females not consistently shown in hijab.

With the focus on hijab and prayer, Khan’s written essay does nothing to challenge the photo essay’s portrayal of Muslims. Come on, where are the issues Muslims face? Where is the diversity of the Muslim community? Where are all the things Muslims do besides pray and gather? Don’t these journalists know what an angle is?

If this is TIME’s attempt to improve its coverage of Muslims, the magazine still has a ways to go.

The secret life of the Middle Eastern Muslim woman is a hot topic. In bookstores around the world, books line the shelves displaying covers of teasing confessionals — desert princesses, seductive eyes lined with makeup behind a niqab, life when related to a terrorist, the disturbing details of what Muslims do to their women. These salacious tales are told by real-live women — don’t you just love memoirs? But there’s one memoir that won’t be snapped up by readers longing for the intriguing stories of those poor, abused Muslim now-saved women. It’s Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage: from Cairo to America—a Woman’s Journey. A memoir that goes beyond mere memories to social issues across continents, the book doesn’t give neo-Orientalist drama a glance. Published in 1999, the memoir has not lost its relevance even nearly a decade later. In fact, Ahmed’s beautifully written reflections on her Egyptian childhood and British education may be even more necessary today.

Ahmed, born in Egypt in 1940, addresses topics such as imperialism, literacy, feminism, racism, and identity as they relate to her life before moving to the United States. Skillfully crafting her prose, Ahmed simultaneously uses the critical analysis of an academic (a PhD of Cambridge University, she currently teaches at Harvard Divinity School) to break down issues and introduce new ideas. In describing the Islam of her childhood, she writes of a “women’s Islam” distinct from a text-based, dogmatic “men’s Islam.” Ahmed laments the way written works dominate academia as reflecting “the ‘true’ and ‘authentic’ Islam”:

“Professors, for example, including a number who have no sympathy whatever for feminism, are now jumping on the bandwagon of gender studies and directing a plethora of dissertations on this or that medieval text with titles like ‘Islam and Menstruation.’ But such dissertations should more aptly have titles along the lines of ‘A Study of Medieval Male Beliefs about Menstruation.’ For what, after all, do these men’s beliefs, and the rules they laid down on the basis of their beliefs, have to do with Islam? Just because they were more powerful, privileged men in their society and knew how to write, does this mean they have the right forever to tell us what Islam is and what the rules should be?” (129-30)

Ahmed shatters many stereotypes about Egypt, Islam, and Muslim women. It’s not that she goes out of her way to do it. Instead, she presents her life matter-of-factly and most stereotypes just don’t fit into that world. The large black veil was only worn by the lower classes? A Muslim man would encourage his daughter to pursue science? Ahmed’s mother saw pacifism as the core of Islam? These ideas are slipped into the story naturally, not as part of a “Let me explain real Islam to you” agenda. (The latter is usually the only alternative to Islamophobic sensationalism.)

When Ahmed does mean to shock and enlighten her readers, the topics are hardly clichéd. A chapter of the book is devoted to investigating the history of the label “Arab.” Egypt, as it turns out, is relatively new to the label. And the fact that Muslims are predisposed to supporting the Palestinian cause over Israel? Ahmed completely destroys this “fact,” uncovering in her research Egypt’s pro-Israel (dare I say Zionist?) past. Ideas that seem unimaginable become real in the memoir, and there lies Ahmed’s greatest strength. The background of politics, the thoughts on literature, the musings on religion are intriguing and enjoyable. But the greatest impression A Border Passage leaves upon the reader is the idea that all “facts” can be reevaluated. Ahmed teaches her critical eye, forcing readers to realize that nothing is simple. Not Egyptian identity, not British imperialism, not the spirituality of Muslim women. This may only be the story of one woman, but with this message it makes room for the stories of many.

This post continues my look at the portrayal of Muslim women in young adult fiction.

Marina Budhos is not a Muslim. She is not an immigrant. But the daughter of an Indo-Guyanese father and a Jewish-American mother, Budhos has had a strong interest in the stories of immigrant teenagers. Her book Ask Me No Questions: A Novel, published in 2006 by Atheneum, explores the story of Nadira, a 14-year-old Muslim girl who is an undocumented immigrant from Bangladesh.

The book is one in the recent trend of female Muslim characters as sympathetic protagonists, especially ones outside the Orientalist fantasy of what Muslim women and their families are like.

