Googling Muslim Women
[This article was published in the March issue of EMEL Magazine]
I'd like you to try an experiment that I have conducted regularly for the last year: Google the search term "Muslim women", click on "images" and then have a look at the pictures that are returned to you by the search. The first time I did this, I was shocked, very shocked, but not surprised.
You'll find the first several pages are populated almost entirely by imagery of women in black niqabs, black burqas or black trailing cloaks. The others are unnerving pseudo-pornographic images with translucent veils that are best left un-described in a family magazine. The sad fact is that this result has changed very little over the time that I have been observing the phenomenon.
Google's mission statement is 'to organise the world' using algorithms that return the results to us that we were looking for. In any search we usually get a result that matches well what we were looking for, which is why Google has become an institution in our lives. When we are searching for information about Muslim women, the intelligent technology throws back these sombre anonymous uni-dimensional images assuming they are what we were referring to by 'Muslim women'. Worse still, perhaps that is all the imagery and information that it can find. If it is the former we can blame lazy stereotyping. If it is the latter, then it is we who are to blame by not providing alternative, compelling and more widely spread diversity on who and what Muslim women are.
Conduct a similar experiment on Amazon or in your local high street bookshop. The same images abound of books with subtitles like: "A heart-rending story of love and oppression", "sold" "burned alive" "honour killing". Even those books that tell of courage, struggle and freedom use this lazy visual shorthand of anonymous women's faces to adorn their books, despite the fact that the writers and protagonists themselves have gone to great lengths to make their names, ideas and voices heard.
The stories that are told in our public discourse about Muslim women are depressingly predictable. Most common is the Oppressed, as we've seen above. Some of these women truly have horrific stories, and it is absolutely right that they are at the forefront of our consciousness, and that we are working constantly to eradicate the attitudes and actions that give rise to these terrible experiences. However, these same images are used ignorantly as shorthand for the 'barbaric' and 'mediaeval' views that Islam is said to hold about women.
Then we have stories from the Liberated, who escaped from the Oppression, and have 'freed' themselves, and at one extreme of the scale have 'enlightened' themselves and even rejected Islam utterly, and yet peculiarly still continue to define themselves in relation to it.
And somewhere in between are the soft sensual tales from the 'hidden world' of Muslim women, the Exotic, which Eastern doe-eyed beauties inhabit and where secrets of desire, womanliness and oriental allure reside. This is a world of voyeuristic otherness.
In order to register in the public consciousness, Muslim women must fit themselves into one of these categories. But they don't. And they don't want to.
The challenge is that Muslims too have ideas about how and what Muslim women should be. They offer Muslim women a choice between hijab-religious or non-hijab-irreligious, making sweeping assumptions about a woman's moral and religious character based on what she wears. But this is a false dichotomy that is saturated with an irony that most Muslims are not even aware of: that the recommendations on modest dress in Islam are specifically in order to avoid defining people by what they wear, and yet we use religious clothing as a way to pigeon-hole women.
Whether Muslim or otherwise, the paradigms within which we understand Muslim women have been limited to these caricatured notions. In doing this, we ourselves have removed the freedom from Muslim women to express their own voices in a way which allows them to represent themselves as they wish to be represented.
We need to create a change in the perceptions about Muslim women, their rights and the way that they are treated. In order to do so we need first of all to create in our public discourse the possibility of different ways of being.
I'd like you to try an experiment that I have conducted regularly for the last year: Google the search term "Muslim women", click on "images" and then have a look at the pictures that are returned to you by the search. The first time I did this, I was shocked, very shocked, but not surprised.
You'll find the first several pages are populated almost entirely by imagery of women in black niqabs, black burqas or black trailing cloaks. The others are unnerving pseudo-pornographic images with translucent veils that are best left un-described in a family magazine. The sad fact is that this result has changed very little over the time that I have been observing the phenomenon.
