ILLUSTRATION BY HANA SHAFI

Growing up in a traditional first-generation Muslim-Canadian family, I constantly struggled to determine what career I wanted to pursue. For years, I faced the dilemma of whether to satisfy the vision my parents had created for me or to go out on a limb and pursue my own interests of joining the entertainment industry, ultimately as a talk-show host. The rarity of this occurrence in the Muslim community often stems from the constant exclusion by the media. While being a hijab-wearing Muslim-Canadian woman of colour with Pakistani roots are parts of my identity that I cherish the most, this identification in present-day society constitutes a life of trials and tribulations that I would have never imagined to complicate my career goals.

Everyone grows up with dreams and aspirations. Regardless of how grand or modest they may be, we never discourage our imaginations from roaming free. I personally have been an avid dreamer for as long as I can remember. Throughout my childhood, I would cultivate the most ambitious fantasies, encouraged by the individuals I witnessed on the television screen before me. Whether it was actress Zendaya, dancer Julianne Hough, or any of the talk-show hosts on the panel of The Real, I found myself absolutely mesmerized. With fluctuating dreams of becoming an actress, dancer, and talk-show host at one point in time or another, it wasn’t until high school that I actively decided to make a change. The moment I’d stumbled upon The Real in my sophomore year of high school, I became captivated by the idea of becoming a talk-show host and began treating it like an achievable possibility, rather than a mindless fantasy. I vividly remember performing a talk-show skit in front of my Grade 10 religion class and being hit with a wave of realization that this was my calling.

It was the first moment I became consumed with this vision, yet there was always one setback that instilled a sense of doubt and hesitation within me—my racial and religious identity.

From the greatness of icons such as Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, I was never able to overcome the fact that there was no reflection of someone who looked like me on the 21-inch Philips Box TV set I was so enamoured by as a child. The division between the plethora of white women and the scarcity of women of colour (of course, with the exception of the aforementioned Winfrey)—especially Muslim women—has always operated as an impression of unwelcomeness. Although it is the industry’s responsibility to work towards this much needed change, it is also up to us to raise our voices and ensure ourselves to be heard, paving the way for future generations. This world we occupy is extremely vast and embodies a plethora of unique groups and nationalities that unfortunately aren’t pictured on our screens. As Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer says: “Little kids need to be able to turn on the TV and see real-world representations of themselves.”

This seemingly American problem also bleeds into the Canadian media industry. Despite over a million Muslims calling Canada home, this one identity, which resonates with roughly 1.9 billion individuals across the globe, warrants far more representation than the obnoxious token character created in a careless attempt at diversity. What showrunners and producers fail to consider is the ways in which the images on our screens impact us past simple viewing pleasure.

These individuals possess great influence and behave as idols to people across the world—a world encompassing tremendous diversity.

Inspired by my mother, I first began to wear the hijab in Grade 3. While I was thrilled and in awe of the beautiful message it depicts, I wasn’t able to fully commit until five years later. As I went on to high school, there were plenty of other women who adhered to this practice as well. But I noticed it was something that instilled a sense of shame within them, similar to the hesitance I carried years prior. This is what happens when we are inclined to conforming to North American beauty standards that have never consisted of any Islamic or other ethnic traditions. The inadequacy of representation severely affects marginalized groups who are never celebrated in mainstream media. Although I grew up watching a fair amount of Bollywood,

I gradually slipped out of that cultural niche as many first-generation children do. I found myself regularly diverting my attention to Hollywood content any chance I had. Much to my dismay, however, I was incredibly disappointed to unearth that the dreamland of all these amazing productions was quite literally Black and white. Besides the quirky personalities simply incorporated as token Muslims, making a complete mockery of the religion, there was no depiction of someone like myself. With every female Muslim character being linked to harmful stereotypes or stripping her hijab off for a white boy, we are illustrated as powerless entities in need of saviours. Many even start believing it.

The entertainment industry is slowly waking up to the idea of change and permitting a more welcoming space for underrepresented groups. Iman Vellani is an up-and-coming actress from my hometown of Markham who will be playing the titular role in the highly anticipated TV series Ms. Marvel, making her Marvel’s first on-screen Muslim hero to headline her own comic book. It’s great to see Hollywood’s increased efforts in working towards diversity and representation for marginalized communities, yet they are heavily overdue.