Nadira Hossein is 14 years old and the biggest problem of her life is that she and her family are in the United States illegally; the government has caught on, and they face possible deportation. The plot of the book is driven by politics, but it is clear that Nadira’s family faces increased problems because they are Muslim and from a Muslim country.

Budhos wrote the book not as a “problem novel,” she said in an interview on the podcast If You’re Just Joining Us, but instead as a work of “psychological depth.” Budhos sought to explore the different types of invisibility, including emotional invisibility that Nadira faces, not just as an undocumented immigrant, a Bangladeshi, or a Muslim but also as a younger sister outshone by her sister, Aisha.

Budhos’s characters are Muslim, but she is not. According to this transcript, her grandfather converted his Indian family to Christianity, and there’s no indication that Budhos is anything other than Christian and/or Jewish. This may be undesirable to some Muslim readers, but as a writer Budhos does not paint Islam with an Orientalist or negative tone. In describing the religious Ali-Uncle, Budhos writes, “Ma says Ali-Uncle is like a guardian angel. He watches over others and makes sure we are safe from harm” (33). In the podcast interview, Budhos noted that writing about a Bangladeshi family was not a stretch for her, being familiar with South Asia and having lived in neighboring West Bengal, but she checked with a Bangladeshi friend to confirm the cultural authenticity of the book.

The child of an immigrant father but herself American-born, Budhos has frequently written about immigrants. Her books include the nonfiction Remix: Conversations with Immigrants Teenagers (1999) and novels about the intersection of cultures. It is easy to fall into standard molds of what immigrants are like, but Budhos manages to avoid this. One of the archetypes of am immigrant family is conservative parents who battle with their children over limits. I’m not saying this doesn’t happen in immigrant or even non-immigrant families, but that’s not what this book is about. The mold-breaking characters are best shown in this passage:

“The first time Aisha came home crying from grade school because the kids were making fun of her head scarf, Ma said firmly, ‘Don’t wear it then.’ Ma got a lot of flak from her friends for that and for other choices she made with Aisha, like letting her go on an overnight trip to Washington, D.C. ‘Let them peck like old chickens,’ Abba laughed. ‘We know who we are.’” (109)

Nadira’s parents seem relatively liberal with how they raise their daughter (in another example, her father shocks his friends by taking his daughter, then younger, to a public swimming pool to teach her to swim). At the same time, it does not feel like they are acting “Americanized.” The Bangladeshi component of Nadira’s culture is never forgotten. Rather, it seems that the idea “We know who we are” is ingrained in her parents. It’s refreshing to see characters who neither conform to stereotype of conservative, strict immigrants or that of immigrants who throw away their cultural identity to become American. And for the record, although no one is noted as wearing hijab, it is clear that Nadira, Aisha, and her mother do not.

One of the unfortunate aspects of the book is its cover. The original artwork (see first photo) shows the eye of a girl peering out through a quadrilateral-shaped opening in a blackness that fills the rest of the cover. Although it may have been intended to reflect the invisibility Nadira feels, it more easily resembles a niqab — a contradiction to the anti-Orientalist content of the book. Luckily, a newer edition of the book (shown left) shows a teenage girl with shoulder-length hair, dressed in a bluish-gray shirt.

It’s interesting how Budhos and her characters play off stereotypes of immigrant Muslim families. Nadira’s sister, Aisha, uses her “old-fashioned” parents who “don’t want [her] going out so much” as an excuse to quit the debate team. Nadira is horrified by “this big fat lie” (109). But the success of the lie points to the prevalence of this image of Asian families. In another example, Budhos contrasts the image of Muslim girls with the reality of Nadira and her sister. One of Aisha’s teachers says, “I’ve seen this happen before with the Muslim kids. I push those girls—they’re so bright. Then one day they come in with a head scarf, and they say their marriage has been arranged and they’re not going to college after all. Everything down the tubes, just like that” (112). This is not the story for Nadira and her sister. The biggest threats to their college education are their questionable immigration status and their lack of money to pay the high tuition costs. Never does sexism hold them back from education.

Throughout the book are strong female characters. Aisha is introduced already on the second page as confident and ambitious, with parents who are clearly proud of her:

“Aisha always knew that she wanted to a doctor going to Harvard Medical School. Even back in Dhaka she could ace her science and math exams, and when Abba was in Saudi Arabia working as a driver, he used to tape her reports to the windshield and boast about his daughter back home who could outdo all the boys.”