Google's mission statement is 'to organise the world' using algorithms that return the results to us that we were looking for. In any search we usually get a result that matches well what we were looking for, which is why Google has become an institution in our lives. When we are searching for information about Muslim women, the intelligent technology throws back these sombre anonymous uni-dimensional images assuming they are what we were referring to by 'Muslim women'. Worse still, perhaps that is all the imagery and information that it can find. If it is the former we can blame lazy stereotyping. If it is the latter, then it is we who are to blame by not providing alternative, compelling and more widely spread diversity on who and what Muslim women are.
Conduct a similar experiment on Amazon or in your local high street bookshop. The same images abound of books with subtitles like: "A heart-rending story of love and oppression", "sold" "burned alive" "honour killing". Even those books that tell of courage, struggle and freedom use this lazy visual shorthand of anonymous women's faces to adorn their books, despite the fact that the writers and protagonists themselves have gone to great lengths to make their names, ideas and voices heard.
The stories that are told in our public discourse about Muslim women are depressingly predictable. Most common is the Oppressed, as we've seen above. Some of these women truly have horrific stories, and it is absolutely right that they are at the forefront of our consciousness, and that we are working constantly to eradicate the attitudes and actions that give rise to these terrible experiences. However, these same images are used ignorantly as shorthand for the 'barbaric' and 'mediaeval' views that Islam is said to hold about women.
Then we have stories from the Liberated, who escaped from the Oppression, and have 'freed' themselves, and at one extreme of the scale have 'enlightened' themselves and even rejected Islam utterly, and yet peculiarly still continue to define themselves in relation to it.
And somewhere in between are the soft sensual tales from the 'hidden world' of Muslim women, the Exotic, which Eastern doe-eyed beauties inhabit and where secrets of desire, womanliness and oriental allure reside. This is a world of voyeuristic otherness.
In order to register in the public consciousness, Muslim women must fit themselves into one of these categories. But they don't. And they don't want to.
The challenge is that Muslims too have ideas about how and what Muslim women should be. They offer Muslim women a choice between hijab-religious or non-hijab-irreligious, making sweeping assumptions about a woman's moral and religious character based on what she wears. But this is a false dichotomy that is saturated with an irony that most Muslims are not even aware of: that the recommendations on modest dress in Islam are specifically in order to avoid defining people by what they wear, and yet we use religious clothing as a way to pigeon-hole women.
Whether Muslim or otherwise, the paradigms within which we understand Muslim women have been limited to these caricatured notions. In doing this, we ourselves have removed the freedom from Muslim women to express their own voices in a way which allows them to represent themselves as they wish to be represented.
We need to create a change in the perceptions about Muslim women, their rights and the way that they are treated. In order to do so we need first of all to create in our public discourse the possibility of different ways of being.
Labels: comment, EMEL, Hijab, Muslim, Muslim Veil, Muslim women, Muslims, Niqab, Veil, women
posted by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at 10:43
11 Comments:
Google ought to scrap their image search function because it's totally useless.
unfortunately, google's image search function (a software program, not a human being) looks for the words that are linked to images over the WWW (web) - and/or words that are close to the images. so if the word 'muslim women' appears next to bikinis or pornography on many pages, then the computer stores that image as 'linked' to the first one. Google's choice of ranking what it puts on the pages is based on how many times those words appear in links leading to that image.
Unfortunately, one reason why there is so much porn on that search page is because some people who don't like (hate, don't understand, etc) Islam obsess about muslim women and make pornography or other insulting depictions.
Do write to Google, but appreciate that it's software compiling the lists. The other thing you can do is to make sure that the 'adult image filter' is set on when you are searching, that should remove the most offensive of the pictures, which you weren't looking for to begin with.
The two previous comments make good sense.
To be honest, I think you're argument is a little weak on this one. Muslim women are not portrayed any more "negatively" than other women.
Try googling Buddhist women for example - what do you get? Lots of Buddhist monks (female and male) clad in orange garb with shaved heads.
Google Catholic women and you get lots of Virgin Marys and nuns.
