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Marketing an imagined Muslim woman: Muslim Girl magazine and thepolitics of race, gender and representationShelina Kassama

a Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University ofToronto, Canada

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To cite this Article Kassam, Shelina(2011) 'Marketing an imagined Muslim woman: Muslim Girl magazine and the politicsof race, gender and representation', Social Identities, 17: 4, 543 — 564To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2011.587308URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2011.587308

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Marketing an imagined Muslim woman: Muslim Girl magazine and thepolitics of race, gender and representation

Shelina Kassam*

Department of Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,University of Toronto, Canada

(Received 9 March 2010; final version received 29 November 2010)

This article examines the magazine Muslim Girl (started publication 2007) andexplores how the representations on the magazine’s pages construct a particulartype of identity for Muslim women: an ‘idealized’ Muslim woman who is bothNorth American/Western and Muslim. Such a woman is portrayed as liberal,educated, fashionable, a ‘can-do’ woman, who is also committed to her faith. This‘ideal’ woman is situated squarely as a neo-liberal subject in an increasinglyconsumerist world: she is ‘marketable’ (and marketed) as the ‘good Muslim’(Mamdani, 2004) and is positioned as the ‘familiar stranger’ (Ahmed, 2000) inNorth America. This so-called ‘modern’ Muslim (read: ‘good Muslim’) isjuxtaposed both against the ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim (read: ‘bad Muslim’) andthe ‘normalized’ white North American subject. Against the discourse of post9/11 nationalism and within the context of (gendered) Orientalism, this articleargues that such idealized representations present easily recognizable tropes,which serve important political, ideological and cultural purposes within NorthAmerican society. An analysis of these representations � and the purposes whichthey serve � provides an important window into the nuances of the structureddiscourses that seek to control and discipline the gendered Muslim body. On theone hand, the representations in Muslim Girl focus on the so-called ‘integratedNorth American Muslim’ � a ‘modern’ or ‘good’ Muslim � within the context ofthe multicultural, neo-liberal and post 9/11 nation-state. On the other hand, theserepresentations also highlight examples of Muslim women, who seemingly remaincommitted to their faith and community. Such representations of hybridized NorthAmerican Muslims speak powerfully to the forces � ideological, cultural, politicaland social � that are at play in the post 9/11 world. In analyzing the representationsfound in Muslim Girl, this paper provides an insight into some of these forces andtheir implications.

Keywords: Muslims post 9/11; race; representation; gender; citizenship; nation-building

Introduction

Muslim Girl, a glossy magazine published in Canada, constructs a particular type of

identity for Muslim women as a marketable global citizen and neo-liberal subject in

an increasingly consumerist world. This identity imagines an ideal Muslim woman,

portrayed as liberal, open-minded, educated, fashionable, a ‘can-do’ woman who

*Email: [email protected]

Social Identities

Vol. 17, No. 4, July 2011, 543�564

ISSN 1350-4630 print/ISSN 1363-0296 online

# 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2011.587308

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remains committed to the principles of her faith. She is marketed as the ‘good

Muslim’ (Mamdani, 2004) and the ‘familiar stranger’ (Ahmed, 2000) readily

assimilated into the commercial landscape of North American culture. This imagined

Muslim woman presents an easily recognizable subject, commodified as part of agrowing Muslim women’s industry. This paper is a reading of the representations of

Muslim women in Muslim Girl, situated within a larger, post-9/11 discourse on Islam

and Muslims in North American public and political life.

In building my arguments in this paper, I outline, first, some theoretical

antecedents which frame my arguments. These theoretical antecedents help to

place this study within existing academic literature on cultural representations, race

and gender in the media, in a so-called ‘post-feminist’, ‘post-racial’ post

9/11 world. I also outline the methodology utilized in my analysis. Second,I move to a reading and analysis of the themes found in Muslim Girl magazine.

In my analysis, I foreground the manner in which the representations in the

magazine create idealized tropes for the North American Muslim woman. Finally, I

analyze the implications � cultural, political, social and ideological � of this

imagined ideal within the context of North American nationalist and hegemonic

discourses.

In this study of Muslim Girl magazine, I argue that the representations

embody an idealized North American Muslim woman, a woman who is both‘North American’ and ‘Muslim’. Such a woman falls squarely within the category

of ‘good Muslim’ (Mamdani, 2004) � educated, emancipated and empowered � an

image that can be conveniently juxtaposed both against the image of the ‘bad’

Muslim as constructed by (neo)Orientalist discourse as well as against the

naturalized whiteness of the Western subject. Further, this imagined, prototypical

Muslim woman presents an easily recognizable subject, who can be commodified

as part of the growing Muslim women’s industry. Such a commodification serves

to reinforce the ideological and structural constraints of North American society,in which the gains of feminism and anti-racism/anti-oppression are being

increasingly challenged. This imagined Muslim woman serves important political

and ideological agendas which reinforce post 9/11 (and earlier) hegemonic

discourses. An analysis of the ‘Muslim Girl woman’ � the idealized ‘modern’

Muslim woman � is critical to a nuanced analysis of the various ideological

debates occurring in Western society.

Theoretical antecedents: Orientalism, cultural politics, and the postfeminist, post-racial

world

An analysis of the construction of the idealized Muslim woman in contemporary

popular culture must begin with the theoretical foundations of Orientalism, as well

as with an analysis of the political and cultural contexts within which popular culture

functions. The three theoretical pillars on which I base my work are Orientalism and

gendered Orientalism; post-feminism in popular culture; and the cultural politics of

representation.The work of Edward Said (1978) and Meyda Yegenoglu (1998) on Orientalism

and gendered Orientalism have provided important foundations upon which my

own work is based. Further, recent work on popular culture and representations

in an increasingly ‘post-feminist, post-racial’ world (Tasker & Negra, 2007;

544 S. Kassam


McRobbie, 2007; Projansky, 2007; Banet-Weiser, 2007) has provided important

analyses into how popular culture reinforces certain types of representations,

particularly of women and of racialized peoples. And finally, the scholarship of

Stuart Hall (1996, 1997) Herman Gray (2004, 2005), Dawn Currie (1999), Angela

McRobbie (2007), Yasmin Jiwani (2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009) and Razack (1999,

2005) on representations of race, identity and gender have been important

touchstones.

Representations about Islam and Muslims have had a long and powerfully

resilient history; these images, perpetuated over time, clearly inform current

perspectives. Said describes Orientalism as ‘a Western style for dominating,

restructuring and having authority over the Orient’ (Said, 1978, p. 3). Orientalist

thought presents Muslims as exotic, primitive, irrational, depraved, child-like,

‘different’ � the ‘other’ � while the European is seen as civilized, rational, mature,

virtuous, and ‘normal’ (Said, 1978, p. 40). The mutuality between the two sets of

images is crucial: the image of the ‘other’ is vital in constituting and sustaining the

boundaries of the western subject, a codification which must continually be

reinscribed.

Said’s distinction between manifest and latent Orientalism is vital to an analysis

of how Orientalist thinking is perpetuated over time and embedded in contemporary

popular culture. Latent Orientalism represents the unconscious, underlying, psychic

impulses that underpin the more obvious perspectives. It is these unconscious

impulses which remain embedded in society and which continue to shape Western

representations of the ‘other’. While manifest Orientalist representations may have

changed, or perhaps become more sophisticated over time, the underlying impulses

remain the same, ensuring that the ‘other’ continues to be viewed as backward,

primitive, somehow different from ‘us’. I argue that the representations found in

Muslim Girl are shaped fundamentally, perhaps unintentionally, as responses to the

images perpetuated by latent Orientalism.

