MUSLIM WOMEN TALK BACK': UNDERSTANDING IDENTITY AND RESISTANCE IN ONLINE SPACES - UVA SCRIPTIES

MA Thesis
 New Media and Digital Culture

 ‘Muslim Women Talk Back’:
Understanding Identity and Resistance in Online
 Spaces

 Supervisor: Natalia Sánchez Querubín
 Second Reader: Marc Tuters

 By: Maria Hayat
 Student No.: 11230525
 mariahayat90@gmail.com
 26th June, 2017

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Abstract:
Muslim women are often seen in mainstream culture as well as media as being ‘submissive’ or
‘oppressed’, or the other stereotypes deriving from Islamophobic ideas views them as potential
threats. This thesis aims to show how Muslim women use the internet, and online spaces to
resist such monolithic narratives, and utilize the ‘democratic space’ of the web for identity
formation and self-representation, beyond limiting categories, and towards a more fluid
conception of identity. To understand and reflect on the nature of this resistance and
representation, it looks at Muslim women and their actions in various avenues, from mapping
the potential of collective action in Muslim women ‘blogosphere’, to seeing fashion enable
resistance on Instagram, to finally seeing athletics and sport opening up new avenues for
reforming discourse.
Keywords: Muslim women, Gendered Islamophobia, Resistance, Self-representation,
blogosphere, fluid identities

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Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements: 4

Chapter 1.Introduction: 5
 1.1: ‘US’ vs ‘Them’: Understanding binaries and stereotypes 6
 1.2: Existing Research and Defining the Research Question 8
 1.3: Framework 9
 1.3.1.: Defining and problematizing ‘Islamophobia’: 9
 1.3.2: Gendered Islamophobia and limiting portrayals of Muslim women: 10
 1.4: Dominant Discourses and the production of resistance 11
 1.5: Towards dynamic, Fluid identities 13

Chapter 2: Muslim Women and Mapping the Blogosphere 16
 2. Introduction: 16
 2.1: The Core Question 17
 2.2: Methodology 18
 2.2.1: Mapping the blogosphere as a network: 18
 2.2.2: Collective action, Metalanguage and content centric analysis: 19
 2.3: A cursory glance at Muslim women bloggers: 20
 2.4: Muslim women bloggers and areas of interest 21
 2.5: Individuals or Network? Mapping the Muslim women blogosphere 23
 2.6: Issue Mapping: Collective resistance to Islamophobia? 29
 2.7: The case of Asra Nomani 31
 2.8: Analysis and Conclusion: 33

Chapter 3: Fashion as Resistance: Muslim Fashionistas on Instagram 36
 3. Introduction and Research Question 36
 3.1: Methodology 38
 3.2: The Muslimah fashion blogger: An archetype? 39
 3.3: A Translocal Phenomena? 40
 3.4: Understanding Muslim Fashion on Instagram as a visual discourse 43
 3.5: Hijab to head-wraps: Contesting the nature of modest-wear 46
 3.6: Instagram and Social/religious norms 50
 3.7: To veil or not to veil? Understanding Agency and representation 52
 3.8: Resistance? Classism, Consumerism and Feminist Critique 54

Chapter 4: Veiling and Athletics: Viewing Muslim women in Sports 57
 4. Introduction: 57
 4.1: Research Question 58
 4.2: Methodology 59
 4.3: Muslim women in sports: A recent phenomena? 60
 4.4: Covering Muslim women in Sports 61

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 4.5: Muslim female athletes and Accessibility 64
 4.6: The case of the Nike Pro Hijab: Increasing Inclusivity in Sports? 66
 4.7: Shirzanan and Muslim female athletes representing themselves 68
 4.8: Analysis and Conclusion 72

5: Conclusion 74

6. References 77

7. Appendix 84

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Acknowledgements:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my family, for their constant support through this
year, and throughout each of my endeavors. A special thanks to Noorya, for always being a
mentor and confidante.
My gratitude to my supervisor Natalia, for her valuable feedback and support throughout the
course of this thesis, and to all the New Media faculty at the University of Amsterdam for
having made this year an incredible learning experience.
A special thankyou to Rhubini and Emillie for all their support through projects and work, and
life. And lastly, a thankyou to Saad for always being an inspiration, and his unending confidence
in me.

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Chapter 1.Introduction:

Addressing the Women’s March on January 21st 2017, Linda Sarsour, former Executive Director
of the Arab American Association of New York and co-organizer of the Women’s March stated
the following:
 I stand here before you, unapologetically Muslim-American, unapologetically Palestinian
 American… The Muslim community has been suffering in silence for the past 15 years… I
 ask you to stand and continue to keep your voices loud for black women, for native
 women, for undocumented women… Justice for all. (Linda Sarsour, Critical Voices)

In today’s context, her statements came at an important juncture in the US, where the election
of Donald Trump as President, led to rising waves of islamophobia, hate crime, anti-women,
anti-muslim and anti-immigrant sentiment. Her speech and participation in the Women’s
March met with strong backlash online, with sites like breitbart.com, the official forum of the
“alt-right”, calling her a “fake feminist” and postulating that “her rise to liberal stardom
following the March has occurred in spite of her support for anti-feminist views”. She also faced
significant backlash by twitter trolls, accusing her of propounding “Shariah Law” and being anti-
semitic, however the hashtag “#IMarchWithLinda” went viral in response to these Islamophobic
attacks. An article on Huffington Post, celebrated her ‘Intersectional Feminism’ approach
stating that “Linda Sarsour’s Intersectional Mantra Is One We Need To Live By”.
In the same vein of public resistance and representation, on the 1st of February 2017, the first
‘Annual Hijab Day’ was celebrated “in recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to
wear the hijab and live a life of modesty”. Addressing the celebration City Council Speaker
Melissa Mark-Viverito declared that Muslim women are ‘at the forefront of the resistance’
against President Donald Trump‘s Muslim travel ban and intolerance of others—and expressed
her solidarity with the Muslim community.
Resistance takes place in many forms; blog/website called muslimgirl.com with the slogan
“Muslim Women Talk Back” aims to normalize “the word ‘Muslim’ for both Muslims and non-
Muslims alike”. The site’s editor claims frustration at “the way the news coverage and media
outlets kept skewing the image of Muslims into a nasty one; the mistrust, racism, and flat-out