And hey, when I googled woman, I got what seemed to me a pretty good crossection of images of women of all ages, sizes, shapes and religions. Number seven on the first page of the search (reading left to right) was a woman wearing a "Saudi"style black veil with only her eyes showing. In the row below her was the cover from a Playboy magazine and another image with lots of cleavage. Under that was a young girl dressed as "Wonder Woman" as well as the depiction of "Woman in Balance" a Vermeer painting of pregnant woman with her head covered. All of this to say that the Muslim woman featured prominently amongst the mix.
I just don't agree with you on this one... Muslim women aren't stereotyped anymore than any other group of women - at least not on Google images.
In fact, based on my search for "woman" they feature right up there at the top in a representative mix of women...
Suggest you examine your own prejudices. It's easy to find evidence for what we believe to be true...
Sr. Shelina, you write, "We need to create a change in the perceptions about Muslim women, their rights and the way that they are treated. In order to do so we need first of all to create in our public discourse the possibility of different ways of being."
Please suggest two specific things my daughter (a long standing young hijabi) can do "to create in our public discourse the possibility of different ways of being."
Simlarly, please suggest one spefic thing each that her two brothers (young men), her mother (another long-standing hijabi) and her father (yours truly) can do, again "to create in our public discourse .... etc."
We must move beoynd words and pictures, shouldn't we?
Wassalam.
Jamal Hassan
Interesting point, however I would suggest that the search result is showing appropriate results (except maybe for the pornographic images - depends on you opinion of course). But if you saw a picture of a woman in Asda - she could be a Muslim, or a Jew, what about a black woman reading a book, she could be a Muslim, or a Christian, etc. In fact any picture of a woman could be a Muslim woman unless she has something about her (her costume, or a religious symbol) showing that she is not a Muslim. If you want variety you will have to search for variety, for example Indian women will produce a variety of pictures of women from India and N America some of whom will be muslim and some not. Similarly if you look for pictures of Muslim women you will get the features that most clearly distinguishes them from all others - i.e. the stereotype features such as the costumes. I think that's entirely appropriate, after all, why else would someone be searching fo pictures rather than information?
Shelina, you mention that a search on amazon will give you similarly stereotypical results. Earlier in the post you make the comment that perhaps "it is we who are to blame by not providing alternative, compelling and more widely spread diversity on who and what Muslim women are". I believe this to be true. That's the way the market works. It has always capitalized on the exacerbation of stereotypes.
It's up to us to force this change, which, I believe, is exactly what posts like this one contribute to.
The fact that this kind of media stereotyping is true for women in general does not detract from the fact that something needs to be done to represent the true diversity of the ummah.
Here's something new that seeks to combat the perceived image of Muslim women in a stylish way: www.hijabshigh.com
hijabshigh - love it! keep up the good work injecting new images of women into the blogosphere...
I have been really enjoying your blog, and it has been extremely useful for a project that I am doing on women's rights in Islam. I have a question though and was wondering if you could answer it.
In countries like Iran what are the morality police, what to they do, and how do people view them?
It is ok if you cannot answer the question I was just wondering.
Any Iranian readers out there who can provide a detailed account of the morality police?
In fact there are three types of Muslim women talked about, so called oppressed (in black burqa), assertive (modern but wearing hijaab) and rebellious (Muslima but happy to flaunt her body)... if you search Christian women you will find smiling faces, because they are from the websites that talk about spirituality and family, while pictures of Muslim women are from the websites that talk about news and scandals... we fail to project an imagery of our society and we let the others form their opinions, and as a Harvard professor says about managing image: �if you are not managing your image, somebody else is�. So we Muslims are not managing our image, and apparently other vested interests are whether they are motivated by making money through media, or influencing policies, and/or out of fear of growing number and power of Muslims. The good news is that there are lots of assertive Muslim women, like you, who are proud of their traditions, religious and can prove that their religion gives them freedom, respect and protection. I see their pictures a major success against the propaganda war against Islam.
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