Said’s analysis, while certainly seminal, does not adequately address the question

of gender, an issue which is vital in considering representations of Muslim women in

popular culture. The Western fascination with the exotic Oriental woman necessitates

a re-reading of Orientalist thought, a re-thinking which centres gender at the heart of

this discourse. Meyda Yegenoglu (1998) argues that ‘the question of sexuality cannot

be treated as a regional one; it governs and structures the subject’s every relation with

the other’ (p. 26). She extends Said’s theorizing by maintaining that the Orient is ‘a

fantasy built upon sexual difference . . . the figure of the ‘‘veiled Oriental’’ woman has

a particular place in these texts, not only as signifying Oriental woman as mysterious

and exotic but also as signifying the Orient as feminine, always veiled, seductive and

dangerous’ (Yegenoglu, 1998, p. 11).By arguing that the Orient is always veiled, Yegenoglu points to the notion of an

essentialized Orient:

In Western eyes, the Orient is always more and other than what is appears to be, for italways and everywhere appears in a veiled, disguised, and deceptive manner. It is by wayof its veiled appearance, by the very act of its concealment, that the Orient reveals itself,reveals that there is an Orient, a place, a culture, an essence that needs to be grasped,known and apprehended. (Yegenoglu, 1998, p. 48)

Social Identities 545


Such a gendered reading of Orientalist thought is critical to an analysis of the

representations of Muslim women which, as I argue below, are shaped fundamentally

by the notion that it is upon the bodies of Muslim women that these ideological

battles are waged. It is on her body that ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ are carried, as are

notions of the ‘enlightened’, modern Muslim woman who must assimilate success-

fully into North American society � a woman who must be the quintessential, ‘good’

Muslim, an imagined category that I theorize emerges clearly on the pages of Muslim

Girl magazine.

Recent scholarship on post-feminism provides the second theoretical pillar on

which I base my analysis of representations of Muslim women in popular culture.

Post-feminist thinking is feminism ‘taken-for-granted’, a world in which the gains

of the feminist struggle are seen to be normalized, hence, rendering unnecessary

(or so the thinking goes) the need for continued feminist struggles (Tasker &

Negra, 2007, p. 1). McRobbie argues that ‘[f]eminism is cast into the shadows,

where at best it can expect to have some afterlife, where it might be rendered

ambivalent by those young women who must in public venues stake a distance

from it, for the sake of social and sexual recognition’ (McRobbie, 2007, pp. 27�28). Related to late capitalism, post-feminism is integrated into the economics of

niche markets, luxury lifestyles, and consumerism. Within such an environment:

. . . the new female subject is, despite her freedom, called upon to be silent, to withholdcritique in order to count as a modern, sophisticated girl. Indeed, this withholding ofcritique is a condition of her freedom. There is quietude and complicity in the mannersof generationally specific notions of cool and, more precisely, an uncritical relation todominant, commercially produced, sexual representations . . . (McRobbie, 2007, p. 34)

Post-feminism focuses on the individual female subject, a subject who is,

ostensibly, free to be a ‘cool’, ‘modern’ woman, one who chooses to engage in

all areas of life, on her own terms, so to speak. The focus is on individual

empowerment, individual consumerism, individual engagement with society, rather

than on the structural context of contemporary society. The representation of a

particular kind of woman � the ‘can-do’ woman, in control, successful, healthy,

well-adjusted, modern, the ideal ‘future citizen’ (Projansky, 2007, pp. 47�48) � is

very much part of this post-feminist thinking.

Similarly, in a post-feminist world, the representation of racialized peoples can

be contained within certain parameters. In her work on Dora the Explorer, the

children’s television show, Banet-Weiser (2007) traces how race and ethnicity are

inscribed in particular ways, as ‘a kind of ‘‘authentic’’ pleasure and an

unproblematic embrace of ‘‘difference’’. Race, in this context is not rendered

invisible, but it is also not presented as specific and particular. Rather, Dora, like

Diego, represents a marketable global citizen’ (Banet-Weiser, 2007, p. 221).

Such analyses of gender and race in a post-feminist world have implications

for my analysis of representations of Muslim women in popular culture.

Representations of the idealized Muslim woman are focused on individual

empowerment and achievement, the ‘modern’ Muslim woman, who is beyond

affiliations to particular communities, one who aspires to be the idealized citizen.

Such representations both challenge and confirm stereotypes of Muslim women, a

dual process which sometimes evokes ambivalent responses.

546 S. Kassam


Research on the cultural politics of representation on race and gender is the third

theoretical pillar within which I situate my analysis of Muslim Girl. Stuart Hall

argues that popular culture is:

. . . an arena that is profoundly mythic. It is a theatre of popular desires, a theatre ofpopular fantasies. It is where we discover and play with the identification of ourselves,where we are imagined, where we are represented, not only to the audiences who do notget the message, but to ourselves for the first time. (Hall, 1996, p. 474)

Popular culture has been an important site through which political and cultural

struggles over blackness have been waged, particularly in the United States and

Britain. One such struggle has been over how the politics of representation negotiates

the desire to represent, on the one hand, an essentialized black subject (seen as

crucial to political struggle), and, on the other, to carve a discursive space for the

heterogeneity of black experiences. If identity is ‘a strategic and positional one . . .[and] does not signal that stable core of self ’ (Hall, 1996, p. 3), how does the struggle

for representation of blackness negotiate a contingent identity in the midst of media

and a public that demands a stable core self? How the politics of blackness has

negotiated such tensions is instructive for discussion and analysis of the representa-

tions of Islam and Muslims at this historical moment.

Hall’s argument on the nature of identity is important in considering the

representations of Muslims:

. . . identities are never unified, and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented andfractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersectingand antagonist, discourses, practices, and positions. They are subject to a radicalhistoricization and are constantly in the process of change and transformation . . .Identities are about questions of using the resources of history, language and culture inthe process of becoming rather than being: . . . They relate to the invention of traditionas much as to tradition itself . . . (Hall, 1996, p. 4)

Such ‘invention of tradition’ is precisely what I argue is occurring through the

idealized Muslim woman, as represented by the ‘Muslim Girl woman’, an imagined

figure which shapes the understanding of ‘Muslim Womanhood’ in post 9/11 North

America.

Herman Gray theorizes that representations of blackness have been critical to the

political and ideological struggles in American society. He argues that contemporary

representations of blackness are founded on earlier stereotypes, based on a

‘generalized societal common sense about the terms of society and people’s social

location in it’ (Gray, 2004, p. 9). Gray’s analysis speaks of the ‘normative universes

within which all other representations and marginalization of difference � race, class,

ethnic, gender, sexual � are constructed and positioned’ (pp. 9�10). In my own

analysis, I argue that the idealized Muslim woman is situated within certain

‘normative universes’ and that the sometimes-ambivalent responses evoked by

portrayals of Muslim women represent struggles over the meanings of these

normative universes. In this respect, the tropes embedded in Orientalist thought

are critical to an analysis of the representations of the contemporary idealized

Muslim woman. These historical images � latent, unconscious, psychic � embedded

in the ‘generalized societal common sense’ (p. 9), combined with the ideological



fervour of post 9/11 nationalism, profoundly shape the representations of Muslim

women, images which are important vehicles in the cultural politics regarding Islam

and Muslims at this historical moment.Key questions raised by Gray (2004, p. 43) regarding televisual representations of

blackness are also relevant in an analysis of the cultural politics regarding Islam and