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hatred that the inaccuracies flamed; the muting of young Muslim voices from mainstream
society”.
To resist this ‘skewed media coverage’ the site aims to ‘take back the narrative’:
 We use our own voices to speak up for ourselves. We are raising the place of Muslim
 women in mainstream society. We are drawing awareness to the Qur’an’s message of
 gender equality and Islam’s principle of peace. We are paving the way towards a world
 in which every woman can raise her head without fear of being attacked for her gender
 or beliefs. (Amani Alkhat)

The Muslim girl blog isn’t the only one with similar aims. From Muslim women bloggers like
‘Alt-Muslimah’, to ‘Muslimah Media Watch’, to Muslim women designers, bloggers and
fashionistas on Instagram (@rumastyles, @summeralbarcha, @hautehijab, @hijabhills etc.), to
motivational speakers or activists on Twitter (Masarat Daud, The Salafi Feminist), to Muslim
women in sports and blogs highlighting those (shirzanan.org,
Muslimwomeninsport.blogspot.com), to advocacy organizations (Women in Islam, Sisters in
Islam etc.) to theater collectives (Hijabi Monologues), to podcasts like #GoodMuslimBadMuslim
and countless others; Muslim women employ online spaces in a diverse set of ways that help
them explore their identity, contest limiting labels ascribed to them by the media and by
society in general. In the ensuing sections the idea is to study some of these examples of
platforms and networks in depth, in an attempt to illuminate how online spaces have
transformed the nature of representation and resistance, and how Muslim women in particular
navigate the terrain to their own advantage.
However, before one can understand resistance to Islamophobia, it is important to understand
the root cause of Islamophobia, and further go on to define how these terms are employed
within the rest of this research:

1.1: ‘US’ vs ‘Them’: Understanding binaries and stereotypes
In his book on Islamophobia, Christopher Allen explains the nature of stereotypes, and how
they attempt to create a “sense of order” by negating “broader or expansive understandings”,
and thus, though the resulting understanding may be reductive, it enables an easier conception

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than dealing with complex “issues relating to the difference and diversity of a subject matter”
(Allen, 143).
The stereotypes regarding Muslims and Islam are manifold, but the discourse tends to use a
number of core labels or terms such as ‘the Islamic world’, ‘extremism’, ‘radicalism’,
‘fundamentalism’, ‘jihadists’, ‘moderates’ and ‘Islamic terrorism’” (Jackson, 401). The issue is
that these labels are almost always used in binary oppositions, such as “the West versus the
Islamic world, extremists versus moderates, violent versus peaceful, democratic versus
totalitarian, religious versus secular” etc. (Jackson, 401). Moreover, much like other sweeping
generalizations and stereotypes, the core contention or concern is that it is “profoundly
misleading” to use any such terms not least because there is “too much variation within ‘Islam’
and Islamic movements for meaningful or illuminating generalizations” (Jackson, 413).
These stereotypes and generalizations regarding Islam and Muslims occur widely, not just in the
media, but in academia as well. In an article on ‘Media representation of Muslims and Islam’
Ahmed and Matthes point out that the existing body of literature around the topic usually
revolves around a few basic themes: “Before and after 9/11, Terrorism, Muslim women, War,
Migrants, Public opinion and Islamophobia, Mosques, Event-specific” (Ahmed & Matthes).
Within this holistic study, they point out that “academic discourses run the risk of using
preconstructed media categories when studying Muslims and Islam” (Ahmed & Matthes, 18).
Hence they argue for “a need for scholars to go beyond the frequently used paradigms and
research categories. More specifically…to include the range of rapidly shifting social, political,
and religious contexts” (Ahmed & Matthes, 18).
Christopher Allen propounds that even before one begins to define Islamophobia, the root of
the issue needs to be tackled, and must therefore:
 be able to identify and accommodate ‘Muslims’ in such ways that they are neither
 essentialised nor reduced, nor made out to be a homogenous collective identified by
 indiscriminate or inappropriate markers or appellations. This would mean being able to
 accommodate the inherent diversity of ‘Muslims’, whether in their practice, race, ethnic
 heritage, or indeed any other marker of difference that might occur.... (Allen, 139)

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1.2: Existing Research and Defining the Research Question
Currently however, there is a “dearth of research on Muslim media and non-Western countries,
as well as an apparent lack of comparative research, and a neglect of the minority perspective”
(Ahmed & Matthes, 21). Also, while there is rising interest and scholarship on understanding
the origins of Islamophobia, documenting its occurrence in various spaces, on ground and
online, focusing on dominant narratives even if through critique; what is usually ignored is the
agency of the Muslims it talks about and represents. What is also found lacking in existing
literature is a critical perspective of the issue. For example, though there is more varied
research concerning gendered Islamophobia, but much of it focuses on documenting its
experiences (Zine; Perry). While some articles focus on interesting aspects such as resistance
and agency (Bilge), till yet the literature that focuses on gendered resistance to Islamophobia is
rare, and of understanding such resistance online is negligible.
The challenge here then, is to conceptualize Muslims and Islam in a way that is neither
stereotypical, essentialised or Islamophobic (at worst), and in a way that does not rob the
subjects of agency. Within this thesis then, instead of using ‘pre-constructed media categories’,
the aim is to deconstruct essentialist terms and Latour’s ideas on social research, by following
the actions of the actors and use their language to describe phenomenon (Latour).
This thesis then aims to focus on examining Islamophobia through a critical lens, with particular
emphasis on its gendered manifestations; but aims to draw lacking attention towards how
Muslim women are resisting Islamophobic narratives, and how online spaces enable this
resistance, by granting them a voice to talk back to the dominant narrative and to represent
themselves, beyond stereotypes and preconceived categories, to a fluid conception of identity
that is able to do justice to the ‘inherent diversity’ amongst Muslim Women.
By doing so, this thesis aims to call attention to the politics of representation, to understand
who constructs identities within prevailing narratives, and how these conceptions are then
solidified over time. Thus it aims to show how the discourse of Muslim women in media,
academia lacks in roundedness and 'agency', and how looking at Muslim women through an
intersectional perspective can give us unique insights into how these women employ online
mediums and formats such as blogs, podcasts and hashtags to reclaim their identity.

