The premise of my project is to create a vast media space that represents Muslim women the way Muslim women want to be represented. The best method for me to do so, is to create a widely accessible YouTube channel. Muslim women are famously deemed as oppressed, subdued, silenced, and in dire need of saving. During the Iraq war, Laura Bush publicly proclaimed her desire to save the oppressed Muslim women there. And the only way to save women is obviously, war, right?
Being a Muslim American woman, I feel highly under-represented. People speak for me and defend me where I don't feel like I need to be defended or supported. I'm not alone with this sentiment. Muslim women all over the world feel insulted that their decision to wear hijab is immediately associated with male force and their desire to shield themselves again the over sexualized Muslim man. That form of feminism, that condemns women who cover as simply playing into a largely patriarchal system, is, frankly speaking, bullshit. How dare someone claim that my decision to wear hijab has nothing to do with my own spirituality and my own regard for something I value greater than what a man thinks of me or tells me to do. I'm sick of people coming up to me, pulling out random verses from the Quran, trying to prove to me that my religion oppresses me. I know my religion well enough to detect whether it's oppressing me or not. I like to believe that us Muslim women have enough intelligence and intellect to make these decisions on our own. Identifying Muslim women as oppressed and in need of saving, is a highly problematic rhetoric. Which is why, I would like to save Western women, the devastatingly oppressed and the shockingly unaware.
This goes into my first video which inspired me to create this channel. In this video, which I will present in class, I will discuss some banal things such as makeup, shoes, clothing, social media, etc., that oppress women. I will also touch upon why this discussion is essentially problematic in understanding feminism and how it works.
Beyond this video, I plan on featuring various Muslim women that do what they love to do. I want to present Muslim women as just women who are talented, opinionated, funny, that have personalities beyond their hijab and their religiosity. Some videos will discuss various stories of how some women became hijabis. Some will discuss how some took off their hijab. Some videos will just be DYI crafts and homemade care products by Muslim women. This YouTube channel will take the microphone away from Western media, and put it in the hands of Muslim women themselves.
The channel handle will be "MuslimahTube." Please let me know what you think!
Some inspiration for this channel:
http://muslimgirl.com/
http://muslima.globalfundforwomen.org/
http://www.wisemuslimwomen.org/
I love this idea! Reading this reminded me of the documentary "The Muslims Are Coming!", which tried to show how humor could be used to counter Islamophobia. While I think having this kind of platform has the potential to be very powerful, I am a little confused about what kind of content you would like on this channel.
ReplyDeleteI am so excited to see your project come to life! It seems like it's been long overdue. Not only for muslim women to see themselves represented correctly, but for non-muslim people to educate themselves on what a muslim women can be. She can be so many things, just like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteWill the content be released on a weekly basis? I think it's important to stick with a schedule so that way viewers will keep interested in the content you are providing. Not only that, but I think it's important to create an instagram and/or twitter account for this channel. Most of the time, personally, i find videos not through youtube but through other forms of social media. I think, It'll be good for your channel to be easily shared through twitter and Instagram
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