http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090504/OPINION/705039942/1080/NONE
It’s time western media looked beyond the veil
Muhammad Ayish
* Last Updated: May 04. 2009 12:14AM UAE / May 3. 2009 8:14PM GMT
Most Arabs are resigned to being stereotyped by western media, but for
Arab women the problem is particularly acute.
I was invited to Doha in Qatar last week to present the Arab Women
Media Strategy at a conference called East and West: Women in Media’s
Eye. My assumption beforehand was that the event would be yet another
platform to expose the misrepresentation of women in Arab media: and
the discussions were indeed inspired by research revealing
long-standing media stereotypes of women in the region. But one issue
raised by speakers that I found intriguing was western media
portrayals of immigrant Arab women in North America and Europe.
Arab women in immigrant communities, just as in this region, are the
victims of negative gender-based media representations, but on top of
that they face yet more negative media coverage based on cultural
misconceptions and the recent political conflicts that have marred
Arab-Western relations. This is rather a thorny topic, and I commend
the Rome-based international cultural association Reset Dialogues on
Civilisations and Northwestern University in Qatar for initiating
these discussions.
I believe that for media stereotypes of immigrant Arab women to
receive appropriate attention, the issue has to be addressed in its
cultural and political entirety, within the broad debate about Arab
media stereotypes in the West. As long as negative Arab images
continue to appear in western public spheres, women in immigrant
communities will continue to suffer from them. One credible response
to this challenge is the Network of Arab Women in Diaspora (NAWD)
project launched last year by Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, who chairs
the UAE General Women’s Union. Among other things, the project
harnesses the internet to initiate a cultural dialogue aimed at
fostering a sense of identity among immigrant Arab women in the
disapora.
At last week’s Doha conference, examples of how Arab women are
portrayed in US, Italian and German media went far beyond the usual
gender-based stereotypes. I was dismayed to hear presenters referring
to demonised images of Arab women, especially in the post-9/11 era.
Both Newsweek and Time magazines portrayed Arab-Muslim women in terms
of the veil/Islam, female circumcision and famine, while disregarding
the contributions they made to their communities. Three different
Italian RAI network shows featured images of helpless Arab women,
often the victims of domestic abuse.
As to German media, Sabine Schiffer, head of that country’s Media
Responsibility Institute, argued that they sensationalised the issue
of Arab-Muslim women’s “oppression” as a strategy to detract attention
from the abuse of women in general in the West. An image of a veiled
Arab-Muslim woman demon-figure flying in the sky to wreak havoc on
high-rise buildings in western cities was particularly disturbing. And
an image of a crescent appearing slowly in synch with an act of
domestic violence was most frustrating.
In the West, clearly, negative Arab images rooted in history are
providing a base for the stereotyping of Arab women in the media. I
have come across several studies that blame Orientalist traditions and
recent political conflicts in the Middle East for reinforcing images
of women only as belly dancers and concubines. One of those studies,
published in 2004 by Maram Hallak (an Arab American) and Kathryn
Quina, chronicles the immediate post-9/11 experience of seven young
Muslim women students at a community college in lower Manhattan, next
to the Twin Towers. The study shows how those young women were
frustrated by media stereotyping, afraid for their safety, and
distressed by the trauma they had experienced themselves from living
next to Ground Zero.
A short documentary film screened at the Doha conference, on how
Hollywood stereotypes Arabs, proved insightful for audiences keen on
understanding the broad context that gives rise to negative images of
immigrant Arab women in western media. The film, featuring the
internationally renowned Arab American media scholar Jack Shaheen,
notes that since the 1970s Muslims and Arabs have generally been
portrayed in US media as violent, aggressive, villainous, ugly, and
even sub-human. Many critics, including Professor Shaheen, blame the
media for inventing and perpetuating the stereotypes that have largely
shaped America’s images of many minorities, including Arabs.
Arab women in immigrant communities cannot win the fight for better
media recognition while they continue to be viewed inside the
parameters of traditional Arab-Islamic stereotypes. So for this issue
to receive the widest attention, it has to be positioned within the
broad discussion of Arab-Muslim media misrepresentations in the West.
More systematic and comprehensive cultural dialogues between the West
and the region are needed to reinforce common ground and avert
potential misunderstandings. I see Sheikha Fatima’s NAWD initiative as
a promising milestone on this path.
Muhammad Ayish is a professor of communications at the University of Sharjah
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