But Aisha isn’t the only strong female. Cousin Taslima is independent-minded and assertive. Even Nadira’s mother is noted for her “quick temper and high, wicked laugh” when Nadira’s father first falls in love with her. While the men are held in jail by the Immigration National Services, the women of the family run the household. This is not a book of quiet, submissive women who shuffle to meet their husband’s demands. Of course, defined gender roles exist, and some of the women and men are reprimanded for not following or enforcing them: “Daughters are not daughters, and wives don’t act like wives.” Patriarchy is inescapable, as it is in American culture. But women stand out as driving forces in the story. Although the men stand as heads of household, while they are detained it is the wives and daughters who must act to save their families.

Although this is Budhos’s first young adult book, she succeeds in the genre. Budhos uses clear, poetic prose that makes for a compelling read. The use of present tense and reference to current events (Homeland Security, Patriot Act, Code Orange) keep the story urgent, and at 159 pages in length the book never grows tiresome. Perhaps it’s because of Budhos’s choice to not dumb down her vocabulary or sentence structure for young adults, but narrator Nadira’s words hold a maturity beyond her 14 years:

“You have a family, and you go around thinking it’s always one way. Ever since I could remember, Aisha was the star we pinned our future on. It’s as if Ma and Abba were still in Bangladesh riding in a flat bottomed boat in the night, and Aisha was the magic girl who lived above the dark tree branches and lit the way, leading us down the complicated bends. Now all the stars are no more than rubber stickers pasted on a ceiling; they’ve come unfastened and they’re whirling around one another, not sure which will settle where.” (137)

Appropriately chosen by the American Library Association as one of the best books for young adults, Ask Me No Questions is a novel worth reading purely for literary merit. But it’s also notable for its inclusion of sympathetic Muslim characters who do not adhere to stereotypes.

Ask Me No Questions is not an “Islamic book.” Before anything, Nadira is defined by her immigration status, not her religion. She notes that her parents do not pray every day, like their friend Uncle-Ali. They fast and observe Ramadan and other holidays. Some Muslims may not consider this Muslim enough and thus wonder if the book really is about American Muslims. It’s certainly not as overtly Muslim as Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah, which centers around the character’s Muslimness. However, Nadira and her family identify as Muslim, are viewed by the U.S. government as Muslim, and should be considered Muslim characters, even though they do not pray five times a day. I hope that this does not lessen their credibility as representatives of Islam but instead shows that diversity exists within the Muslim identity.

If you’re looking for Muslim teenagers in young adult fiction, you’ll be hard-pressed to find many good examples. There are plenty of Orientalist novels about exotic Muslim girls in distant lands. A standard example is the narrator of Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind (Suzanne Fisher Staples, 1991), who at age 13 is forced into marriage with a man over 50 who already has three wives. Western Muslim women don’t fare much better. Until recently, Jehran of Caroline B. Cooney’s The Terrorist (1999) represented the role of a Muslim woman in young adult fiction: the antagonist, who, abused by her family, is driven to murder.

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah represents the new trend: Muslim protagonists who aren’t terrorists. Abdel-Fattah’s book has to be the most overtly Muslim book that exists in young adult fiction.

The book, published in 2005 by Scholastic, is the story of 16-year-old Amal, an Australian-Palestinian who struggles with standard high school drama, in the context of being a Muslim girl who has recently adopted the hijab. The original cover art shows the face of a girl in a maroon hijab. She is looking up with a slightly raised eyebrow. Instead of glamorizing her by turning her hijab into a niqab and adding dark eyeliner and eye shadow (as done to the protagonist of this book), the publisher chose a cute and friendly cover, scattered with brightly colored circles. It’s even reminiscent of the cover of this lighthearted read. Amal’s hijab isn’t played up to sell books.

So, before anything, masha’Allah! Muslim teenage girls are finally represented in young adult/teen fiction. Not as terrorists. Not as child brides. Instead, they’re average high school girls. Author Randa Abdel-Fattah takes this responsibility seriously and she tries to tackle every issue facing Muslim teen girls. That’s where she trips.