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1.3: Framework
In the remaining part of this introduction then, the terms used will be expanded on, within the
questions outlined above, to set the stage for the particular cases that are explored in more
detail in the following chapters. Any illuminating discussion on Islamophobia for example,
should ideally start with defining what an often politically loaded term actually means. It comes
as no surprise however, that the meaning or usage of the term is highly contested.

1.3.1.: Defining and problematizing ‘Islamophobia’:

While Islamophobia emerged in contemporary discourse with the 1997 publication of the
report "Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All" by the Runnymede Trust, the British race relations
NGO; it has since then been regularly used in the media etc., particularly in Britain, France and
the U.S. (Bleich 2012). While initially it was used as a concept by activists to understand ‘racism’
or hate directed particularly at Muslims and Islam, it’s now widespread in its usage not just in
the media, but also in academia where the concept is used “to identify the history, presence,
dimensions, intensity, causes and consequences of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim sentiments”
(Bleich, 180).
There is, however, an on-going contention about how the term ought to be defined and
conceptualized, with some taking it as a “a social anxiety toward Islam and Muslim cultures”
(Gottschalk and Greenberg, 5), others framing it as a “fear-laden discourse” where “Islam as the
enemy, as the...monolithic bloc that is the natural subject of well-deserved hostility from
Westerners" (Zúquete, 323). Semati (1) calls it "a single, unified and negative conception of an
essentialised Islam, which is then deemed incompatible with Euro-Americaness."
The issue with most of these definitions is that they are usually either too broad, too narrow or
too vague in how they are defined. The conceptualization or usage of the term also has
“weaknesses” because most studies using the term either look at “it’s deep historical roots”,
others focus on documenting incidences of violence directed at Muslims in studies that are
generally anecdotal in nature, while “a third type of research conflates Islamophobia with

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attitudes toward overlapping ethnic, national-origin, or immigrant-status groups” (Bleich, 183).
As an alternative, to understand the “multidimensional nature of Islamophobia”, Erik Bleich
proposes that: “Islamophobia can best be understood as indiscriminate negative attitudes or
emotions directed at Islam or Muslims” (Bleich, 182). He draws parallels with concepts such as
homophobia or xenophobia, and explains that if Islamophobia is “viewed in this way, [it] is also
analogous to terms like racism, sexism, or anti- Semitism” (Bleikh, 182).

1.3.2: Gendered Islamophobia and limiting portrayals of Muslim women:

This thesis, as mentioned, then aims to look at Islamophobia through a critical gendered
perspective. Studying the gendered perspective becomes increasingly important given that in
the aftermath of 9/11 and “the ongoing ‘war on terror’, narratives by and about Muslim
women have been increasingly commodified, circulated and uncritically consumed, particularly
in the West” (Zine, Taylor, and Davis, 272).
Many authors in fact, point out that gendered Islamophobia has roots that are in fact
“historically entrenched within Orientalist representations that cast colonial Muslim women as
backward, oppressed victims of misogynist societies (Said).
According to Sirma Bilge as well, the existing discourse argues that “the ‘core value clash’, ‘the
primary cultural fault line’ between the West and Islam is not about democracy but gender
equality and sexual liberalisation” (Bilge, 10). She argues that thus Muslims are constructed as
essentially different from liberal western subjects and that their culture is seen as “inherently
sexist and homophobic” (Bilge, 10).
Such representations served to justify and rationalize imperial domination over colonized
Muslims through the emancipatory effect that European hegemony was expected to garner for
Muslim women” (Zine, 240).
As a consequence, Muslim women are “paradoxically portrayed both as a victim (passive) of her
oppressive patriarchal culture/religion and male kin, and as a threat (active) to Western
modernity and culture of freedoms (Bilge, 10). Elsewhere the portrayal of Muslim women is
identified in terms of three personas:
 The first is the ‘harem belly-dancer character,’ the mysterious and sexualized woman of

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 the ‘Orient’; the second is ‘the oppressed Muslim woman,’ often represented as the
 hijab (headscarf) wearer or the woman who is unable to drive; and, finally, there is the
 ‘militant Muslim woman,’ often shown in hijab with a gun and military clothes”. (qtd in
 Perry, 81)

Barbara Perry posits that as a result of this second stereotype Muslim women are thus seen as
“women in need of salvation” with veiled women particularly depicted as being devoid of
agency and hence “making the veil a site of contention between different strands of feminism”
(Bilge, 10).
Also, though it may be argued that both men and women are victims of Islamophobia, an article
on gendered Islamophobia calls to attention the special vulnerability of girls and women to
anti-muslim hate crime (Perry). Driscoll (93) argues that “both men’s and women’s bodies are
important sites of cultural and religious inscriptions; yet these markings have particularly
devastating consequences for girls and women”.
Rising waves of Islamophobia continue to make Muslim women into particularly vulnerable
targets for not just stereotyping, harassment and online bullying but also hate crime. The issue
seems to be the complexity of Muslim women and their identities, with “their gender status as
women”, their cultural or ethnic identity, “their status as immigrants and minorities”, “their
language barriers”, “their religious identity” and “their Islamic dress code” (Abu-Ras and
Suarez). As a result, “unlike her male counterpart, the headscarved Muslim woman is caught at
the intersection of discrimination against religion and discrimination against women’” (Aziz, 25).

