Women and Media in the Middle East

From Veiling to Blogging

Nahed Eltantawy, Nahed Eltantawy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317401773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Estudios de medios

The traditional image of the Middle Eastern woman, as portrayed by the Western media, has tended to be one of a woman oppressed by men and religion. Veiling intensifies this image of supposed powerlessness and imprisonment. However, the Arab Spring uprisings have introduced the West to women in the Middle East who do not conform to this stereotype, and have shown the Western media that Middle Eastern women cannot be categorized altogether as one oppressed, powerless group.

This book investigates the diverse realities and complexities of women in the Middle East in terms of their relationship with media platforms old and new. Contributors offer a range of perspectives that discuss everything from media portrayals of the veil to women in film and television, from women's involvement as activists on the street to the role played in the Arab Spring by cyber activism. The collection provides insight into how some women in the Middle East are utilizing traditional as well as new media for purposes of self-expression, activism, and democratization, while also investigating media portrayals of women at home and in the West. This book was originally published as a special issue of Feminist Media Studies.

VEILED THREATS: DECENTERING AND UNIFICATION IN TRANSNATIONAL NEWS COVERAGE OF THE FRENCH VEIL BAN

Barbara Friedman and Patrick Merle

In October 2010, France approved a law banning the Islamic veil in all public areas, asserting the republican principle of laicité. This cross-cultural analysis applies Muhlmann’s theoretical framework to French and US news coverage from March 2004 to October 2010 in order to discern whether coverage featured unifying frames invoking shared values; or decentering frames challenging consensual views and presenting alternative contexts.

Introduction

In April 2011, France became the first European country to impose a ban on full-face veils in public areas. French President Nicolas Sarkozy cited the veil’s “threat to the dignity of women” (Herald 2010) and its “unacceptability in French society” (Steven Erlanger 2010a). Public debate exacerbated concerns over immigration, nationalism, secularism, security, and sexuality, with various interests, including news organizations, taking part. Veils were “quite literally the sites of a power struggle over national, cultural, and religious identity” (Bradford Vivian 1999, pp. 116–117).

In 2004, the French national assembly overwhelmingly approved a ban on Muslim headscarves and other “conspicuous” religious symbols in public schools (Los Angeles Times 2004b). The measure was preceded by school officials’ repeated efforts to force Muslim girls to remove their headscarves, even after France’s State Council upheld the right of religious expression in public schools (Le Parisien 2003). Critics of the veil viewed the garment as a symbol of Muslim society’s refusal “to engage in what were taken to be the ‘normal’ protocols of interaction with members of the opposite sex” (Joan Wallach Scott 2007, p. 154). Additionally, Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the ban represented an effort to defend the principle of secularism and the principle of gender. Opponents accused Sarkozy of fostering Islamophobia and using the law for political gain (Alison Culliford 2010).

This study examines news coverage of France’s veil ban in US and French newspapers, adopting the novel framework of journalism’s unifying and decentering tendencies (Geraldine Muhlmann 2008). A cross-national comparison is appropriate since France has the largest Muslim minority in Western Europe and by 2030 the US will have a larger number of Muslims than any European country other than Russia and France (Pew Forum 2011). Understanding the ways in which the mass media have represented the French veil ban to audiences illuminates the link between media and social cohesion.

Literature Review

State, Religion, and the Public Sphere

The Separation Law, an act separating church and state promulgated in 1905 and prevalent today, constitutes the foundation of France’s veil ban. The law “ensures freedom of conscience … free exercise of religion,” yet “it neither recognizes nor subsidies any religion.” Thus, France as a laïque state divulges no preferences toward any religious denominations. This principle of state neutrality, resting on a particular view of the public sphere, differs from American separation of church and state. Cecile Laborde (2003) argues that loyalty to the republican state represents a contingent condition to laïcité. Limitations in the public sphere, including those to religious expression, are thus justified by the State’s role as guardian of public well-being. By comparison, US citizens view religion as a personal freedom and the public sphere as a protected space for religious expression, with few exceptions. Veiling is permissible under US laws protecting religious expression and prohibiting discrimination, yet it has been an “easy target” of authorities’ post-9/11 focus (Alia Abdo 2008, p. 441).

Mass Media and the Veil

Ideas about the veil are informed by notions of Orientalism and otherness, including a modern-era view of “Islam as a form of barbarism” (Nancy Hirschmann 1997, p. 464). Although veiling is not limited to Islam, it has come to function as a kind of shorthand for the “problems of Islam” (Helen Watson 1994, p. 153) and as a “symbol of Muslim women’s oppression” (p. 142). The veil “is simply a symbol … the outward manifestation of a particular religious interpretation” (Sheida Shirvani 2002, p. 269).

Prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan, the all-enveloping burqa had become a discursive shorthand for women’s secondary status and, moreover, part of a justification for military action (Elizabeth Klaus & Susanne Kassel 2005; Sujata Moorti & Karen Ross 2002). When, after the Taliban fell, women did not cast aside the burqa in accordance with a Western conceptualization of an Afghan women’s liberation, photographs of unveiled women nonetheless circulated widely, providing “glimpses of an uncommon social reality in Afghanistan” (Shahira Fahmy 2004, p. 108). “The issue of the veil was secondary to issues of security, financial stability, and education” (Annabelle Sreberny 2002, p. 272), yet the media were slow to make this connection, even in regions where veiling is common (Sam Cherribi 2006; Myra Macdonald 2006).

Unifying and Decentering

This work focuses on the unifying and decentering tendencies of journalism described by Muhlmann (2008). Journalism has evolved over time to regard its audience as “a unified entity, or at least as an entity that is capable of being unified” (p. 9). Narratives tend to manifest common values and prevailing viewpoints, thus creating for the audience an “experience by proxy” (p. 10). “The socio-political aim of unifying,” is to produce “a collectively acceptable gaze that conforms to the general norms of the ‘public’” (p. 10). Teun Van Dijk refers similarly to “local coherence” (1988, p. 61) in which discourse creates meaning that seems commonsense and thus reveals society’s underlying assumptions and values. Media’s unifying function is related to community building (Daniel Hallin 1986). In short, to define and concretize a community, journalists endeavor to provide the largest possible audience with a palatable truth.

Muhlmann (2008) argues that journalists have exercised this unifying power by assuming the role of a trusted eyewitness who experiences the world and speaks on the audience’s behalf: the “witness-ambassador.” In its most explicit form, this witness-ambassador refers to herself in the first person, as a columnist might do. However, the role can be fulfilled when journalists conduct interviews and are presumed to be asking questions on behalf of the audience; or when they expose wrongdoing, forcing the audience to reconstitute itself as a community with shared values.

Conversely, some journalists and news organizations have challenged dominant perspectives and provided other ways of seeing; for example, the “new journalists” of the 1890s and 1960s, or post-9/11 alternative journalism. This decentering role, Muhlmann explains, sets journalists

apart from “us” at the outset, so that they can address us as “you.” They say to their readers: what I see is precisely what you do not see and probably cannot easily see, so profoundly does it challenge your usual categories; it is because I exclude myself from you, and because I am not like you, that I see. (2008, p. 29)

The decentering journalist embraces her “non-belonging” and writes from a singular standpoint to undermine the ideological sameness of the audience and, perhaps, the journalism profession.

These complex processes are especially relevant to the veil, a discursive symbol that problematizes ways of seeing—whether related to the mutual gaze typically present in human interaction (Erving Goffman, 1966), the perceived willingness of a minority group to assimilate within a dominant culture, or the willingness of the dominant culture to accept a minority group, or the homogeneity of the typical newsroom (Robert Carle 2004; Elizabeth Fernea 1993).

Method

This analysis examined articles p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – From Veiling to Blogging: Women and media in the Middle East
• 1. Veiled Threats: Decentering and Unification in Transnational News Coverage of the French Veil Ban
• 2. I Am Just Doing My Bit to Promote Modesty: Niqabis’ Self-portraits on Photo-sharing Websites
• 3. They Call Me Muslim: Muslim Women in the Media Through and Beyond the Veil
• 4. Finding a Place for a Muslimah Heroine in the Post-9/11 Marvel Universe: New X-Men’s Dust
• 5. Selfish, Vengeful, and Full of Spite: Representations of Women Who Have Abortions on Turkish Television
• 6. Mediated Piety in Contemporary Syria: Women, Islam, and Television
• 7. A Right to Exist: A Palestinian Speaks
• 8. Women’s Experiences of Work in the Iranian Broadcast Media (IRIB): Motivations, Challenges, and Achievements
• 9. “Talking Back”: The Poetry of Suheir Hammad
• 10. Social Media and Turkish Feminism: New Resources for Social Activism
• 11. The First Ladies and the Arab Spring: A Textual Analysis of the Media Coverage of the Female Counterparts of Authoritarian Oppression in the Middle East
• 12. In Their Own Voice: Technologically Mediated Empowerment and Transformation Among Young Arab Women
• Index