Muslims. This paper will address some of these questions in an attempt to situate the

idealized Muslim woman (as represented in Muslim Girl) within the context of the

discursive negotiations in the North American context. What do these representa-

tions say about Muslim women in the North American context? Is Muslim tradition

(however defined) being ‘represented’ or is a tradition being ‘invented’, a tradition

that is made to appear far more homogenous than it really is? And if a tradition is

being invented, to what end? How, if at all, do these representations contribute to the

struggle over meaning and what do they say about the signifier, ‘Muslim woman’ at

this historical moment? And finally, what work � political, social, cultural and

ideological � does the idealized Muslim woman do in the contemporary context?In analyzing representations of gender and race in the media, Angela McRobbie

(2004, 2007), Dawn Currie (1999) and Yasmin Jiwani (2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009)

have been important in my analysis of Muslim Girl magazine. Linking the depiction

of gender in media to post-feminist thinking, McRobbie makes the point that ‘those

utterances of forceful non-identity with feminism have consolidated into something

closer to repudiation rather than ambivalence, and it is this vehemently denunciatory

stance which is manifest across the field of popular gender debate. This is the cultural

space of post-feminism’ (McRobbie, 2004, p. 257). In looking at the popular

television series, Bridget Jones, McRobbie further argues that ‘[t]hese so-called ‘‘A1’’

girls are glamorous high-achievers destined for Oxford or Cambridge and are usually

pictured clutching A-level certificates. We might say these are ideal girls, subjects par

excellence, and also subjects of excellence’ (McRobbie, 2004, p. 257). The notion of

‘individual choice’ is crucial to this configuration and McRobbie theorizes that:

choice is surely, within lifestyle culture, a modality of constraint. The individual iscompelled to be the kind of subject who can make the right choices . . . [and] new linesand demarcations are drawn between those subjects who are judged responsive to theregime of personal responsibility, and those who fail miserably. (McRobbie, 2004,p. 261)

In her research on adolescent girls’ magazines, Dawn Currie (1999) argues that

women’s magazines shape how society thinks about femininity. She theorizes that

‘femininity is the ‘‘other’’ against which our notions of the public and the social are

constructed. The femininity in women’s magazines stands in contradistinction to the

unacknowledged masculinity of war, political events, and financial dealings discussed

in magazines such as The Times’ (p. 22). Quoting Marjorie Ferguson who writes

about the ‘cult of femininity’:

. . . The direct parallels are these: the oracles that carry the messages sacred to the cult offemininity are women’s magazines; the high priestesses who select and shape the cult’sinterdictions and benedictions are women’s magazine editors; the rites, rituals, sacrificesand obligations that they exhort are to be performed periodically by the cult’s adherents.All pay homage to the cult’s totem � the totem of Woman herself. (Ferguson, 1983, p. 5,quoted in Currie, 1999, p. 25)

548 S. Kassam


Yasmin Jiwani (2005a, 2005b, 2008, 2009) provides important analyses of the

representation in media of women of colour and Muslim women. She argues, for

example, that representations of Muslim women often depict ‘helpless victims’

juxtaposing this with ‘chivalrous knights’ (2009), the latter being western bodies,

usually men, but now increasingly liberal white women/feminists. Such representa-

tions, she theorizes, reinforce the notion of a ‘rescue mission [that] produces and

reproduces the chivalric code of masculinity that is the inverse of the hard power of

the security state’ (Jiwani, 2009, p. 729). In order to be rescued, however, Muslim

women must be ‘rescue-able’ (p. 736) and this ‘‘‘rescue-ability,’’ then comes to be

defined through terms that reveal how these women have become ‘‘ours’’ or more like

us’ (p. 736).

In her analysis of the characters of the American television show, Relic Hunter,

Jiwani provides an analysis of the representations of women of colour, and how

these reinforce key Orientalist binaries, as well as contribute to the reinscription of

the so-called ‘American Dream’ to which people of colour are invited. She outlines

how the key characters in the television show (Nigel, a white male; Claudia, a

white female; and Sydney, a ‘modern’ mixed-race woman) interplay with each

other to create an interesting triad. In this configuration, Sydney:

. . . typifies the American Dream: the self-made woman whose professional and materialsuccess can be attributed to a combination of the innate race and class privilegeimparted by her father and that certain je ne sais quoi afforded by her mother’s culturallegacy. Sydney, in other words, epitomizes the liberal ideology of equality that isenshrined in the whole notion of the American Dream. (Jiwani, 2005a, p. 188)

Such an analysis has clear resonances for my investigation of the representations of

Muslim Girl magazine: the ‘modern’, ‘cool’, quintessentially North American (yet

marked as ‘Muslim’) women depicted reinforce the important hegemonic discourses

within North American society. Using (neo)Orientalist imaginaries, in a so-called

post-feminist, post-racial world, such representations provide important windows

into the discourses that seek to control and discipline gendered and racialized bodies.

This imaginary is one in which western superiority, Eastern exotica, and in-between

hybridity combine to reinscribe the ‘American Dream’ where race, class, gender and

ability cannot (should not?) stand in the way of individual achievement, thus

rendering structural inequities invisible and yet fiercely powerful.

These theoretical foundations, then, provide the key underpinnings for my

argument that representations of Muslim women are shaped by the discursive field

of meanings � and constraints � established by earlier Orientalist thought. I

further maintain that the representations are critical to the cultural and political

struggles about Islam and Muslims in the contemporary context. Much like

earlier representations of blackness, I argue that these representations create

an imagined � and idealized � Muslim woman who plays a particular ideological

role both within Muslim communities as well as within Canadian society.

Methodology

In its analysis of representations found in Muslim Girl magazine, this paper relies on

discourse analysis to identify how such representations reinforce the ideological



formations in mainstream society. The notion of ‘discourse’ refers to any written,

spoken or physical ‘texts’ which comprise a shared system of meaning. As Currie

states, ‘a discourse both defines and is used by a socially constituted group of speakers

because it provides the semantic, aesthetic, and ideological terms of reference whichmakes a social world possible’ (Currie, 1999, p. 11). According to van Dijk, an

understanding of power and discourse are vital to critical discourse analysis (van

Dijk, 1993, p. 254), and such a focus on power should concentrate especially on social,

not individual, power. Social power, he argues, is ‘based on privileged access to

socially valued resources, such as wealth, income, position, status, force, group

membership, education or knowledge’ (p. 254). More importantly, van Dijk theorizes

that power involves control of one group over another, and that the ‘‘‘modern’’, often

more effective power is mostly cognitive, and enacted by persuasion, dissimulation ormanipulation . . . to change the mind of others in one’s own interests’ (p. 254). Such

techniques of ‘mind-management’ (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 254) are crucial to under-

standing how discursive practices (such as those found in a magazine for instance)

reinforce and naturalize the prevailing social order. Indeed, if such mind-management

techniques, subtle as they are, can convince those of dominated groups to ‘accept

dominance, and act in the interest of the powerful out of their own free will, we use the

term hegemony’ (p. 255). Dominance and power can be ‘jointly-produced’ (p. 255) and

the ‘consent’ of the dominated groups can be thus ‘manufactured’ or ‘created’.Discourse analysis, then, provides a sound methodological framework through

which to explore the representations found in Muslim Girl magazine. Indeed, as

Currie points out:

. . . [a]s social texts women’s magazine organize our ways of thinking about femininityand act as ‘women’; . . . It directs us to the study of how certain texts, such as women’smagazines, claim to speak to the ‘Truth’ of our being. As social texts, magazines makeparticular constructions of what it means ‘to be a woman’ possible by providing thelogics and the ‘rules’ about what can be said and done (and therefore what is leftunspoken and undone). (Currie, 1999, p. 12)

Using these tools, I have analyzed the representations and imaginaries in Muslim

Girl, against the backdrop of the social, political and cultural contexts in post 9/11

North America. Focusing particularly on the representation of race and gender in a

neo-Orientalist, ‘post-feminist’ and ‘post-racial’ world, this article attempts to read

Muslim Girl magazine, and identify key themes which bring patterns of discourse,

dominance, and power into relief.

