On the surface Imane Khelif is the embodiment of liberalism; a fiercely strong, fighting, Muslim woman shattering every perceivable stereotype and uninhibited by the constraints of ‘Islamism’, writes Mariya bint Rehan. [GETTY]
As Muslim women, our very claim to femininity is also obscured through a narrative which pervades public thought and opinion – and which impacts us as mums so acutely; the ‘breaking the stereotype’ trope. It becomes incumbent upon us to prove ourselves by performing to shatter historical, racist assumptions, that never belonged to us or our religious tradition in the first place.
Muslim women are tasked with proving ourselves against a figment of racist imagination; we must not be the submissive wife, the obedient daughter, or the self-sacrificing mum. All roles which were created by the West to justify military, cultural and imperial dominance – the literature, arts and media concerning Muslim women in Afghanistan pays testament to this. In this era of Islamophobia, we are expected to perform against these older racist labels, by embracing the newer, shinier ones; it’s not Racism, it’s Diet Racism.
Muslim women in times of war and peace are encouraged to engage in a self-contorting insanity to create a circus whose sole purpose is to satisfy a secular gaze which is itself wrestling with its own conscience. We must be the skateboard wielding, independent, career-pursuing women.
And, of course, the arts and corporate advertising’s obsession with Muslim women on wheels needs to be unpacked for everybody’s well-being. If you are intent on getting misty eyed and self-fawning about a supposedly edgy ideal you feel your culture has proffered to a class of women – because you have dehumanised them so much their very existence outside of the stereotypes you shoehorn them into appears revelatory to you – then really the call may be coming from inside the house.
This expectation to succumb to another more current fruit of racist thinking, this time by eschewing the historical seeds that bore it, is nothing more than a waste of time and a distraction. The idea that Muslim women must performatively demonstrate they are ‘bold, ‘intelligent’, ‘independent’ or anything else on the list of benign adjectives, exposes the limitations of both mainstream assumptions of Muslim women and their impoverished perceptions of those very traits in themselves.
Boldness need not be expressed through a shade of lipstick, and intelligence should not have to manifest itself in terms of our salaried worth. This is not our cultural baggage and we don’t need to take it on as a barometer of our success; our lives, values and most importantly, our religion, are not beholden to these ideas. Our liberation comes from refusing to pander to the limitations of racist and colonialist minds.
Ultimately, the truth remains, even when we adopt what are perceived as secular constructs of femininity it is not enough to initiate us into the private sorority of womanhood, as is evident in the case of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, and the diabolical gender row during the 2024 Paris Olympics. On the surface, Khelif is the embodiment of liberalism and it’s pet, corporate media’s, dream; a fiercely strong, fighting, Muslim woman – shattering every perceivable stereotype and uninhibited by the constraints of ‘Islamism’. The corporate logo is poised and ready to take centre stage in her success. Yet despite being ‘liberated’ according to these ideals, she was deemed a threat to the very notion of ‘womanhood’ – her identity as Muslim, and her opposers identity as European, was integral to this demonisation. That is – when a Muslim woman meets those standards so graciously set out for us by secular culture – those very standards are then weaponised against us, and considered a threat to womanhood itself. Underscoring this is the idea that modern notions of femininity very much exclude the Muslim woman, by default, herself – irrespective of what cultural caveat or secular appendage we attach to our very beings.
The “Breaking the Stereotype” narrative that Muslims become unwittingly enmeshed in means we are afforded humanity through our adjacency to liberal notions of femininity. Our apparent value comes from being conceptually intelligible to others. We are understood – and culturally seen – if we invest our identity into massaging the liberal ego.
As Muslim women, we are not obliged to alter our very being for others’ visual or intellectual consumption. The truth is Muslim women, of their own accord, can and will fit on a more nuanced spectrum which will incorporate some of these arbitrary rankings of worth. Surprisingly, we are not 2D cut out figures in a wider game of social expectations.
The male gaze, which directs popular notions of femininity, is inherently lazy, it seeks a kind of visual gratification that serves its interests and desires. The hijab, and modesty, subverts and desists that gaze. This has created a visual culture whereby as Muslim women we often adopt the practicality of hijab and modesty, but are simultaneously labouring to ensure we are culturally catalogued and visually indexed in a way that is non-threatening and pacifying to the wider world.
Often, the way we alter our public-facing selves to appease mainstream notions of beauty, we are honing and adjusting that unsought spectatorship back onto us.
And of course, motherhood is one of the primary things we as Muslim women must qualify through other means, to appear meaningful to the world. This constant din of public discourse and thought, that we see repeated in the highest of government offices, and on an everyday level on the street – that Muslim women are only good for being mothers and being a mother is only good for the passive, empty symbol of the Muslim woman.
Both ‘Muslimness’ and the symbol of ‘mum’ are pulled down and further denigrated by this associative label. It asserts a normative ideal that, given the weight of stereotype we carry, we must be more than just a mum, and that we might achieve something with some semblance of remarkable if we are appendaged with more than just ‘mum’. As though that three letter, unassuming and everyday English word doesn’t encompass, and isn’t encompassed by, so much of what is meaningful to ourselves and society at large.
As though it isn’t the first word for many of us form, a primary element of our language, identity and thinking – the first notion of love, comfort, warmth, happiness and stability most of us encounter; all uncommodifiable, intangible things that materialist culture glitches in response to.
Undoubtedly, Muslim women can and will be more than what we identify as ‘mothers’ because we are (massive shock and true horror…) whole humans – slaves of Allah. But the fact remains, this identity of the Muslim mum is the ultimate pigeonhole we are all told implicitly and explicitly by the world at large, that we must, at all cost, be more than and reach further beyond.
Often, unsurprisingly, the more contrasting to the role of ‘mother’ we assume, the more social advantage we accrue. Roles that are as far away from the private, non-profitable, nurturing, and invisible have more social currency, especially for Muslim women. This creating a strange and congratulatory pride that we all silently carry in us, for being as remote to ‘motherly’ as we can be. As though we carry the shame of being a ‘mother’ in our most unconscious selves.
The pressure to prove ourselves according to other people’s prejudice is not something any woman should take upon themselves for the sheer futility of it. This doesn’t mean that the Muslim mum should ‘restrict’ herself to motherhood – but that our realities and identities should never be in submission or defiance to any ridiculous, recurrent man-made trends and values. Despite ad agencies across the globe achieving a sense of marketing-euphoria in feeling they’ve invented the (Muslim) wheel…
This article is an excerpt taken from The Muslim (M)Other: Social and political commentary on contemporary Muslim Motherhood, Mariya bint Rehan’s debut book, due out in Spring 2025 with Kube Publishing.
Mariya bint Rehan is a writer and illustrator from London, with a background in Policy and Research and Development in the voluntary sector. Her collection of essays, ‘The Muslim (M)Other: Social and political commentary on contemporary Muslim Motherhood’, is out in Spring 2025.
Follow her on Twitter: @ummkhadijah13
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Opinions expressed here are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of their employer, or of The New Arab and its editorial board or staff.