It’s understandable that Abdel-Fattah would have a lot to achieve in a book like this. She takes on the hijab (the decision to go from non-hijabi to full-time hijabi, the reactions, the consequences), the image of Islam in the context of modern-day terrorism, boys and dating, culture vs. Islam, sexism within the Muslim community, racism, Islamophobia, prayer and wudu, fasting, and being the lone Muslim in an upper-class Australian prep school. It’s a lot to cover, and Abdul-Fattah has 360 pages to do it, but often her attempts to address the topics come off rather heavy-handed. It’s that she has stereotypes to break, and she will break them, damn it.

The book is awash with spelled-out stereotype-breaking. It is stated repeatedly that Amal was not forced to wear the hijab. Her school principal, a rather two-dimensional character, even suggests her parents make her wear it, so that Amal can explicitly state, “No, I made this choice.” The idea of a Muslim woman as “oppressed” is repeatedly mocked. It’s clear that Abdel-Fattah set out with the goal of destroying Muslim stereotypes. The goal in and of itself isn’t a problem; it’s the way Abdel-Fattah achieves it that is.

Here’s a description of narrator Amal’s old (Islamic) school:

“Where they indoctrinate students and teach them how to form Muslim ghettos, where they train with Al-Qaeda for school camp and sing national anthems from the Middle East. NOT!” (12)

Simply describing how wonderful the school is, which Abdel-Fattah does, would be sufficient to get her point across, but she goes beyond this to describe the stereotypes and tack on “NOT.” This can interfere the readability of the story. In an other example, an awkwardly stilted dialogue ensues for the sole purpose of assuring readers that Amal does not wear her hijab in the shower (“Helps with the conditioning treatment” ([45]), when the explanation that she takes it off at home already suffices. A smaller attempt to break stereotypes is the author’s note that Amal has light hair and green eyes; Amal explains that people are surprised by her appearance once they know her name. It’s certainly valid for Abdel-Fattah to note that not all Muslims or Arabs are “swarthy and dark-eyed,” as stereotyped. Ironically, the cover shows Amal not with green eyes but dark brown. Clearly some stereotypes have yet to be broken.

Amal describes her reaction to the terrorist bombings in Bali as a combination of horrified sadness for the victims and outrage that would be associated with her religion, her faith, her God. Amal says, “These people are aliens to my faith” (250). I’d say most Muslims can agree with this statement and relate to her reaction, whether in terms of the Bali incident, September 11th, the Sudanese teddy bear incident, or Aqsa Parvez’s murder. The visibility of Islam is so frequently so negative that it forces Muslims into the awkward position of having to explain themselves, simply for being Muslim, every time.

Unfortunately, Abdel-Fattah’s view of what is a Muslim is strictly defined. First of all, there’s the huge emphasis on the hijab. Half of the plot focuses on Amal’s decision to wear the hijab, the reactions she receives, and how it changes her behavior. Granted, the hijab is a large part of many Muslim women’s lives and all the issues Amal raises (“What will my classmates think?” “Dare I go on the subway alone?”) are realistic and specific, but the author spends less time on Amal’s reasons for wearing hijab. In fact, Amal spells it out like this: “I’m doing it because it’s my duty and defines me as Muslim female” (52). Exactly why this is a “duty” is never explored. Amal explains it as “modesty” and falls to the clichéd dichotomy of hijab or scanty clothing. Modesty is an odd way to explain the hijab when Amal focuses so much time on makeup and new clothes in order to impress boys. The irony is never questioned. She does have a close Muslim friend, Yasmeen, who doesn’t wear the hijab, but any reader unfamiliar with the hijab debate within the Muslim community could easily assume that Amal’s viewpoint — that the hijab is the initiation into “universal sisterhood” (28) — is the last word on hijab. This is rather off-putting to those of us who consider ourselves members of the sisterhood of Islam — without covering our heads.

I’ve browsed commentary on the book at sites such as Amazon and LibraryThing. The majoity of the response indicates that the novel’s main readers are non-Muslim, although the book has been read by Muslim women seeking to find a portrayal of their experiences growing up the West. In the novel, Amal rants about being seen as the “walking ambassador” of Islam because she is the only Muslim at her school (156). Ironically, outside the book the character carries this same responsibility, because she is the most visibly Muslim narrator of any young adult novel. Abdel-Fattah wittingly or unwittingly defines through Amal what it means to be Muslim. For Amal, Islam involves wearing hijab and abstaining from romantic relationships until marriage. Anything less is presented as against her beliefs. These are pretty mainstream Islamic ideas, but they may leave the non-Muslim reader with the firm belief that no “real” Muslim ever considers dating or sees hijab as not obligatory.