Who is the Muslim woman represented in Muslim Girl?

Background

Muslim Girl, first appearing in January/February 2007, and published six times a

year,1 was targeted towards teenage Muslims (with an increasing emphasis, in later

issues, on young adults). The Editor thus articulates the purpose of the magazine:

There are six million Muslims in the United States today, yet there’s a surprising absenceof venues where Muslim girls like you can make meaningful connections. What betterway to fill that void we thought, than to create a magazine that tells your stories andcelebrates your values? . . . Your commonalities with other teens far outweigh your

550 S. Kassam


differences. You enjoy the same things that other American teens enjoy, within theboundaries of the values you respect and hold dear. You are proud of your traditionsand proud of your place in America. (Khan, Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 1)2

The magazine shows a seeming diversity of Muslim women: veiled and unveiled;

teenagers and middle-aged women; students, athletes, professional women, media

personalities and others. A closer examination of the magazine’s representations of

Muslim women, however, reveals that such diversity may be skin-deep. In my

analysis, I identify a number of characteristics of the Muslim woman being

represented through Muslim Girl � a character I refer to as the ‘Modern Renaissance

Woman’. This is a woman positioned as both Western and Muslim, an educated (or

aspiring to be educated), assimilated, ambitious woman, one committed to a

‘modern’ (read ‘liberal’) understanding of her faith and its place in her life and who isan active consumer and member of Western society. These characteristics, under-

stood together, create a particular identity, an imagined, idealized Muslim woman in

North American society.

Living between two worlds: the ‘assimilable’ Muslim

The Muslim Girl woman is presented as someone who is comfortable with both

Muslim and North American cultures (albeit reified constructs), someone who is

comfortable living ‘between’ these two worlds. A fascinating example of this

characterization is shown on the cover of the premier issue (January 2007) on which

is a photograph of a Muslim woman (‘Our very first cover girl’) wearing a hijab. What

is most striking is that the hijab is red and white and the young woman has three stars

(red, white and blue) on her cheek, with an American flag in the foreground. The

largest title on the cover states ‘Growing up American: 6 girls on being Muslim in

America’. As with the hijab, the colours used for the largest title (which is unrelated

to the cover girl wearing the hijab) are red, white and blue. The symbolism is clear:

the idea is to highlight that Muslim women can successfully integrate into North

American society (indeed, are ‘American’ or ‘Canadian’) and can find a ‘balance’

between their American/Canadian and Muslim identities. As Schmidt states about a

similar image of a Muslim woman in hijab, ‘The symbols were easily recognizable

and translatable. Her garment bridged imagined cultural contradictions in a way that

was difficult to contest. If one arguably essential element of her attire was removed

(the Stars and Stripes or the hijab), the integrity of her identity would disintegrate’(Schmidt, 2004, p. 33). The symbolism on the Muslim Girl cover is obvious: the

colors, the American flag, the hijab � all these speak powerfully, with economy of

language, to the agenda of the magazine, and to the representation of Muslim women

as assimilable in the North American context.

The stories within the magazine support this notion of assimilation. Embedded

in most articles is the presumption that an individual Muslim woman should be

comfortable living in the midst of ‘both cultures’ (no mention is made of the

reality that ‘Muslim’ spans a diversity of cultural backgrounds). In other words,

the emphasis is on a body that is both Western and Muslim. For example, in the

article entitled ‘Growing up Muslim’ (Muslim Girl, January 2007), six American

Muslim teenagers are interviewed about how they negotiate their identities in the

midst of competing discourses. Says one young Muslim: ‘My heroes are both



Martin Luther King Jr. and the Prophet Muhammad. I had to know about

Christmas and Eid. I had to learn American history and Islamic studies. I had to

know the difference between a church, synagogue, and mosque . . .’ (Younis,

Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 70). The stories highlight Muslim women who

integrate into North American society without sacrificing their ‘Muslimness’.

These women are represented as living within both worlds/cultures, however reified

and essentialist these notions might be. These are the ‘good’ Muslim women, those

who are able successfully to integrate their Muslim identities within the norms of

North American society.

Educated, emancipated and empowered: the modern renaissance woman

The idealized Muslim woman, as portrayed in Muslim Girl, is represented as a

‘modern’ Muslim who partakes actively in the opportunities offered by contempor-

ary western society. Young Muslim women are encouraged (though role models,

articles about successful women, advice columns) to be successful in all endeavours.

The role models are women who have achieved much, and have done so within a

middle-class framework; there are no representations, for example, of women

plumbers or domestic workers. The idealized Muslim woman is, in the end,

positioned as an Enlightenment subject, with a focus on education, emancipation

and empowerment (these terms are, in fact, used as the sub-title of an article in

Muslim Girl).

What is notable is that the notions of education, emancipation and empowerment

are situated within an individualist frame: no mention is made of societal structures

(race, gender, class, ability, sexuality . . .) that impact on women’s achievements. The

stories are focused on the efforts of the individual Muslim woman who, through her

own initiative, hard work and faith, can ‘achieve it all’:

. . . girls and young women in North America are in a privileged position. They haveremarkable access to education and to knowledge as a tool of empowerment . . . It isthis generation of young women who can bring about social change as they learn,grow and gain knowledge and fulfill their potential. (Jalabi, Muslim Girl, January2007, p. 31)

Muslim Girl includes many articles about successful Muslim women (physicians,

fashion designers, astronauts, television/media presenters, artists, entrepreneurs,

athletes, etc.) who have achieved success while maintaining their ‘Muslim’ identity

and combining this success with family life.

The sub-text to this representation of Muslim women within an individualist

framework is to render invisible factors such as race, gender, class, disability and

sexual orientation. Such factors are not considered in the representations of Muslim

women and the sub-text is to highlight the notion that it is the individual that

matters. This is an attempt to fashion a decidedly neo-liberal subject who ‘chooses’

(choice being an important principle of the neo-liberal agenda) the privileges of

North American society. The individualized Muslim subject aspires to be part of the

North American elite, and hence, does not attempt to disrupt the inequitable power

relations of society.

552 S. Kassam


The ‘can-do’ girl and superwoman

The Muslim women represented in Muslim Girl are high-achievers: educated,

professional, successful, involved in many activities, engaged in civic and societal

issues, they are the ‘can-do’ girls and/or superwomen. Young women play sports

(many with hijab), are artists and are successful in school; the older women

represented have fascinating careers (most are executives, professionals or entrepre-

neurs) and are good wives and mothers (and women of strong faith). For example,

one story focuses on Muslim cheerleaders who are good students, attend cheerlead-

ing practices and games, and help their mother at home. Their mother works (flexible

hours so she can be at home for the children); she is a good mother and wife, she

cooks and takes care of the housework (interestingly with the help of her daughters,

not her sons!); she spends time with her children, reading, helping with homework,

and bonding; she sets a good example for her children, encouraging them to achieve

their goals; she is even training for her first marathon! (Muslim Girl, May 2007).