1.4: Dominant Discourses and the production of resistance
The underlying issue is one that revolves around the politics of representation, which narratives
are highlighted and brought to notice, which voices are ignored or overshadowed, which
narratives dominate and who constructs and disseminates these? The issue with dominant
discourses is that they:
 1) Are “necessarily exclusionary and silencing of other modes of representation”
 2) “de-legitimize alternative knowledge and practice”
 3) “naturalize a particular political and social order”

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 4) “construct and maintain a hegemonic regime of truth”
 5) And they “render unreasonable more nuanced narratives about the often-contradictory
 identities and characteristics of the narratives’ central actors” (Jackson, 396)

Jackson then states that on the contrary, we need “an understanding of discourse as historically
and culturally contingent, intertextual, open-ended, requiring continuous articulation and re-
articulation and therefore, open to destabilization and counter-hegemonic struggle” and thus
“open up critical space for the articulation of alternative and potentially emancipatory forms of
knowledge and practice” (Jackson, 396).
As mentioned in the beginning, one of the foremost issues with current research is that it
ignores non-Western and Muslim media, and the hegemonic narrative regarding Muslim
women for example, is created by and through ‘Western’ media.
Moreover, the particular problem with discourses about Islam and Muslims is that they “have
proved extremely resilient, perhaps because, as Said claims, they reflect deeper social-cultural
fears, anxieties and stereotypes of the oriental ‘other’ that go back to the imperial age. For
others, they are the necessary cultural corollary of contemporary forms of imperialism
(Jackson).
To combat against such stereotypes and produce alternative ‘forms of knowledge and practice’,
Zine et al., suggest an “Anti-Orientalist resistance” that is “not only deconstructive” in that it
critiques, “Imperialist stereotypes and assumptions about Western superiority”, but is also
“constructive in offering alternative contemporary and ‘traditional’ representations of Muslim
women which resist easy identifications and pat understandings of Islam” (Zine, Taylor, and
Davis, 275).
The need is thus, to create “an alternate space for the articulation of Muslim female identity
that resists both patriarchal fundamentalism and secular Islamophobia” (Zine). As a result, “the
audiences of these new cultural and scholarly productions are not monolithic but rather
multiple and overlapping, dynamic and often emergent (Zine, Taylor, and Davis).
While such identity construction then brings forward a form of resistance to the dominant
discourse, it is important to note here that resistance can take other forms as well. For

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example: “As an Islamic feminist construct, the veil represents a means of resisting and
subverting dominant Euro-centric norms of femininity and the objectification of the female
body and as a means of protection from the male gaze (Bullock; Read & Bartkowski). Speaking
of the hijab then, Haleh Afshar points out that for many women it “provides both a personal
anchor and a public form of resistance to subvert the daily experience of Islamaphobia.
However, this is not merely done to counter the prevailing prejudices but also as a positive,
liberating step” (Afshar, 6).
It is also significant as a disclaimer here to point out that agency should not be reduced to just
resistance, it “is only one of the many configurations that agency may take” and such a notion
would expel “social action involving ‘’complicity with, accommodation to, or reinforcement of
the status quo -sometimes all at the same time’” (Bilge, 19). There are thus also ‘non-resistant
agencies’.
Thus instead of translating actions of actors to our own terms and understandings, instead the
Latourian notion to “follow the actors” is followed. Hence, “by centering the voices and struggle
of these young Muslim women, we can begin to see them as actors who at times reinforce
traditional norms and at other times act in ways that begin to redefine the terrain of gender,
faith, and identity” (Zine, 250).

1.5: Towards dynamic, Fluid identities
It is important to note that though gender and religion are the most highlighted or visible
identity markers for Muslim women, their identity goes beyond the terrain of gender and faith
alone. There is hence no doubt that Muslim women particularly occupy a contested space, and
a unique set of discrimination and disadvantage, based on gender and religion amongst others.
To do justice to these unique conditions, the idea is to employ theories of ‘transnational’ and
‘intersectional’ feminism to understand the experiences of Muslim women, as well as convey
how they represent themselves and resist hegemonic narratives.
 ...[C]ompeting imaginaries—Western imperialist, Orientalist, imperialist feminist as well
 as transnational feminist, anti-colonial and Islamic—form a contested terrain of
 knowledge production upon which the lives, histories and subjectivities of Muslim

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 women are discursively constituted, debated, claimed and consumed through a variety
 of literary, academic and visual forms of representation. (Zine, Taylor, and Davis, 271)

While it is true that the lives of Muslim women are determined by all the structural forces
mentioned above, “too often women are defined by ascribed identities that confine them to
categories developed and used by others” (Afshar, 1). The issue is that though “identity can be
ascribed rather than chosen” (Parekh 2009), “women have to negotiate and struggle to move
beyond the stranglehold placed on them by such ascriptions” (Afshar, 1). However, Afshar
postulates that: “Women recognize identities as dynamic and malleable and are able to use
differing interpretations to move beyond the limitations imposed in the name of specific faiths,
cultures, or socioeconomic norms” (Afshar, 1).
In this context, a British-Muslim woman interviewed by Afshar stated: “... I see my Muslim
identity now as a kind of opportunity to bridge cultures and communities, especially when
there is so much conflict, confusion around perceptions of different civilizations and different
identities. I see my Muslim identity as a fusion that cuts across any country, any community…”
(Afshar, 98).
Identity formation involves complex power dynamics, and are “never a matter of pure
autonomy and independence versus lack of choice: They develop through complex and difficult
mechanisms of compromise and bargaining in which individuals, even in constraining situations,
always exercise their plural and fluid affiliations, transforming those same constraints into
weapons of emancipation” (Afshar, 122). In this way, the activists interviewed by Afshar assert
that their identities are “complex and variegated” and thus cannot be reduced to a “piece of
fabric” or the hijab: “Their faith, although important, is one part of their life” (Afshar, 122).
Haleh Afshar’s work then, in the context of this thesis is vital for she points out how:
 Whether the labelling stems from the government, Muslim communities, the media, or
 other women’s groups, the result seems the same: the women take the label ‘Muslim’,
 deconstruct it, and introduce alternative interpretations in order to transform an
 imposed category into an emancipative weapon. (Afshar, 120)

It is particularly interesting to look at how online mediums lend themselves in form, format and
accessibility to such alternative interpretations that serve as a counter-narrative or ‘an
emancipative weapon’ against such labelling by the media in particular. The ensuing chapters

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take up three varied domains of counter-narratives, the first concerns Muslim women and the
blogosphere, the second focuses on Instagram and the role of Muslim fashion bloggers, and the
last takes on the representation of Muslim women in sport.