Nevertheless, Amal does break other stereotypes. She’s a Muslim teenager and she watches Sex in the City. She has a mad crush on her classmate Adam, showing that Muslims are in fact not asexual! It’s interesting to see how Abdel-Fattah handles the conflicting forces within Amal: she is intensely attracted to Adam (from forearm lust to his personality), but she does not believe any romantic relationship is appropriate outside marriage.

For a book that’s a “journey of faith” as the dust jacket advertises, there’s a lack of clear spirituality. Amal goes through the actions of religion; she prays, she fasts, she wears hijab, and she doesn’t shy from explaining her beliefs to her classmates. But it’s hard to see her spiritual connection with God, to understand her actions as anything more meaningful than rote motions. The most helpful moment is when Amal explains to her crush Adam that praying is like taking a timeout in soccer. Nowhere else does Amal hint at what prayer or faith actually mean to her. Sport analogies, though, fall short of spiritual significance. Perhaps it’s just not for this genre. The prose is hardly poetic, and one of the most vivid descriptions is of Adam’s bulging forearm. As put by one Amazon reviewer, “For the Muslim reader looking for an ‘emaan lifter’, look elsewhere.” Islam is described in terms of daily actions, but there’s nothing inspiring about it.

Littered with painfully stilted dialogue, far too many references to shallow materialism (Amal learns that color-coordinating her hijab with her shoes and bag is essential), and moments when the book plods on without a plot, Does My Head Look Big in This? is no literary gem. The writing is too immature for a typical teenage audience. Especially in the first half it easily passes as mediocre fluff reading — “chick lit” if you like.

In the second half more serious themes are addressed. Amal’s friend Leila faces unfair treatment at home. Her mother, clinging to tradition she learned growing up in a village in Turkey, criticizes Leila for focusing on school. Leila is introduced to man after man, all in her mother’s attempt to marry her off at age 16. While Leila is told off for being a “bad girl” for studying and not doing enough housework, her brother entertains scantily-clad girlfriends, goes to bars, and returns home intoxicated on alcohol and marijuana. Unlike Leila, he is not forbidden from going out at night or even punished for his behavior.

It’s commendable of Abdel-Fattah to bring up issues such as this, instead of painting the entire Muslim community as as progressive as Amal’s parents. Here Amal faces the same issue covered in a recent post; how can she help her friend without making Islam into the culprit? She hesitates over telling her non-Muslim friend about the situation: “I’m worried that she’ll think, Oh, typical Muslim nutjobs. Locking their girls up in the house” (297). Her clarification that culture is not Islam (“And they don’t tell me it’s a Muslim story. They don’t tell me it’s a Turkish story. They understand it is a Leila story” (301) and “she’s following her village’s culture, not Islam” (89)) is again a bit heavy-handed; it’s too clear that Abdel-Fattah wants to make the distinction. I appreciate that Abdel-Fattah doesn’t ignore sexism and oppression within the Muslim community. This is even more relevant with the recent story of Aqsa Parvez.

If there were a hundred books about Muslim teenagers, Does My Head Look Big in This? would not be the one book I’d recommend. Abdel-Fattah’s writing could do with serious editing for length and quality. She lacks the skill of subtlety: messages like “Show kindness even to the grouchy old lady next door” hit the reader with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the predictable storyline makes foreshadowing useless. The fluffiness can grow tiresome. And there’s the fact Amal defines her understanding of Islam in black and white terms.

Unfortunately, the hundred books about Muslim teenagers do not exist. Does My Head Look Big in This? is what we have, the only book to cover so many issues of Western Muslim teenagers. And, despite its flaws, the book succeeds in one of its very important goals: normalizing Muslim girls. Here is Amal. She’s not a “fanatic,” she’s not a terrorist, and she doesn’t lead a life of misery and abuse. She’s just a teenage girl, dealing with standard high school problems — but she navigates them her own Islamic way.

(Note: Randa Abdel-Fattah has come out with a second book featuring a Muslim teenager, Ten Things I Hate About Me (2006). Not yet available in the United States, this novel focuses on the protagonist’s identity as a Lebanese-Australian.)

