Following Boris Johnson’s column in The Telegraph on the 5th of August, in which he mocked and belittled women who wear niqabs and burqas, there has been an intensification of (already prevalent) Islamophobic language, arguments and attacks in the press, on social media and in the streets. While couched within an ostensibly liberal argument against a ‘total ban’ of niqabs and burqas in public places, Johnson’s comments were clearly and very deliberately aimed at stoking already entrenched anti-Muslim racism and appealing to the right of the Conservative Party to build support for his likely leadership bid.
It is important to note that amid his dehumanising descriptions of women who wear niqabs and burqas, Johnson’s argument contained echoes of a liberal feminism, both in his description of these garments as oppressive and in his argument that ‘a free-born adult woman’ should not be told ‘what she may or may not wear, in a public place’ (hypocritically stated just after claiming he should be entitled to ask a woman to remove parts of her clothing in his MP surgery). In affecting a concern for Muslim women’s rights while peddling Islamophobia, Johnson is treading the well-worn path of gendered racism. The demonisation of Muslims in western political discourse originated with the orientalism of European colonisers, and has always proceeded on highly gendered terms, with the figure of the ‘oppressed Muslim woman’ operating as a symbolic shorthand to justify all manner of imperial foreign and domestic policy interventions.
Continue reading “Anti-racist feminist statement on Islamophobia”
Poet, artist and writer 
This month Lani interviews Steve Graby, a Disability Studies researcher at the University of Leeds. They discuss the tensions inherent within the personal assistance employer-employee relationship, as well as the opportunities for solidarity.