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Chapter 2: Muslim Women and Mapping the
Blogosphere

2. Introduction:
In an interview with the Guardian, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, the founder of popular online blog or
magazine MuslimGirl.com, talked about the power of online or social media: “It can be an
exceptionally powerful tool if we challenge ourselves to use it in innovative ways. The beauty of
it is that there are no borders, so our reach is potentially limitless”. She however was careful to
point out that the internet is a double-edged sword, but that it has the potential of being an
“equaliser of sorts”, “offering a level playing field to all sorts of competing opinions. That’s what
allows MuslimGirl and our narratives to have a fighting chance” (Lamont).
 Muslim Girl as a platform though, has been widely covered in the news for its growing
readership, and being one of the most visited sites by Muslim women in the US.
Studies however show that “despite the exponential growth of bloggers in Muslim countries”,
“there is very little research attempting to understand social, cultural and political roles of
female bloggers and collectivity among female social groups” (Agarwal, Merlyna, and Wigand,
1).
The Muslim Girl blog was set up by Al-Khatahtbeh in the aftermath of 9/11 to challenge
stereotypes regarding Muslim women and to give them space to express themselves. With
respect to the blogosphere though, studies have shown that there exists acute gender
inequality, particularly when it comes to blogs talking about political issues, with the underlying
belief that women either do not talk about politics or their blogs lack quality (Harp and
Tremayne, 247).
 However, when it comes to Muslim women, the Muslim blogosphere appears to have a
high concentration of women. Mitra, in a study on South Asian women points out to this”
veritable paradox of power” in cyberspace where “the traditionally powerful… are competing

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against those who have been conventionally powerless, but have begun to gain a sense of
discursive power because they can now find a speaking space on the Internet” (Mitra in Harp
and Tremayne, 249).
One can wonder then, if there is something particular about the platform that is empowering to
women, and that encourages them to speak up. A study on the empowerment potential of
blogs talks about how “the constant activity of blogging itself serves to further boost one’s
competence as a creator and as a distinct voice, most likely imbuing users with a deep sense of
agency” (Carmen, 2782). In addition to granting a voice, and agency, “bloggers can—and often
do—initiate a public dialogue, the likely outcome of this being a strong sense of community”
(Carmen, 2782).
Taking up this idea of a public dialogue and ‘strong sense of community’, this thesis sets out to
understand Muslim women bloggers as a group, or rather as forming a blogosphere, with
similar goals, given that the internet has “completely transformed the landscape of collective
action” (Friedland & Rogerson).

2.1: The Core Question
According to Latour, groups and group formation is not static, it’s a dynamic process which has
to be constantly performed (Latour). Whether a set of actors forms a group is dependent on
how it delineates group membership and identity; boundaries are defined and set to
differentiates the group from the ‘anti-group’, and members of a group tend to share a form of
in-group language, and have similar matters of concern, and agendas (Latour).

In the context of this thesis then, the question asked here then is, can one even talk about the
‘Muslim women blogosphere’? Do they form a group in the Latourian sense? If so, who are
their spokespeople, what are the issues that they are most concerned with, what type of
language do they employ? Can one thread through common themes and similar agendas?
The overarching question of course is whether and how Muslim women employ these blogs to
represent themselves, and resist dominant hegemonic narratives, and whether the blogs run by

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Muslim women can be thought of as a network (even if it is geographically sparsed) organized
towards collective action.

2.2: Methodology
As a starting point to the research in this chapter, a master list of blogs had to be compiled. The
challenge with that is that other than the major renowned blogs, there aren’t many authentic
compiled list of blogs run by Muslim women.
As a starting point a list of compiled by ‘orbala.wordpress.com’ of Muslim Feminist blogs was
collected, and to this list were added top search results on Google for phrases such as “Muslim
women blogs”. This led to a list of 40 blogs (refer to Appendix) that are used throughout this
chapter, however, this list isn’t representative since the collection technique is through a
snowball. These blogs were then ordered into categories, ranging from parenting, to fashion to
feminism, according to how they identify themselves or their blogs in the “About” sections. A
detailed depiction, and discussion of this list follows in the ensuing section.
As a next step, the main research question surrounding this chapter had to be answered: can
one even talk about a Muslim women blogosphere, and as it coming together as a group?
According to Agarwal et al, there are three approaches to understanding networks or
‘communities’ as they call them, which are either network centric where “structural properties”
are used “to identify communities within a social network” (in Agarwal et al., 6); or content
centric where members of a community tend to talk about similar topics. A third approach is a
hybrid of both the aforementioned approaches.
To answer the central question then, this chapter takes a two-pronged stance building upon
Latour’s ideas of group formations (Latour), and the approaches mentioned above.

 2.2.1: Mapping the blogosphere as a network:

In his book “Reassembling the Social” Latour challenges the dominant conception of group
identities and group formation as static and given, and explains how group formation is always
an ongoing process and that “groupings have constantly to be made, or remade, and during this

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creation or recreation the group-makers leave behind many traces that can be used as data by
the informer” (Latour, 34).
While this data can be collected in many different forms, to locate an actor-network though, it
is first important to understand that action is “borrowed, distributed, suggested, influenced,
dominated, betrayed, translated” and should be “felt as a node, a knot, and a conglomerate of
many surprising sets of agencies that have to be slowly disentangled” (Latour, 44).
Since according to Latour the best kind of sociological account is one that traces a network, the
first step in this chapter takes the ‘network centric’ approach, and attempts to map the
blogosphere as a network, to see whether and how these blogs link to each other, by using an
Inter-Actor analysis, using the Issue crawler tool, the network mapping software by the
Govcom.org Foundation, Amsterdam. The Inter-Actor analysis is then looked at, where the
Issue Crawler “crawls the specified starting points, captures the starting points' outlinks and
shows inter-linking between the starting points”. A detailed depiction is included in the findings
section of this chapter, including a discussion of what the results entail.