According to Projansky, the ‘can-do’ woman is one who can:

. . . manage her surroundings . . . and in fact stands in for the ideal ‘future citizen’. This isthe girl who has successfully taken hold of the opportunities that feminism,postfeminism, commodity consumption, deregulation in the workplace, and democracyafford her. She is healthy and well adjusted. (Projansky, 2007, p. 56)

The virgin: izzat and sharam revisited

Muslim Girl contains almost no explicit discussion of sexuality and, yet, control of

women’s sexuality forms a powerful sub-text throughout the magazine. Where

discussion of sexuality appears explicitly, it often refers to health issues. For example,

in a column on the vaccine for cervical cancer, a physician provides a clinical

response, but then adds ‘Keep in mind that being sexually active is a prerequisite of

getting infected with HPV. Those groups who are not sexually active during teenage

years certainly decrease their likelihood of HPV infection and subsequent risk of

developing cervical cancer . . .’ (Shaikh, Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 15). The

assumption is made, of course, that Muslim girls are not (or should not be) sexually

active during their teenage years.

The justification of the control of women’s sexuality is based both on religious/

communal norms and on parental authority. This, in itself, is perhaps not surprising

but what is surprising is the extent of the control. One article, providing advice to

Muslim teenagers talking to parents about college, states (emphases mine):

. . . Your parents are your biggest champions. You should involve them in your planning

. . . You can only do this by having crucial conversations with your parents tounderstand their concerns about your choices . . . Don’t start arguing if you disagreewith them; try to understand their point of view. Let their words sink in, and go back toyour room to plan how to address their concerns . . . Make sure you keep the solutionspositive, and leave the complaining, crying or guilt-trips to a minimum. Prove that youare an adult and you can live up to the responsibility of living on campus or movingaway from home, and that you are trustworthy . . .

Maybe your parents would feel more comfortable if you could find a school where youhave other family members who already attend or live near by. Use technology to youradvantage. Let your parents call you as many times as they need to so they are



comfortable, make sure you check-in as needed, and always pick up your phone. Beingpredictable creates trust. You can also use a new function on your cell phone that allowsyour parents to view your location via satellite . . . (Hussaini, Muslim Girl, January 2007,p. 33)

Such statements argue for ongoing parental (and communal) control over the bodies

and sexualities of Muslim women. There is no questioning of the implied parental

right to oversee their daughter’s body and decisions; indeed, she is urged to be

amenable to, and understanding of, the implied rights of parents. What is especially

startling is the explicit call for surveillance, even invoking the use of technology to

facilitate this surveillance. Clearly, such a discourse makes obvious the perspectives

of the author � and editors? � that the surveillance of Muslim women’s bodies and

actions can be condoned.

Underlying this discourse on women’s sexuality � as a powerful subtext � are

notions of izzat and sharam (honour and shame). These notions valorize Muslim

women as the repositories of family honour (and conversely, shame when female

sexuality is not tightly controlled). Such notions of izzat and sharam are embedded in

the articles in Muslim Girl in two ways. First, these notions are reflected in

exhortations (direct and indirect) on young Muslim women (and their parents) to

control their sexuality (advice columns, the use of parental surveillance techniques).

The magazine outlines the restrictions on young Muslim women, implying that

ignoring these restrictions may bring disrepute to the woman and her family. Second,

the magazine upholds the ‘noble’ end of this equation, through the highlighting of

‘good’ family values. Thus, stories about older Muslim professional role models

include pointed references to family life. For example, one woman with a PhD and

working as a senior executive is photographed with her three daughters and talks

glowingly of her role as mother (Sulaiman, Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 37).

Similarly, a media personality, when asked about success, states, ‘My family will

always be the most important part of my life. So I suppose I would feel successful if I

bring up rounded, kind human beings. I think that would be my highest goal . . .’(Barghoorn, Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 52). Such examples reveal the underlying

agenda: Muslim women, while striving to be educated and successful � the ‘modern

woman’ � should not give up their role as mothers, especially if this means upholding

the sanctity of the Muslim family and its nobility. Izzat and sharam revisited,

reinscribed and re-formulated for the post-modern world.

Re-imagining Islam: the ‘authentic, universal’ Muslim and transnational Islam

Muslim Girl portrays a particular perspective on Islam and Muslim identity. First,

there is a focus on ‘Muslim identity’ and not other characteristics of identity

(country of origin, racial, linguistic, historical variables). For example, one young

Muslim (identified as being of Palestinian origin) was confronted by a classmate who

told her to ‘go back to your country’ (Younis, Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 70). The

author of the article comments that ‘[she] had never felt the need to defend her

identity as an American or as Muslim’ (Younis, Muslim Girl, p. 70). What is

interesting is that the comment was directed at country of origin and not faith � and

yet the author places the comment in the context of the dual identities of ‘American’ and

‘Muslim’. Further, the racial identities of the women are rarely, if ever, raised in the

554 S. Kassam


magazine while there is a definite emphasis on the religious identity of the women

portrayed. One article, discussing a high school basketball team, quotes one of the

players emphasizing her belief in Islam:

. . . [she] stresses that humility is important in both victory and defeat. She believes thatIslam is the key to their game. ‘When we play we know we are not just playingbasketball as a team representing its school but we are playing for God and representingour faith to the world’. (Saeed, Muslim Girl, January 2007, p. 26)

Surrounding this text are photographs of the basketball team, playing and praying

before a game. Noticeably absent from the discourse is race: the majority of team

players (visible in the photographs) are black and yet this does not enter the

discourse. Utilizing such imagery of Muslim identity and simultaneously erasing

‘blackness’ provides a fascinating insight into the forces at work. To what end are the

team players ‘Islamized’ in a deliberate manner while another aspect of their identity

� race � is ignored? What purpose does this serve in the magazine? Does the erasure

of race highlight Islam as the powerful unifying factor amongst the Muslim women

represented, while simultaneously dispensing with a potentially divisive � and

problematic � factor amongst these women? Race is a politically charged issue,

especially in the context of the American/Canadian nation-state, an issue which

could destabilize attempts by middle-class Muslims (presumably the consumers and

the subjects of the magazine) to acquire the cultural, social and economic capital/

privileges of North American society.

Second, notions of a ‘Muslim identity’ in Muslim Girl are predicated on a

particular interpretation of Islam, which is supposedly ‘purified’ of its cultural,

historical and geographical affiliations. Such a perspective implies that Islam

should be ‘as it truly was and is supposed to be . . . a means to transcend

ethnicity, geography, social class and even time itself ’ (Schmidt, 2004, p. 37).

Articles in Muslim Girl speak to an Islam that is ‘modern’, ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’:

stripped of its cultural, historical, geographical, ethnic roots, this supposedly

‘pure’ Islam is used to transcend problematic aspects of its identity. This is

perceived to be not a fundamentalist Islam, but a liberal one, which encourages

women to be educated, empowered and ethical, and to negotiate an identity

‘between’ ‘Islam’ and ‘America/Canada’. These terms are essentialized and reified,

and separate from other grounding signifiers of identity that may limit their

appeal across boundaries. This is an Islam that encourages engagement with

societal issues, but at an individual level, and does not suggest activism to

challenge systems of oppression. This is an Islam that upholds tradition (and

especially women’s roles in upholding this tradition) and argues for living

according to the ‘essence’ of Islam (there is no attempt to define this ‘essence’).