We need to recognize that we are in the 21st century, living in the greatest melting pot of different cultures. It was only in late 2016 that Canada’s first hijab-wearing TV news anchor, Ginella Massa of Toronto’s CityNews, was cast. However, Massa serves as a role model for Muslim women all over the globe as she recently debuted her new CBC show Canada Tonight with Ginella Massa, which she describes as “basically a conversation with Canadians.” Ryerson School of Journalism alumna Zarqa Nawaz is another go-getter who has taken the burden upon herself and is doing an incredible job of putting Canadian-Muslim women on the map. With her work ranging from her personal creations of Little Mosque On the Prairie to her newest project Zarqa—in development with her own Regina-based production company FUNdamentalist Films—Nawaz is paving the way. In addition to being responsible for the conception of these two series, she will also be playing the lead in Zarqa, a show aiming to be the first mainstream Canadian comedy show told from the perspective of a Muslim woman.

As a journalism student in the heart of Toronto, I am surrounded by people from all walks of life and am constantly reminded of the variety in our world. I am dedicated to voicing the concerns of my nation as well as creating a positive and realistic image of my people. With aspirations as grand as mine, while identifying as a member of a stigmatized community, I’m cognizant of the fact that I have to work twice as hard. But I’m willing to do so. I will prove myself by following my dreams of becoming the very first hijab-wearing Muslim-Canadian talk-show host in Hollywood. I will strive to promote diversity and serve as an embodiment of hope, determination and possibility for future generations. As Academy Award winner Viola Davis says, “The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity.” I say it’s time to allow our people to access and maintain a platform. It’s time for real change and substantial advances to be taken. And it’s time to finally declare female Muslim representation.

I am tired of the narrative of the Empowered Muslim Woman. I find it exhausting.

As a visibly Muslim woman, a large portion of my daily life involves attending to a strange kind of image management. I’m aware of the stereotypes that might fill the air when I walk into a room, so I take it upon myself to disprove them. Stereotype-disproving is an undercurrent of my day, embedded in my way of thinking. It’s almost like I work as an unpaid PR agent for my community as I interact with the “outside world.” Through my work, activism, and persona, I demonstrate that Muslim women are not oppressed—that we are, in fact, empowered.

This work is never-ending, but that is not why I am exhausted by it. What has drained me to the point of despair is the feeling of being trapped in a black-and-white conversation that doesn’t ring true. The binary of “Muslim women are strong and empowered” versus “Muslim women are weak and oppressed” doesn’t reflect the nuance or complexity of real women’s lives. Of course it doesn’t. And yet these two opposing narratives about Muslim women are cycled back and forth in a never-ending stream of simplistic sound bites. I, too, have offered these kinds of sound bites in response to harmful stereotypes and far-right rhetoric I’ve encountered, as if I am reading off talking points provided to me by an anti- Islamophobia marketing team designed to improve the brand of Muslim Women and Girls.

And I am tired of it.

My stereotype-busting-Muslim-girl PR job started in 1995. My first day of Grade 6 was also my first day wearing hijab to school, and I was the only kid in my central Toronto elementary school who did so at the time. When I walked into the classroom with my head covered that day, my teacher asked me to stand up and explain my hijab to the rest of the class. I remember sweating as I described the meaning of hijab to my classmates to the best of my 12-year-old ability, trying to ensure that they all understood that wearing hijab was my choice—that I was empowered. By that age, I knew all too well the stereotypes that circulated about Muslims: that we were terrorists, that we were backwards, and—the gendered stereotype most relevant to me—that Muslim women and girls were oppressed, helpless, victims.

It was my job to disprove those ideas—and disprove I did, for many years.

Throughout middle school and high school, disproving gendered Islamophobic stereotypes was easy for me, because my natural interests and passions went against dominant expectations for Muslim women and girls. I was loud and outspoken in my classes, sharing many opinions about the books we were assigned and engaging in fiery debates about current events. I played basketball and soccer with the boys at lunch and after school, and joined the girls’ rugby team, relishing rolling around in the dirt and fighting hard to score a try (the rugby term for “touchdown”) in tournaments. Yet although I presented an assertive, athletic image, there were nonetheless areas of my life where I didn’t feel strength; where I felt frightened, vulnerable and—dare I say—disempowered. But I couldn’t share those feelings. There was no space for them. They were stuffed down for the sake of maintaining the strong image I felt compelled to uphold. The task of shattering Islamophobic stereotypes felt most urgent to me, and so it took priority.