 2.2.2: Collective action, Metalanguage and content centric analysis:

According to Latour, when studying groups and social formations, “analysts are allowed to
possess only some infra-language whose role is simply to help them become attentive to the
actors’ own fully developed metalanguage” (Latour, 49).
In order to understand in more detail whether Muslim women’s blogs can be thought of as a
group, the idea is to do a content centric analysis.
The point is to see if the Muslim women blogs identified have similar stances and use similar
language to react towards specific happenings or incidents. In an article on the ‘Power of
Collective Action amongst Muslim Bloggers’, Agarwal et al. chose a particular campaign
distinctive to the blogosphere within their study, so as to highlight “how individual cause
diffuses within the cyber-network of interactions and shapes into cyber-collective
cause as time progresses” (Agarwal et al., 4).
Taking forward the same methodology, the aim was to select particular issues that may be
rallying points for Muslim women blogs, identify certain “issue keywords”, use the Google

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Scraper or Lippmannian Device to understand whether the blogs listed address the issue, map
out “issue clouds” accordingly, to see how they choose to speak about it, and whether there
are any similarities across the blogs in how they do so.
For the purposes of this research, keywords surrounding ‘Trump’ and the travel ban,
implemented by President Trump, were taken, which is referred to as the ‘Muslim ban’ by
those rallying against it (“Trump’s Executive Order”). More generalized keywords such as
“islamophobia”, “hate speech” and “anti-muslim” were also observed to get an idea of how
Muslim women blogs react or resist such ideologies. Lastly the specific case of ‘Asra Nomani’,
who featured widely in the news for being a ‘Muslim, a woman and an immigrant’ and choosing
to vote for Trump; was studied. This specific case was chosen since it was expected that it
would elicit strong reactions from the ‘community of bloggers’ being studied.

2.3: A cursory glance at Muslim women bloggers:
Before delving into the details of the list of Muslim women blogs and their themes, it would
perhaps be interesting to get a general idea of Muslim women blogs, bloggers and their
perception in the media. A preliminary search on google yielded the following results:

Fig 2.1: The top page search results for ‘Muslim women bloggers’ on Google. The results coded in purple
correspond to the links that refer to fashion, either giving lists of Muslim fashion bloggers, fashionistas or
 ‘hijabistas’. The ones coded grey refer to all the other results

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The above results are interesting at the outset, for a number of reasons. First, fashion and
beauty seems to be the common association drawn with Muslim women bloggers. There is
however more diversity in search results when one searches for just Muslim women blogs, the
topmost being the Muslim Girl blog/website mentioned in the introduction. So even though
‘Muslim Women Talk Back’ appears at the outset, one still sees the ‘Fashionable Muslim
Women’ idea come across, within the top search results.
In contrast however, if one searches for just ‘Women Bloggers’ the results are broader (refer to
the Appendix), which is as expected, but the main themes change, with qualifications such as
‘successful’, ‘professional’ or ‘fearless’ used when referring to certain women bloggers.

2.4: Muslim women bloggers and areas of interest
This section seeks to understand how the list of blogs collected classify themselves, what
themes they talk about, and other particular sub-spheres of interest that they refer to. A
detailed look into the blogs for example revealed that the most common themes addressed by
the blogs were as follows: Lifestyle, Parenting, Religion, Beauty/Fashion, and Feminism. It was
also interesting to note that there were often overlaps in the major areas of concern outlined
by these blogs, and the more popular ones often covered a variety of diverse topics, with the
category ‘lifestyle’ encompassing a broad range of topics already, from food to culture etc.
The results of this classification is shown in the figure below:

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Fig 2.2: A list of 40 Muslim women blogs categorized according to how they identify the core interest of
 their blog, and what broad topics they engage with

From the above figure a number of interesting insights can already be made. For example, it is
intriguing to note that none of these blogs address religion on its own, which is to say none of
these blogs can be considered as religious ‘Islamic blogs’ despite being owned and run by
Muslim women that identify themselves as such. Whenever religion is mentioned though, it is
mentioned in tandem with other general topics of interest related to lifestyle, and daily living.
These range from instances about wearing the hijab, to cooking halal meals to preparing for the
month of Ramadan. The graph reflects this by showing that the categories ‘Religion’ and
‘Lifestyle’ co-occur quite often.

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Within this list, it is still interesting to note that Fashion or Beauty do not come up as the main
topics of interest. This is perhaps so because Muslim women fashion and beauty bloggers are
instead found to be more active on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube (however for a
detailed discussion on these refer to the next chapter).
Moreover, the figure already begins to show that despite overlaps and variations in interest,
there are certain ‘types’ of blogs: for example, the ones that focus on Parenting and Religion,
like ‘Irum Irshad’ and ‘Muslimah Mommy’, those that span across almost all categories, like
‘Muslim Girl’ and ‘Alt Muslimah’, and those that focus on Feminism, and Resistance particularly,
such as ‘Salafi Feminist’, ‘Fatal Feminist’ etc.
Regarding the last example, the categories of Feminism and Representation/ Resistance occur
in tandem most often. It is important to register here as a disclaimer that blogs are only
classified in the ‘Representation/ Resistance’ category if they specifically mention that they use
their blog to combat stereotypes regarding Muslims and Muslim women, and to provide a
counter-narrative. For the purposes of this analysis then, the mere fact of existing as a Muslim
woman blogger in a contested sphere is not taken as a fact of resistance, following Latour’s idea
that the analyst should not superimpose categories and action, and instead let the actors speak
‘for themselves’ (Latour, 230).

