Writing this post forced me to think about my own positionality in relation to faith. I grew up in the UK in a dual heritage British-Nepalese household. My mothers atheist scepticism sometimes clashed with my fathers Buddhist/Hindu practises. Although I wouldn’t class him as particularly ‘religious’, to echo Appiah’s lecture, there weren’t beliefs or creeds my father espoused, but lots of traditions and rituals which were rooted in the combined faiths of his home country, ‘a consciousness of ancestors, of talking to the gods’. While I have never followed a religion, growing in a mixed household has made me sensitive to cultural and religious pluralism, which informs my teaching.
Modest style is something I have documented in my photographic work, so I’ve enjoyed looking at the relationship between representation and inclusive teaching practices. In a fashion communication context the idea of embodied intersectionality is relevant if we consider what Reena Lewis describes as’ fashion’s role in materially expressing how people see themselves and their beliefs’.
The veiled Muslim woman challenges the values that are crucial to the multicultural nation, such freedom and culture, making her a symbol of what the nation must ‘give up’ to be itself”
Heidi Mirza
In 2018 model Halima Aden was the first woman in a Hijab to appear on the cover of Vogue, the same year Boris Johnson made his infamous Burka postbox comments. In the past 5 years I believe we have seen a shift in representation of Muslim women, you will now find Hamina in her hijab as a Matey Bubble Bath in Boots.
Has this shift in representation begun to influence structural changes? To what extent would a female Muslim student still be constructed as a ‘Body of out Place’ (Mirza, 2018) on the FCP course?
We must move beyond western imperialist notions of libratory emancipation and the deterministic binaries of resistance/subordination by which Muslim female subjectivity and agency is so often judged”
Haifaa Jawad
Haifaa Jawad debunks myths around Islam’s attitudes towards Muslim women playing sport, and discusses the accommodations that have to be made in sport to enable Muslim women to have full participation, such as sex-segregated spaces and accommodations for modest dress.
How could this be applied to my classroom setting, and what accommodations might need to be put into place? In this case, the issue is so much to do with perception.
Jacklyn Rekis work was helpful here, expanding on epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007), which she breaks down into two categories. Testimonial justice, where stereotypes can ‘distort the hearer’s perception of the speaker, where we focus on the ‘Social type over rational agent as giver of knowledge’. Hermeneutical Injustice, the structural prejudice that exists in the collective imagination. Muslim women are particularly prone to these epistemic harms.
In the Trinity University film, it was insightful to hear Simran Jeet Singh discuss how he uses classroom space to demonstrate the differences that exist within these communities by challenging stereotypes. He echoed Razia Aziz’s words on the tendency to homogenise the oppression of black people.
Any argument chosen to emphasise black/white difference will tend to deny the complexity of both black and white experience. This may be unavoidable, but unless it is specifically acknowledged a racial essentialism can emerge through the fixed back door of fixed and oppositional identities”
Razia Aziz
In my classroom context, one way to address this could be by providing a platform for organisations who challenge these perceptions. In 2022, I invited Muslim Sisterhood to speak to FCP students about the work of their Collective and their experiences in the fashion industry. By making space for these voices, not only Muslim groups, but of other marginalised communities, by writing them into the curriculum; centreing their histories and lived experiences, we can begin to shift perception.
In all our work, we want to celebrate Muslim women and give them respite from an external gaze. We are always conscious of trauma narratives; we want people to feel uplifted and inspired after interacting with our work.”
Lamisa Khan, Muslim Sisterhood
References
Appiah, K. A. (2014) Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question). Youtube [Online].
Mirza, H. S. (2018) Black Bodies ‘Out of Place’ in Academic Spaces: Gender, Race, Faith and Culture in Post-race Times. In Dismantling Race in Higher Education, Eds. Arday, J & Mirza, H. S. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jawad, H. (2022) Islam, Women and Sport: The Case of Visible Muslim Women. [Online]. Available at:
Trinity University (2016) Challenging Race, Religion, and Stereotypes in the Classroom. [Online].
Reki, J. (2023) Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account. Hypatia 38, pp779–800.
Aziz, R (1997) Feminism and the challenge of racism: Deviance or difference? In Black British Feminism, ed. Mirza, H. S. London, Routledge, pp. 70-77.
Begum, T. (2022) Muslim Sisterhood on ‘Joy as rebellion’, British Vogue. Available at: https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/bc/whistles-muslim-sisterhood (Accessed: 22 May 2024).
It is great to read how you have constructed this blog, considering your own positionality, your experience of photographing modest fashion, issues around representation and challenging stereotypes. I was especially interested in your invitation to the Muslim Sisterhood, which sounds like a fabulous session to open up student engagement with issues around faith within FCP and wider culture. I agree that practice this aligns well with Jeet Singh’s explanation of challenging stereotypes, encouraging students to see beyond a toxic and biased media narrative. What sounds great about this to me is that you are allowing students access to a plurality of voices, and within the group, students can take inspiration and information from a wider range of ideas and practices. This aligns well with the idea which we encountered in the Ted Talk featuring The Horizontals from which I noted down the quote ‘doing things the way you’ve always done doesn’t work because things have always been exclusive’. (available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhXcP65h0sI) Your blog for me shows that within FCP you are finding new ways to do things inclusively.
I enjoyed reading about the way which you approached this blog through your photographic practice and how you related it to Mirza’s paper. By further tying this into the discussion of Muslim women in sport and, equally in teaching practices, draws attention to what one can do to accomodate this in classroom spaces. I similary was interested in how we can work with perception of different identity groups and, in particular how this visibility relates to woman who are visible faith practitioners. It was great to hear about your invitation to Muslim Sisterhood to speak to FCP students – I am sure the greatly benefited from listening to their experiences!