This piece, titled "Unveiling Muslim Feminism" by Erin Wiegand, is from In These Times, the web version of a print magazine. I didn’t see this cover of the Economist, but you can trust I would have said something if I had! Anyway, I’m including the article here despite some historical date errors the author makes. I include corrective notes within the text (This is my thesis, people). I also included the picture that ran with the piece, which I don't know (or think) is the original Economist cover.

Unveiling Muslim Feminism, by Erin Wiegand

The cover of the July 21 Economist touted an article about Iran’s push to develop nuclear weapons. But the accompanying photo, filling the cover along with the article’s title, “The Riddle of Iran,” presented a sea of figures in black chadors, floor-length cloths used by some Muslim women to cover themselves—despite the fact that the article said not a word about Iranian women. The riddle of Iran, the photo suggested, is the way that it teeters between modernity (the development of nuclear weapons) and antiquity (the omnipresent chador).

By using the image of the covered Muslim women to question the modernity of the Iranian state, the Economist reflects an entire history of Western interactions with Muslim women. As Nima Naghibi argues in Rethinking Global Sisterhood: Western Feminism and Iran (University of Minnesota Press), Muslim women’s veiled or unveiled bodies are frequently used to symbolize the Iranian state as a whole, and particularly the degree to which the state associates itself with the West.

Rethinking Global Sisterhood is a book that not only tears apart stereotypes and assumptions about the significance of Muslim women’s dress, but levels harsh critiques against those feminists who invoke “global sisterhood” as their cause while perpetuating colonial attitudes of superiority toward their veiled “sisters.” Western-minded Iranian nationalists and liberal feminists have generally viewed the veiled woman as a symbol of a primitive era, but Naghibi argues that the reality is more complex.

The interpretation of “hijab” (modest clothing) has varied greatly between cultures, classes and time periods. In early 20th century Iran, for example, middle- and upper-class women often wore a chador and facial veil. Full concealment was a sign of higher class status, because it indicated that one did not have to work in the fields. (Peasant women traditionally wore simple, loose clothing with a headscarf.)

As Iran sought stronger identification with Western values in the 1930s (under the rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi), the veil became seen as a marker of a tribal past, and “modern” middle-class women discarded it. But by the 1960s, the symbolism had again reversed. Unveiled women were associated with a sinful, corrupt West, and women veiled themselves to proclaim their virtue and, more, importantly, to protest against the Pahlavi dynasty. [While it is correct that many women took up the chador to protest the Shah and his policies, some women wore veils in the 1960s and some did not; the idea that not wearing a hejab is 1960s Iran was shameful was not a widespread idea] Following the shah’s ouster, many women removed their veils, which sparked a backlash from those men who believed women should not have a choice in their dress; the women responded by taking to the streets of Tehran for several days of women’s rights demonstrations.

Naghibi also examines the ways the state has regulated Iranian women’s dress in order to promote or reject an association with the West. In 1936, Reza Shah Pahlavi (the first of Iran’s two emperors) banned veiling, as part of an attempt to “modernize” Iran. Women who resisted the ban had their veils ripped from their bodies. Naghibi suggests that the 1936 ban was, in many ways, quite similar to the ban on unveiling that would be imposed in 1983. Both pieces of legislation, at their roots, attempted to use women’s bodies to promote a particular form of nationalism, whether Westernized or anti-imperialist. “Beneath these two polarized representations,” she writes, “lies a desire to possess and to control the figure behind the veil by unveiling or re-veiling her.”

Naghibi suggests that the visibility of Muslim women—whether veiled or unveiled—has caused a great deal of anxiety for Western feminists, who have largely ignored the indigenous presence of Muslim women’s activism. During the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), for example, Iranian women participated in protests, acted as couriers and even took up arms. [The Constitutional Revolution started in 1906, not 1905.] Naghibi argues that such actions threaten feminists’ perceptions of themselves “as liberated and modern in contrast to imprisoned and backwards Persian women, and … as leaders of the international women’s movement.”

Seventy-five years later, little had changed. The feminist writer Kate Millet gushed about the Iranian women’s demonstrations in 1979: “It’s a whole corner, the Islamic world, the spot we thought it would be hardest to reach, and wow, look at it go!” It was as if the only possible reading of the situation, for Millet, was to see the demonstrations as the direct result of Western feminism’s influence, rather than something Iranian women were seeking on their own and for themselves.