This is an Islam which attempts to highlight a transnational Muslim community

but which reinforces certain stereotypical notions about Islam and Muslims

(among others, ideas around women’s roles, notions of an orthodoxy and

orthopraxy in Islam). The perspectives on Islam embedded in Muslim Girl work

towards the delineation of a particular type of Muslim community � a ‘re-

imagined Ummah’ (Mandaville, 2001, p. 187). It is this re-imagined community

that stands at the heart of Muslim Girl, a notion which can be likened to:



. . . a mythological homeland that is both nowhere and everywhere, hereby offeringmembership across national borders. On this imaginary level ethnicity and geographydoes [sic] not matter. What matters is religious identity, or rather the thematicframework for identity formation that this transnational space offers, beside theinternal solidarity of diaspora members. (Schmidt, 2004, p. 41)

I argue that there is no ‘universal view from nowhere’ nor can there be an ‘authentic’,

pure and universal Islam; religious belief, like other convictions, is always mediated

by the social conditions within which its adherents live and are, hence, always open to

interpretation and contextualization.

Despite my reservations about the imagined Muslim community, this ideal plays

an important role in representations of ‘Muslim identity’ in Muslim Girl magazine.

The ‘ideal’ Muslim woman is situated within the context of the idealized Muslim

community, one perceived to be capable of integration within North Americansociety:

. . . The ideal citizen helps and respects his and her fellow citizens in the encounter ofdaily life. The ideal citizen respects and maneuvers within the core values of powerfuldiscourses of today: democracy, modernity and human equality. The ideal citizen isengaged in the constituting activities of the country in which he or she lives . . . The idealcitizen is considerate both on a broader social and on an individual level: he [sic] isacademically and social ambitious and visible, but not cynical. (Schmidt, 2004, p. 40)

I argue that the representations found in Muslim Girl are fashioning � intentionallyor otherwise � this ‘idealized Muslim citizen’ in the North American landscape. The

gendered nature of women’s roles is evident in the nuanced dimensions of this ‘ideal

Muslim citizen’, an individual who embodies tradition, faith, culture, and modernity

and who must carry it forward on her body. The ‘ideal’ Muslim woman is represented

as a modern, cosmopolitan woman who belongs to ‘both worlds’ to carry forward

this re-imagined idealized vision of Muslim womanhood and the re-imagined

Muslim community.

The ‘ideal’ Muslim woman: what purpose does she serve?

The ‘good Muslim’ and political discourses post 9/11

The idealized Muslim created through representations in Muslim Girl is reflective, I

argue, of the ideological milieu of post 9/11 nationalist and political discourses,which emerge from a long history of Orientalist thought but which take specific

nuances in this historical moment. The image of the Muslim as the ‘new racial Other’

(Grewal, 2005, p. 208) has been solidified. Further, the category of ‘good Muslim’

(Mamdani, 2004) provides a filter through which Muslims are viewed, and their

support of the nation-state’s political goals (especially for the ‘war against terror’) is

ascertained. In this context, ‘unless proved to be a ‘‘good’’ Muslim, every Muslim [is]

presumed to be ‘‘bad’’’ (Mamdani, 2004, p. 15).

The imagined Muslim woman cannot be situated outside these various discoursesthrough which real-life Muslims negotiate their identities and a space for themselves.

Situated as she is at the ideological fault-lines of community and society, the Muslim

woman must confront the daily reality that her body is the site of multiple discourses

and ideological battles. She is, if you will, the ideological football of the structured

556 S. Kassam


discourses within which both Muslim communities and North American society

function. Seen as the ‘carrier of tradition’ on the one hand, and as ‘oppressed third-

world woman’ on the other, the idealized Muslim woman negotiates her way through

these discourses. In the post 9/11 world, such negotiations have become yet more

fraught as the ideological and political stakes have been heightened. It is vital,

therefore, to ask whether the representations of this imagined Muslim woman serve a

particular purpose at this historical moment. If so, what sorts of Muslim women are

being created through these representations? What is the identity being invented? To

what end is an idealized Muslim woman � and Muslim community � being created?

Orientalism revisited: creating the self and the other

Edward Said (1978) has, of course, brilliantly traced the development of the Muslim

‘other’ in Orientalist thought, which he describes as ‘a Western style for dominating,

restructuring and having authority over the Orient . . .’ (Said, 1978, p. 3). Orientalist

scholarship represents Muslims as exotic, primitive, irrational, depraved, child-like,

and ‘different’, while Europeans are seen as civilized, rational, mature, virtuous, and

‘normal’ (Said, 1978, p. 40). The creation of the ‘other’ constitutes and sustains the

boundaries of the western subject, a codification that must be reinscribed to

maintain the boundaries.

A gendered reading of Orientalist thought maintains that the Oriental woman is

the entry point for understanding the Orient, that in seeing the Oriental woman, the

Western gaze seeks to penetrate the ‘veiled’ world of the Orient. It is through the

Oriental woman that the Orient itself can be known and its ‘essence’ grasped. As

Yegenoglu argues:

[t]he reference of the veil thus exceeds its sartorial matter; it is in every thing that isOriental or Muslim. The Western eye sees it everywhere, in all aspects of the other’s life.It covers and hides every single Oriental thing that the Western subject wants to gaze atand possess; it stands in the way of his desire for transparency and penetration.(Yegenolgu, 1998, pp. 47�48)

The construction of the imagined Muslim woman is crucial to the subject

constitution of the western subject and the male subject, both western and Muslim.

In this sense, the Muslim woman in the North American context becomes the key site

upon which important ideological battles are waged. The ‘essence’ of Islam is

embodied on, and defined through, the bodies and lives of Muslim women and,

through this, Muslim women are relegated to their ‘appropriate’ place both within

Muslim communities and in dominant society. The hierarchies of power are

delineated and reinforced through this idealized Muslim woman, who must be

both modern and the upholder and carrier of tradition and faith.

The identity created for the Muslim woman situates her as a carrier of tradition,

but also as the site of ‘modernism’. Returning to Orientalist thought, the ‘ability of

the Orient to modernize itself is only through a radical break with tradition . . .’(Yegenoglu, 1998, p. 99). In the context of post 9/11 North America, the identity

being constructed through Muslim Girl � implicitly � encourages the modernist (yet

committed) Muslim approach. This break is not a radical one, but rather a

reinterpretation of those aspects of Islamic identity considered problematic to the



modernist project. What is clear, nonetheless, is that the binary construction

established by Orientalist thinking remains. As Ahmed argues, ‘The production of

the nation . . . requires some-body or some-where to not-be in order for it to be . . .The Orient comes to embody that which the Occident is not . . . Orientalism createsan imaginary geographical divide based on the binarism of Occident/Orient . . .’(Ahmed, 2000, p. 99). This binary construction of Orientalism, in which categories of

‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are essentialized, continues to underpin contemporary

perspectives on Muslims:

In the case of gendered Islamophobia, the discursive roots are historically entrenchedwithin Orientalist representations that cast colonial Muslim women as backward,oppressed victims of misogynist societies. Such representations serve to justify andrationalize imperial domination over colonized Muslims through the emancipatoryeffect that European hegemony was expected to garner for Muslim women. Thesestereotypical constructs have maintained currency over time and have served to markthe border between the binary spaces of the West (read: progress, modernity) and theEast (read: illiberal, pre-modern) as irreconcilable halves of a world living renewedrelations of conquest and subjugation. (Zine, 2006, p. 240)

Hence, the idealized Muslim woman as represented in Muslim Girl becomes a symbol

of modernity such that she is differentiated from the ‘illiberal, bad’ Muslim. At the

same time, she embodies the ideal of the ‘good’, pious Muslim woman and carries

the ideals of ‘tradition’ on her body.