2.5: Individuals or Network? Mapping the Muslim women blogosphere
As mentioned in the methodology section, the Issue Crawler tool by Govcom Foundation was
used to input the blogs in this list, and see whether and how the actors linked to each other.
The graph below shows the preliminary results:

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 Fig 2.3: The above graph captures the starting points' outlinks and shows inter-linking between the
 starting points. The larger the node, the more links received. This map however does not show blogs to
 which there are no links. The nodes in blue depict ‘.com’ sites and the nodes in red depict ‘.org’ sites

At the outset again, a few interesting observations can be made. First, altmuslimah.com has
been linked to the most by other actors, which fits in with the fact that it is one of the blogs in
the list which receives the most traffic, and the fact that it covers a broad range of themes and
topics. Similarly, ayeina.com, which primarily tackles themes related to religion and parenting,
is also linked to often, which is another of the blogs with the most traffic.
One can also notice how ‘happymuslimah.com’ which is also a parenting/ lifestyle blog links to a
variety of other blogs. Digging deeper into this, one finds that the ‘happy muslimah’ blog in fact

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hosts a lists of other blogs that the owner is interested in or reads. Hence, one of the ways that
these blogs link to one another is by curating a list of related blogs that their readers may be
interested in as well.
Another central node seems to be the ‘muslimahbloggers.com’ site, which becomes highly
interesting once the site is analyzed in more detail, and see that it identifies as “A community
for Muslimah bloggers around the world”. Not only does this blog then have multiple
contributors, hence reaching out to other blogs, it talks about Muslim women bloggers as a
community, for which this particular site serves as a hub. Here telling signs of a ‘blogosphere’
can already be seen.
Lastly one can also note that in the graph shown above, the only major beauty blogs in the list,
‘Muslimah Musings’ and ‘Hijab Trendz’ link to each other, but are at the periphery of the more
connected network.
The above figure depicts a basic graph of linkages, and does not depict particular landing pages.
Here the interlinkages are looked at in more detail with the graph below:

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 Fig 2.4: Directed graph showing links between actors within the list of Muslim women blogs. The
 clockwise curves represent directionality. The more the links, the larger the node. The links have been
 shortened for visual clarity

Both the graphs depicted above show the influencers within the network, however to find the
more detailed pages and links, let us zoom in on the clusters depicted above:

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 Fig 2.5: A snapshot of the cluster of links surrounding ayeina.com

A closer look at the cluster around ayeina.com, the Parenting/Religion blog shows that it
interlinks to many of the blogs listed in the network, from ‘ummjohar.com’ the
Lifestyle/Religion blog to ‘themuslimahmommy.com’, the Parenting/ Religion blog. Also many
of these links are from the ‘muslimahbloggers.com’ site, which focuses on Lifestyle in general as
well as Representation/Resistance, and is the one of the forums that seeks to connect bloggers.

On the other hand, the other central node is shown below:

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 Fig 2.6: A snapshot of the cluster of links surrounding muslimahmisunderstood.com

Most of the links leading to the Muslimah Misunderstood, (the Representation/Resistance) blog
however are from pages of the ayeina.com site as well. A further investigation to these links
shows that most of them are related to the ‘Gratitude Caption Contest’, which relates to a
campaign by ayeina.com to ask people what they are grateful for, to promote gratitude, using
the hashtag ‘#AlhamdulillahFor…’ which is Arabic for being thankful or grateful to God.

 Fig 2.7: A snapshot of the cluster of links surrounding the irum irshad and the muslimahmommy blogs

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Further towards the peripheries there is the Irum Irshad, the Lifestyle/Parenting/Religion blog,
which is one of the major authors behind Muslimahbloggers.com. Her own blog however
connects to Ummjohar.com (the Lifestyle/Religion) blog, which can be understood given the
fact that both focus on lifestyle, and religion within their blogs.

It is interesting to note here that blogs that seem to be influencers or are major traffic drivers
such as Muslimgirl.com or Altmuslimah.com do not form part of the central network and are
instead found at the extreme peripheries, mostly without interlinkages. The Muslim girl blog
does however link to Muslimah Media Watch and the Race.Gender.Faith blogs links to the
AltMuslimah blog, and all of these blogs have Representation/ Resistance as one of their
primary focus.

2.6: Issue Mapping: Collective resistance to Islamophobia?
As mentioned in the methodology section, the idea was to understand whether the Muslim
women blogs under our study address similar issues, and respond to them in a similar manner.
Thus a list of terms was collected, relating to Islamophobia and incidences affecting Muslims
and Muslim women at large, and the blogs in our list were queried to see the resonance of
these terms among them. Following are the preliminary findings:

Site Total Number of Results for "Trump"

altmuslimah.com 2300

muslimgirl.com 1280

muslimahmediawatch.org 386

koonjblog.wordpress.com 54

thefatalfeminist.com 23

margariaziza.com 16

muslimreverie.wordpress.com 12

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Fig 1.9: Top sites, in descending order for the frequency of mentions for the word “Trump”

 Total Number of Results for "Muslim
Site Ban"

altmuslimah.com 1290

muslimgirl.com 1130

koonjblog.wordpress.com 8

race-gender-faith.blogspot.com 2

Fig 2.0: Top sites, in descending order for the frequency of mentions for the word “Muslim Ban”

As the above tables show, the terms “Trump” and “Muslim ban” seem to elicit most responses
from the ‘Alt Muslimah’, ‘Muslim Girl’, or ‘Muslimah Media Watch’ blogs, and the word
“Trump” seems to have more widespread usage across blogs rather than “Muslim Ban”.

However, the most used amongst these terms in general across blogs is ‘Islamophobia’, though
‘Anti Muslim’, followed by ‘hate speech’ have some resonance as well (depicted in tables in the
Appendix).
What is more interesting to note is that across all these tables, some blogs feature more
frequently than others, being more vocal about the related topic. Whereas, there are also a
number of blogs that do not mention any of these terms (but are omitted from the tables
shown above).
As a next step, the idea was to understand in detail how each of these blogs address some of
the terms shown above. A word frequency analysis of the title page results for each site, and
the corresponding keyword was done.