I was not alone in choosing this priority. Muslim communities in Canada, and in the West in general, have a lot invested in challenging the stereotype of the “oppressed Muslim woman”—a figure that haunts the colonial imagination and fuels immeasurable harm against Muslim communities. Indeed, the single, stereotyped story about Muslim women isn’t just personally hurtful; it is weaponized against Muslim communities across the globe. The image of the “oppressed Muslim woman” has been used to justify the colonization of Muslim-majority countries and even to justify imperial wars. For example, the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was in large part justified to the public through the idea of liberating the Muslim women who lived there. Yet more than 38,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, including the very same Muslim women that the invasion was promising to save.

In addition to these global impacts, the stereotype of the “oppressed Muslim woman” also fuels violence against Muslim women living here in Canada. In 2016, I carried out a study with Muslim women survivors of Islamophobic violence for my master’s thesis. In this study, I spoke with 21 Muslim women across the Greater Toronto Area. Collectively, these women told me about over 30 incidents of violence they were targeted for because of their Muslim identity. These incidents included attempted murder, physical assault, sexual assault, and verbal harassment. Several participants told me that they believed they were targeted for this hate-motivated violence because of the stereotype that Muslim women are passive, demure, and oppressed. As one participant said, “the idea that Muslim women are weak, they can’t speak up, they’re subdued, they’re scared, they’re oppressed, and somehow we have to liberate them, makes us ‘easy targets.’” Many other participants echoed similar sentiments: they believed that their attackers were motivated by the belief that Muslim women are oppressed; in their minds, since Muslim women were already “damaged goods,” this made it okay to perpetrate violence against them.

In light of how central the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman is to Islamophobia, and how it fuels violence against Muslims, it makes sense that I, and so many others, set ourselves about the task of disproving this harmful narrative. Progressive media outlets trying to support this cause sometimes try to rehabilitate the image of Muslim women by featuring triumphant stories about Muslim women athletes, politicians, engineers, scientists, activists, and soldiers; these articles are then shared by well-intentioned people in the hopes of poking holes in what sometimes feels like an immutable and fixed story about Muslim women’s helplessness.

See? We collectively declare through these stereotype-shattering stories. Muslim women are not oppressed. They are empowered!

Don’t get me wrong: these kinds of stories are vital, and myth-busting is important work. After all, we are living in a time of rampant and growing Islamophobia in Canada and across the globe. It has been troubling to witness how the spread of white supremacist ideologies and the political scapegoating of Muslims and refugees have whipped up a new far-right white nationalist identity in Canada. Indeed, the far-right uses talking points regarding Muslim women’s oppression to argue that Muslims don’t belong in the West, and to push for closing our borders to refugees and immigrants. And as this kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric has been spreading, there has been a parallel precipitous rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes, not the least of which was the massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City on January 29, 2017, which left six Muslim men dead and injured 19 others. We’ve also seen Bill 21 pass in Quebec, which targets Muslim women (and other religious minorities) by banning people from wearing religious symbols if they want to be hired to teach in a classroom or engage in other public service jobs.

In this hostile social and political environment, it is vital to dismantle the stereotype of the oppressed Muslim woman. But in doing so, we risk erasing and dismissing Muslim women and girls who don’t serve this goal: those who aren’t breaking barriers and whose lives don’t provide a compelling counterpoint to the far right’s rhetoric. What’s more, by fixating on shattering stereotypes, we can get stuck in a reactionary and defensive mode, clinging to slogans instead of responding to nuance and complexity. We risk becoming PR agents when what is needed is thoughtful conversation and truth.

The truth is that Muslim women in Canada are neither inherently oppressed nor empowered, whatever each of those terms mean. Just like everyone else, Muslim women’s lives are full of both good and bad, and contain messy contradictions. Some are survivors of Islamophobic hate crimes. Others are survivors of abuse within their families and communities. Some fall in love with the hijab and wear it out of choice. Others are pressured or coerced to do so. Some grow up to become doctors or political leaders and are celebrated by their communities. Others struggle with addictions and need support. I personally know Muslim women who have been through all of these things at different points in their lives. Just like any other real, three-dimensional human beings, our lives are not caricatures that fit into neat boxes, whether those boxes be far-right stereotypes or progressive stereotype-disproving. Yet as Muslim women live out their real, multi-faceted lives, many still feel the pressure to tell a single, hyper-empowered story about themselves in order to keep up appearances and combat Islamophobia.