Unearthing the ghosts: idealized Muslims and other mythical figures

The imagined Muslim woman can be read in juxtaposition to various other figures in

the post 9/11 nation-state; these are the ‘ghosts’ against whom the identities of

Muslims should be seen. In seeking to create this ideal � the ‘modern, Islamized’Muslim � what ghosts can be unearthed? Who remains invisible and ‘naturalized’

through the creation of this idealized figure?

Toni Morrison theorizes that an analysis of ‘blackness’ through a reading of

literature serves to create a ‘new white man’ (Morrison, 1993, p. 43) whose very

subjecthood (white, male, gentleman, man of property, powerful, civilized) was

created against the image of blackness (racialized, ‘savage’, enslaved, powerless). This

juxtaposition highlights an imagined Africanism (Morrison, 1993, p. 47) which is

vital to the mythology of the white American nation. In seeking to understand theidentity created by the representations of Muslim women in Muslim Girl, I ask

similar questions: How can we read the Islamization embedded in the representations

of Muslims in the magazine? What is being foregrounded? Against what back-

ground? What purpose do these foregrounded figures serve?

First, the ‘Islamization’ of the Muslim subject is juxtaposed against the Western

subject (read: white, Judeo-Christian, male, upper middle class, educated, upwardly

mobile, heterosexual). The idealized Muslim woman is encouraged to move closer to

this quintessential North American, but there is an implicit recognition that she willnever achieve that status: while she may aspire to ‘integrate’ with ‘American/

Canadian culture’, she will never be ‘of ’ this culture. Grewal’s description is apt:

‘within the racial hierarchies of the United States, another racial formation was

created that produced a new Other (albeit from an old history); at the same time ‘new

558 S. Kassam


Americans’ were constructed through their solidarity with those who died or suffered

in the attacks and through their difference from the ‘terrorists’ (Grewal, 2005, p.

208). Thus, the ‘Islamization’ of the Muslim subject is critical in constituting the

Western subject, the non-Muslim who is ‘mobilized to be American’ (Grewal, 2005,p. 209).

Second, the imagined Muslim subject is situated as a ‘good Muslim’ (Mamdani,

2004), who is moderate and can be integrated into the ‘Western way of life’. This

‘good’ Muslim is juxtaposed against the image of the ‘bad’ Muslim, the primitive,

barbaric, uncivilized Muslim. Based on classic Orientalist imagery, the ‘bad Muslim’

(often male) is clearly fundamentalist, traditionalist and violent, a heartbeat away

from terrorist activity. As Grewal suggests, ‘[t]he creation of the Middle Eastern

Muslim as a terrorist recuperated in new ways an old category of the Oriental.Within the territorial boundaries of the United States, to look ‘‘Muslim’’ or ‘‘Middle

Easterner’’ was not a sign of cosmopolitanism; instead the Muslim or Middle

Easterner became America’s new racial other’ (Grewal, 2005, p. 209). The female

accompaniment to the ‘bad’ male Muslim is, of course, the veiled, oppressed,

primitive, fundamentalist woman, a resurrection of the classic Orientalist stereotype.

Defining the borders of the nation: post 9/11 nation-building

In the context of post 9/11 North America, I maintain that the imagined Muslim(neo-liberal subject, modern and good Muslim) is important in the definition of the

Canadian/American nation-state. Sara Ahmed suggests that:

[t]he very habits and gestures of marking out bodily space involve differentiating ‘others’into familiar (assimilable, touchable) and strange (unassimilable, untouchable) . . . Thenation becomes imagined and embodied as a space, not simply by being defined againstother spaces, but by being defined as close to some others (friends), and further awayfrom other others (strangers) . . . The proximity of strangers within the nation space �that is, the proximity of that which cannot be assimilated into a national body � is amechanism for the demarcation of the national body, a way of defining borders withinit, rather than just between it and an imagined and exterior other. (Ahmed, 2000, p. 100)

In other words, so-called ‘modern’ Muslims are being positioned as ‘familiar

strangers’ rather than as ‘stranger strangers’ (Ahmed, 2000, p. 100). This is similar to

Razack’s hypothesis that the cosmopolitan man ‘embodies this new cosmopolitan

ideal: an individualist who stands determinedly outside colonialism, neocolonialismand racism, which he associates with bygone eras, a man who can acknowledge that

his history and roots shaped him but who maintains that the past is the past’

(Razack, 1999, p. 181). Such a cosmopolitan ideal allows for an ‘individualized and

privatized citizenship’ (p. 181), which erases history and context, encouraging an

unsituated subjecthood. Such a cosmopolitan ideal is certainly similar to the

imagined Muslim as represented by the Muslim Girl woman.

The delineation of the imagined, idealized Muslim plays a crucial role in defining

the nation-state and its ideological goals. These tropes � good/bad Muslim, good/badimmigrant, familiar/other stranger � provide the means through which the nation-

state fashions a ‘story of innocence, of non-involvement in the economic and

political interventions of the North into the South’ (Razack, 1999, p. 161). The

figures of good/bad Muslim or familiar/stranger stranger allow the ‘normalized’



Canadian/American nation to perpetuate a myth of innocence and lack of complicity

in global issues.

The tropes of the ‘familiar stranger’ and ‘stranger stranger’ (Ahmed, 2000)

reinforce the nation’s sense of benevolence: the ideals of the ‘good’ multicultural

nation are reinforced through these figures. As Ahmed offers, ‘National identity

emerges at the site of social conflict; there is a constant redefinition of who ‘‘we’’ are

through the very necessity of encountering strangers’ (Ahmed, 2000, p. 101). The

redefinition of the nation occurs through the marking of these figures, which are

important in ‘defining both the potential and the limits of the multicultural nation’

(p. 106). Thus, the figures of the ‘familiar stranger’ and the ‘stranger stranger’ allow

the multicultural nation to determine who is ‘acceptable’ within the boundaries of

the nation, an acceptance that, more often than not, is determined by the proximity

of the individual’s or group’s characteristics to naturalized white nation. Hence, the

‘familiar stranger’ (or the ‘good’ Muslim) is a figure that is deemed to be more

‘acceptable’ within the nation’s boundaries and this acceptance is supported by the

aspirations of the familiar stranger.

Portrayals of Muslim women in Muslim Girl showcase ‘acceptable’ figures within

North American society � the good idealized Muslim woman and the benevolent

Canadian/American. The focus is on the modernist project, and the ideal is the

‘good’, modern Muslim woman, who can integrate within Western society, and who

can erase identity markers that are problematic within the nation-state. As Ahmed

states:

The ‘we’ of the nation can expand by incorporating some others, thus providing theappearance of difference, while at the same time, defining other others . . . In one figure,the stranger appears different, but is the same underneath; this stranger can beassimilated, and even welcomed, insofar as it enables the nation itself to appear asdifferent . . . (Ahmed, 2000, p. 106)

Defining the limits of the multicultural nation is important in providing the basis for

the nation-state’s policing of its borders and the policing of individuals and

communities within the state’s borders:

The work of preserving a national collectivity requires intervention in various forms ofsocial and cultural practices of established migrants, as well as the policing of those whoare allowed to enter and eventually become citizens. Hence, boundary maintenance isnot just about controlling the numbers who are permitted entry but also managing thecomposition of populations that may potentially alter the make-up of the . . . collectivity.(Yuval-Davis, Anthias, & Kofman, 2005, p. 517)

In post 9/11 North America, the control and policing of racialized Muslim or

‘Muslim-looking’ individuals and communities are important components of the

state’s security policies. Required for such policing is a reinforcement of the

nation-state’s sense of self, a setting of the limits of its acceptance of the ‘stranger’

in order to manage the communities living within its borders. The attempt to

demarcate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims can be read in this light. Muslims

are presumed to be ‘bad’ unless proved otherwise; this bolsters the authority of

the state to justify action against other bodies. On the other hand, ‘good’ Muslims

aspire to be like ‘us’ and hence, can be assimilated into the nation, and can then

560 S. Kassam


both reinforce the nation’s image as benevolent, and be co-opted into support for

the policies of the state.

