Muslim Girlhood: Media's Narrative of Muslim Girls, Communities, and Islam

• In Event: Perceptions of (Im)Possibility: Muslim Students' Reality Within a Context of Islamophobia

Abstract

Objectives. In a world marred by the fears of religious extremism, Muslim youth are viewed as ‘ticking time bombs’ who will sooner or later fall prey to radicalized extremism. Muslims girls are seen as particularly vulnerable subjects confined by the patriarchal structures of Muslim communities and Islam. This vulnerability of Muslim girls is feared as a fertile ground for religious extremism and a future threat to global security.
It is in this context that Malala Yousufzai, a young activist from Pakistan, has emerged as a global icon of girls’ education and empowerment. This paper examines how the US media has constructed and mobilized the image of Malala as a global icon of girls’ education and empowerment, and if Malala’s story has the potential to problematize the dominant stereotypes about Muslim girls, communities, and Islam.

Theoretical Framework. In the aftermath of 9/11, the images of burqa-clad Muslim women are increasingly used by the Western media to project the problems of the “Muslim world” (Watt, 2012). In this context, Muslim girlhood has emerged as a complex subject position encompassing not only the victimhood of Muslim girls but also their potential to transform their unmodern and patriarchal families and societies (Khurhisd & Pitts, 2017). This subjectivity is increasingly inserted in global discourses and policies as an effective weapon to fight religious extremism in Muslim societies (Ranani & Kharazmi, 2017). This paper examines if and how the US media mobilizes the images of Muslim communities and Islam to tell Malala’s story as an empowered girl.

Methods & Data Sources. This article focuses on The New York Times (NYT) and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) coverage of Malala. The authors used the ProQuest database to find articles in the two newspapers from the time of the incident, October 9, 2012 to May 2014. Each article’s text was systematically analyzed utilizing conventional content analysis, a process by which the textual content of a source directly informs the coding categories chosen for critique (Hsiu-Fang & Shannon, 2005).

Results. The findings of this research highlight three main themes; first the NYT and the WSJ presented Malala’s as a patriarchal culture complicit in the perpetuation of religious extremism; second, Islam, Pakistani society, and Taliban were conflated as somewhat homogenous entities; and finally both the newspapers approached Malala’s family as having a marginal role in her journey to becoming a global icon. These findings reveal how this media discourse has tailored Malala’s narrative as she herself has termed Islam and her culture as being the inspiration for her activism and her family, especially her father, playing a crucial role in supporting her.

Conclusion. This critical analysis of media discourse provides insights into how an empowered Muslim girlhood becomes intelligible in the Western contexts only when it stands in opposition of the institutions of Muslim family, community, and Islam. In other words, the story of an empowered Malala reinserts, rather than challenging, the dominant stereotypes about Muslim girls, communities, and Islam.

Author

• Ayesha Khurshid, Florida State University