Millet had been one of a handful of Western feminists (including Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer) who visited Iran in the ’70s and invoked the solidarity of “global sisterhood.” But their incursion, Naghibi argues, actually undermined women’s struggles in Iran, both by encouraging the growth of an elite feminist movement that neglected lower class and rural women, and by creating an association between feminism and the West—an association that made it easy for the women’s movement to be crushed in post-revolutionary Iran, when anything Western was seen as counter-revolutionary and dangerous to the state.

Naghibi’s critique of “global sisterhood,” a concept prevalent among feminists since the ’70s, is by no means new. Feminists of color have been arguing for decades that women’s experiences differ greatly between classes and ethnicities—to say nothing of the fact that the vanguard of such a “sisterhood” has tended toward the white and middle-class. But today, Naghibi writes, the “discourse of sisterhood” in the West has led to “a merging of interests between liberal feminism and a xenophobic nationalism. … [an] uncritical support of the Bush and Blair administrations’ rhetoric of the ‘us/them’ divide, the ‘civilized world versus the terrorists.’ ”

In November 2001, Laura Bush delivered a tear-jerking appeal during the weekly presidential radio address to save the women of Afghanistan from their imprisonment under the Taliban. She invoked the familiar representations of the “oppressed Muslim woman” and the “civilized Western woman” who needs to intervene on her behalf. For feminists who recognize such appeals for what they are—window dressing for imperialist ambitions—it is time to rethink global sisterhood.

Forbes.com’s article entitled “Muslim Women in Charge” crows proudly that “Despite the barriers, 10 women executives from the Middle East made our World's 100 Most Powerful Women ranking this year.” Except not all of them are Muslim or from the Middle East.

Vidya Chhabria, #97 on Forbes’ list, is originally from India. She also isn’t Muslim (why does Forbes think that Muslim = Middle Eastern?).

Imre Barmanbek (#88) is from Turkey—while I’ll always consider Turkey part of the Middle East, a number of Turks themselves consider Turkey as part of Europe. I guess Forbes forgot to ask.

And what are these barriers that Muslim women had to overcome to be on Forbes’ oh-so prestigious list? Culture? Family? Middle Eastern women have no more barriers to making Forbes’ list than North or South American, European, or Asian women. Women everywhere have to grapple with cultural and familial acceptance of their place in the workforce. Didn’t the term “glass ceiling” originate within the U.S.?

While I sort of appreciate Forbes’ efforts at being inclusive, they’re going about it completely wrong. Other than mislabeling these women (or labeling them at all), Forbes also takes on the task of reminding everyone about how “backward” the Middle East is: “[Dr. Nahed] Taher is unusual in a country where women are prohibited to drive, vote or hold high-level government office, and in a region where poverty and tradition deprive many women of control over basic choices, from what to wear to when to get married….”

After giving several paragraphs about positive developments for women’s employment throughout the region, Forbes immediately reminded us that despite all this, a Arab Human Development Report from 2002 says that “noted that just one in every two Arab women can read and write.”

Don’t worry everyone! The Middle East is still backward, despite all these fantastic women! Maybe these women are powerful heads of companies and government, but we think they all still have to cover their hair, and thus are completely oppressed! Forbes makes it seem that not driving herself to work or wearing hijab almost cancels out Dr. Taher’s work. By the way, Dr. Taher is the first woman chief executive of Saudi Arabia's Gulf One Investment Bank. I wouldn’t drive myself to work either with a sweet title like that.

And why did Forbes focus on Dr. Taher? There were plenty of other Muslim women on their list from the Middle East that they could have focused on in this article. Why not focus on Maha Al-Ghunaim, chairwoman of the rapidly expanding Global Investment House in Kuwait, or Dr. Sima Samar, the chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, neither of whom wear hijab? Or focus on Sheikha Lubna al Qasimi, who has enforced transparency within the United Arab Emirates economy since she became Minister of the Economy in 2004 and has launched her own perfume?

While Forbes could have made up condescendingly ethnocentric captions about any of these women, Saudi Arabian Dr. Taher allows Forbes to easily solidify its ideas of Middle Eastern women as oppressed, and lets the article showcase her great “triumph” over these “backward” traditional societies, lumping all of the Middle East into the “as backward as we think Saudi Arabia is” category.

While some of the Muslim women featured in Forbes’ list cover their hair and some of them do not, and I am sure that they all choose what they want to wear and whom they want(ed) to marry, Forbes has a difficult time seeing past these women’s circumstances and focusing on what they’re really doing for their countries and other women.