The figure of the ‘familiar stranger’ or the ‘good’ idealized Muslim also plays an

important role in reinforcing patterns of hegemonic social relations. Hage commentsthat the nation highlights the dominant group’s understanding of itself as well as of

other groups in society (Hage, 2000, pp. 65�66). The ‘familiar stranger’ � the one that

aspires for assimilation and integration � fits nicely into this map of social relations.

The upwardly mobile, aspiring ‘familiar stranger’ is unlikely to usurp the power of

the dominant elite � indeed, s/he seeks to be incorporated into this elite. In other

words, the ‘familiar stranger’ � the ‘modern’ Muslim woman � seeks to acquire the

material, political and symbolic benefits of assimilation. The imagined ideal Muslim

woman is encouraged to fit within existing social relations both of North Americansociety and of Muslim communities. The ideal Muslim woman is one who remains

committed to her faith while simultaneously integrating within mainstream society.

She is not encouraged to challenge, much less articulate a politics of resistance to, the

social structures that underpin the communities and the society within which she

lives.

Thus, the imagined and idealized Muslim woman plays important and multiple

roles in the nation-building exercise in post 9/11 North America. There are very real

political and practical reasons � both for the North American nation-state as well asfor Muslim communities � that underpin the creation of such an identity.

Conclusion

The representations of Muslim women in Muslim Girl magazine speak powerfully to

the political, ideological and social forces prevailing in post 9/11 North American

society. The dominant discourse in the post 9/11 world has focused on the

demonization of Muslims (or anyone who ‘looks’ Muslim). Embedded in a longhistory of Orientalist discourse, representations of Islam and Muslims in global

discourse have re-established the view that Muslims pose a serious threat to western

society. Karen Engle (2004) argues that, the ‘War on Terror’ demands the revival of

various stereotypes of foreigners in United States history and these � she refers to

them as ‘the enemy alien, the unassimilable alien and the undetectable transnational

movement-sympathizing alien’ (pp. 60�61) � work to justify the war and political

actions associated with it. She, therefore, argues that the ‘good Muslim category

provides a means for Muslims both inside and outside of the United States tosupport the United States internal as well external attempts to fight the war on

terrorism, thus reinforcing the war’s legitimacy’ (p. 62). In this context, the ‘good’

Muslim becomes critical to the political, economic and ideological aspirations of the

United States and/or its Western allies.

Against such an ideological backdrop, the situation of North American Muslims

has become yet more precarious. Situated � even more than ever � as the dangerous

‘other’, Muslims in North America have become the target of harassment,

surveillance, suspicion and physical intimidation, incarceration and violence. Undersuch circumstances, Muslims in North America are confronted with the ideological

battle lines daily: ‘good Muslim’ or ‘bad Muslim’, ‘with us or against us’? Such

ideological battles are especially poignant for Muslim women, whose bodies and lives

sit at the ideological cross-roads of community and society. Situated against the



discourse of post 9/11 nationalism, I argue the cultural politics of representations

provides one site through which these ideological battles about ‘good’ and ‘bad’

Muslims are waged. On the one hand, the representations in Muslim Girl showcase

‘assimilated Muslims’ (‘just like normal Americans/Canadians’), within the context

of the multicultural, neo-liberal and post 9/11 nation-state. On the other hand, the

representations highlight examples of Muslim women who remain committed to

traditional notions within their communities. This hybridized North American

Muslim, as represented in Muslim Girl, reveals the fault-lines of the politics of

cultural representation.

The politics of representation in popular culture provides an important window

into some of the structured discourses that seek to control and discipline the Muslim

gendered body. Such representations are ‘a set of discursive openings that offer a way

of constructing the past, representing the present, and staging the future’ (Gray,

2004, p. 167). I maintain that the narratives in Muslim Girl are based on a mythical,

ahistorical past, a sanitized present, and an unrealistic future, which reinforce, rather

than challenge, hegemonic social relations. The imagined Muslim woman, as

represented in Muslim Girl, is a homogenized, essentialized and idealized woman,

who is both ‘modern’ and ‘Muslim’, one who carries on her body the so-called ideals

of Muslim tradition and Western society. Since these ideals have often excluded the

‘other’, such an identity cannot provide critical spaces for Muslim women to

challenge existing social norms and power relations. Certainly, the identities

conveyed through these representations speak to the aspirations of the upwardly

mobile so-called ‘modern’ Muslim in North America, thereby foregrounding the

material, political and symbolic benefits of assimilation and integration. I maintain

that this essentialized, commodifiable identity poses a powerful dilemma for the

Muslim woman. Will she sacrifice the material and symbolic privileges to which she

aspires in order to challenge the dominant discourses and structures within which she

lives? How do Muslim women seek alternate spaces to fashion a meaningful politics

of resistance and representation? How can Muslim women fashion such a politics to

challenge patriarchy, racism, and Islamophobia, both in dominant North American

society and within Muslim communities, while, at the same time, finding safe spaces

for themselves in the ideologically fraught post 9/11 landscape?

There can be little doubt that the enhanced visibility of Muslim women at this

historical moment is significant. For perhaps the first time, the representations of

Muslim women have moved beyond the cliches of the oppressed, primitive,

traditional and exotic woman (although these stereotypes have not disappeared

from the representational landscape). However, I maintain these representations are

based on an essentialized and universalized Muslim female subject. Absent from

these one-dimensional representations (whether the exoticized ‘negative’ images or

the idealized ‘positive’ ones) are the more complex realities of Muslim women’s lives:

silenced are the voices of difference, diversity, richness, complexity, debates, tensions

and challenges. In creating an image of an ‘ideal’ Muslim, these representations do

not challenge dominant or hegemonic discourses either within Muslim communities

or in Western society. In other words, these characterizations ‘occupy a discursive

space still marked by their relationship to an unnamed but nevertheless hegemonic

order’ (Gray, 2004, p. 88). These characterizations do not provide critical analyses of

dominance (either within and outside Muslim communities) and obscure the

562 S. Kassam


diversity, difference, tensions, debates and alliances � the stuff of ideological work �being played out in Muslim communities and in North American society.

The key question is how Muslims can fashion a politics of representation that

has political meaning and yet honours the diversity of Muslim communities. This is

a critical issue with which cultural producers must grapple. In the end, it is

important to move beyond the rhetoric of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ representations

and to develop nuanced and mature representations of Muslims. Rather than being

politically ineffective (as some would argue), such nuanced representations are

precisely what is required in the politically and ideologically fraught post 9/11

world.

Notes

1. Muslim Girl ceased publication in 2009, within three years of its launch. From theinformation available at the time of writing, the magazine had lost financial support fromits (unnamed) benefactor. The magazine had not developed a solid advertising base (eitherthrough omission or commission) and its subscription rates were relatively low ($20/year).In this context, the loss of financial support seems to be the primary reason behind thecessation of publication of Muslim Girl. I am not aware of any evidence that suggests thatthe magazine ceased publication due to the loss of interest of its readers and/orsubscribers.

2. In quoting from Muslim Girl, I have cited the author’s last name, the name of themagazine, date, and the page number. In the References section, I have not cited eachauthor individually but have listed the entire magazine.

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