Can we be something more honest than “woke”? I’ve been thinking a lot about the performativity of all our politics recently. I am worried. An MP describes people as ‘a funny tinge’ and to be a “good” person you have to perform outrage/ridicule, though I’m sure many of us funny-tinged people feel nothing deeper than an eye-roll. It’s not that deep. And by not that … Continue reading Everybody wants to be ‘woke’ but who wants to be honest?
This post is a response to a question I got asked during my Instagram takeover of amaliah.com’s story (@thebrownhijabi). I mentioned my fascination with “the way liberal feminism colludes with islamophobia” and was then asked to elaborate – which I did, but which I want to do more now. How do liberal feminism and Islamophobia work together? First off, we need to define what I … Continue reading When Feminism & Islamophobia are Two Sides of the Same Coin
Today we stand in a moment, or many moments, where people talk about the world being broken. For many of us, globally and historically it has been broken and breaking and completely destroyed already many times and again and again. How do we move forward then? How do we reconceptualise societies that are healing rather than negligent, celebratory rather than unjust and fundamentally committed to … Continue reading Ramadan Reflection: Islam is a duty to Resist
EDIT: disclaimer that this is from my perspective in Britain and primarily about rhetoric here and in other Western European/North American contexts. The hijab, burqa, burkini, FGM, ‘honour killings’ and ‘forced marriages’ are familiar tropes when it comes to thinking about migration and Islam in ‘the West’. Their prevalence represents the slippage between ‘women’s rights’ and questions of national borders and religion, reflecting the way … Continue reading Why are we obsessed with Muslim women?
This week marks the beginning of my year of studying (Postcolonial Studies) at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London. Though practically unheard of by many, SOAS has a reputation for being a very political space and an institution with appreciation for critical and sometimes radical analysis and thought. To my mind, entering this space would be jumping from one extreme experience of … Continue reading SOAS vs Cambridge
Content notes: Islamaphobia, colonialism, imperialism, misogyny, orientalism, racism. Yesterday David Cameron announced that a £20 million fund to teach Muslim women in the UK to ‘speak English’ will tackle segregation and help prevent ‘radicalisation’ – though he also said there was no causal connection between radicalisation and English language… Now, my initial reaction, beyond an eye-roll, was to wonder how and why this policy was … Continue reading Is it time for the British government to stop Saving Muslim Women yet?
Content Warning: discussion of misogyny, racism, Islamaphobia, imperialism, oppression and mention of war, religion, Western beauty standards, sex, slut-shaming, victim-blaming and rape. This is quite a self-indulgent post. A post about trying to work out by working through, where my feminism stands in regards to others and about my conceptualisation of “feminism” itself. Lately I have begun to feel slightly torn about my own perception … Continue reading Intersectional, Radical, Unpalatable and Abrasive; that is the feminism I’m about.
The Brown Hijabi 