Perhaps the most significant tension lies in situations of gender-based violence and abuse. Abuse happens across all communities, and Muslim communities are no exception—we are no more prone to abuse than other communities, nor are we immune to it. Yet when Muslim women survivors of abuse come forward, and if the perpetrator is also Muslim, the entire community is stigmatized as barbaric and the survivors’ stories risk being co-opted to fuel racist agendas. Muslim women survivors aren’t afforded the benefit of being seen as individual women who were targeted by violent men; instead, their abuse story is racialized and generalized to the entire community. See? They’re all like that.

In this way, Islamophobia makes talking about abuse harder for Muslim women. Because of this fraught dynamic, many Muslim women who are survivors of abuse choose to remain silent. Those who do come forward often have to walk a tightrope: they face the prospect of their abuse story being used to demonize their entire community and further Islamophobic policies and violence against Muslims. At the same time, they face potential backlash from abusers and enablers within the Muslim community, who may accuse them of bringing further stigma to the community by coming forward with their truth.

Muslim women survivors of violence are not alone in feeling silenced because of systemic discrimination. Last January, jaye simpson, an Oji-Cree Saulteaux non-binary Two-Spirit trans woman, wrote in GUTS magazine that they would not name abusers within Indigenous communities because they are “not willing to provide a blade for non-Indigenous people to use to cut us.” Similarly, Lindsay Nixon, a Cree-Métis-Saulteaux writer, wrote in the Walrus in December 2018 that they have “held secrets for Indigenous men for years, fearful of the repercussions that might result if I told those truths.” For Nixon, those potential repercussions include Canadian settlers and administrators painting their whole community as “corrupt Indians with troubled communities who can’t, and don’t deserve the right to, manage our resources.” These are high stakes, placing enormous pressure on survivors to keep secrets. Nixon and simpson’s pieces demonstrate that a broader conversation needs to happen in Canada around how colonialism and racism contribute to silencing Indigenous survivors of abuse.

Survivors from Muslim communities are also speaking out and writing about the impossible dilemma that systemic racism and discrimination places them in. In February 2018, Nour Naas, a Muslim American woman whose mother was killed by her father after years of domestic abuse, wrote a personal essay for The Establishment in February 2018, in which she shared that “Islamophobia informed my mother’s silence, and mine.” She drew a clear link to Islamophobia as a barrier for Muslim women who want to speak up about abuse they are living with. “If Muslim women are to be vocal about their abuse,” Naas wrote, “the inimical culture of Islamophobia cannot exist.”

Thanks to the voices of Naas and others, I believe that the tide is turning within Muslim communities in North America. Last August, in a landmark case in the U.S., Imam Zia ul-Haque Sheikh of the Islamic Center of Irving was ordered to pay $2.5 million to Jane Doe, whom he groomed through a counselling relationship from the age of 13 and allegedly sexually coerced after she turned 18. Facing Abuse in Community Environments, a Muslim women-led non-profit organization aimed at holding abusive Muslim religious leaders accountable, discovered that prior to this incident, Zia ul-Haque Sheikh had been fired from other mosques due to his inappropriate conduct with Muslim women. Jane Doe’s fight demonstrates that powerful members of the community can be held accountable and that religiosity should not be used as a shield for abusers.

In light of Nour Naas and Jane Doe’s stories, I hope that a new narrative of Muslim women’s empowerment will emerge: one that doesn’t require hiding or denying abuse that occurs in Muslim families and communities in order to break stereotypes and combat far-right propaganda. I hope that leaders and influencers within Muslim communities in Canada and the U.S. will realize that we can hold abusers in our communities accountable, while fighting systemic Islamophobia. We don’t need to respond to far-right sound bites with oversimplified sound bites of our own. Indeed, putting the onus on Muslim women and girls to disprove stereotypes by insisting that they are Empowered has consequences. It subtly tells Muslim women and girls who are living with abuse or oppression that their stories are not welcome.

I hope that one day, Muslim women and girls who are living with abuse can come forward without fearing how their story will be used, or what the impact will be on their already-targeted community. I also hope that our society at large will begin to see through the tactics of the far-right when they co-opt Muslim women’s stories of abuse in order to fuel racist and xenophobic agendas.

Most of all, I hope that the day arrives where Muslim women and girls don’t have to prove that we are Empowered at all. That we can all resign from the job of PR agents, and just live out our regular lives, with all of their messy contradictions, and figure things out for ourselves.