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The above word frequency clouds related to Islamophobia show that words like ‘Trump’ are
very often associated with ‘Islamophobia’ and that the sites particularly tackle the idea from a
gendered perspective by speaking of feminism in general and ‘Muslim women’ in particular as
victims of Islamophobia. Other issues of importance are minority rights, the hijab or niqab that
features as a common interest, as well as solidarity and condolences for the terrorist attack in
Paris.

2.7: The case of Asra Nomani
In the methodology section, as mentioned, the idea was to deal with a particular case study
that would elicit strong responses and might become a rallying point for the Muslim women
bloggers identified.
So here the case of Asra Nomani is highlighted, a journalist, activist and writer who taught
journalism at Georgetown University. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal correspondent
and has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Slate, The American Prospect,

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and Time (“Asra Nomani”). Recently during the US elections, she became the subject of
controversy when she described herself as a ‘silent Trump voter’ while identifying as a ‘Muslim-
American woman’ (Nomani and Nomani).
From just a glance, many of the blogs in our list had very specific comments and reactions
regarding Asra Nomani and her stance. The following figure shows the word clouds surrounding
Asra Nomani:

Fig 2.5: Word Clouds or “issue clouds” related to the ‘Asra Nomani’ and the top sites
mentioning the term

While the above figure only shows the results for the topmost sites, it is indeed interesting to
note the terms used in association or in response to her such as ‘Apartheid’, ‘Ludicrous’, and
‘Orientalism’.
The corresponding article titles are also of interest, such as “What Won't She Sell Out? The
Opportunism of Asra Nomani”, “Asra Nomani and the Mosque Crusade: Lofty or Ludicrous …”,
“A Letter to Asra Nomani: You Do Not Speak on Behalf of Muslim …”, or “Stop Telling Muslim
Women How to Dress”.
These examples suggest that some of these blogs indeed have similar responses or reactions to
Asra Nomani and her ideology, even though whether it is a concerted effort or collective
actions remains a question.

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2.8: Analysis and Conclusion:
As mentioned earlier, within Social Network Analysis, three approaches have been highlighted,
from network analysis, to content centric analysis, to hybrid approaches. Within this chapter
then a hybrid approach was taken, employing both the above mentioned techniques to
understand whether the Muslim women bloggers studied can a) be thought of as a group c) be
considered as a part of an interconnected ‘blogosphere and c) be thought of as working
towards a common goal i.e. resistance to Islamophobia.
According to Java et al. regarding the hybrid approach “the central tenet… is: a set of blogs that
are highly linked and tend to share similar content, reflect tighter communities (qtd in Agarwal
et al., 5). Given the detailed findings in the previous section, one can reflect whether this
central tenet is applicable to this current research.
With respect to the question of ‘tighter’ communities, or networks, while the results indicate
that these blogs do connect to each other, many of them lie outside this network of
interconnected nodes. However, as Agarwal et al. note, blogs are “blogs are extremely sparsely
linked due to the casual environment that does not necessitate users to “cite” the sources that
inspire them”. Moreover, there are “inherent differences between web pages and blogs (such
as interactive and dynamic environment, highly likely topic and user drift, low barrier to
publication leading to extremely noisy data)” (Agarwal, Merlyna, and Wigand, 5). Despite this,
it is interesting to note that there are blogging forums like ‘Muslimahbloggers.com’ that serve
as a hub of activity, connecting to various other blogs and refer to these as the ‘Muslimah
blogging community’.
In addition, this somewhat sparse linkage may also be due to the fact that the list of bloggers
under study was not comprehensive in any sense, and perhaps may form part of other ‘sub-
blogospheres’ that are less geographically distributed, and may connect to blogs in other
niches, such as other parenting blogs.
With regards to working towards a common goal, resisting Islamophobia in particular, there is
significantly more substance to suggest that many of these blogs work towards a common goal.
Specifically given the recent US elections, and Trump becoming the president, it becomes more
than a local phenomenon, but a transnational issue. With Muslim women becoming the

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collective victims of misogyny and islamophobia, there arises the need for collective action and
debate.
The question asked here is can “decentralized online individual actions” be “transformed into
cyber-collective actions?” (Agarwal, Merlyna, and Wigand, 4).
If, however, the findings are looked at through the lens of ‘connective action’ instead of
collective action, the data might appear to make more sense. Bennett points out that the main
difference is that at the core of the logic of connective action “is the recognition of digital
media as organizing agents” and while “collective action” is “associated with high levels of
organizational resources and the formation of collective identities...the less familiar logic of
connective action [is] based on personalized content sharing across media networks” (Bennett
and Segerberg, 739). Moreover, they point out that though there is the formation of a more
‘inter-personal’ network, “enabled by technology platforms of various designs...the resulting
actions can resemble collective action, yet without the same role played by formal
organizations or transforming social identifications” (Bennett and Segerberg, 752). They also
point out that the people involved in this ‘connective action’ may be on different sides of the
world, they do not “require a club, a party, or a shared ideological frame to make the
connection” (Bennett and Segerberg, 753).
While in the space of this chapter, it would be difficult to address the complete possibility of
‘cyber collective action’, though ‘connective action’ seems more viable, there is a trend forming
within the content centric analysis undertaken. Certain influencers emerge, particularly with
respect to resistance to Islamophobia, and these blogs or bloggers are significantly more vocal
when it comes to either the broad issue of Trump, the Muslim ban, anti-muslim sentiment or
Islamophobia. This fits in with Agarwal et al. and their analysis that blogospheres follow “a
power law distribution with very few influential blog sites that form the short head of the
distribution and a large number of non-influential sites that form the Long Tail” (Agarwal,
Merlyna, and Wigand, 5). In this sense blogs such as ‘Muslim Girl’ and ‘Alt Muslimah’ for
example lead the conversation and are the most vocal in terms of resistance, whereas the ‘long
tail’ of other blogs often follow suit.
Reaching back to our core question on how Muslim women use online spaces for self-