8 - Creative Activism: Tackling Islamophobia, Racism and Sexism

Summary

Introduction

Over the course of this book I have explored the roles of Muslim women in creative fields and how issues of identity are shaping working lives. In this chapter I give more space to the discussion of discrimination, oppression and hatred experienced by many of the women I researched with. Social identities are multifaceted therefore reported lines of discrimination were multiple and complex. Although matters of identity are interrelational, for some these sorts of marginalising experiences were mostly relating to gender, for others issues of ethnicity, race and culture were prime, whereas elsewhere discrimination was viewed as clearly a matter of prejudice against Islam and as Islamophobia. In relation to discussions around negotiating multiple indexes of prejudice and othering, Muslim identity was located variously at: multiple scales (the city, national, transnational, diasporic or in terms of the global ‘ummah’); in relation to denomination (for instance Sunni, Sunni-Salafi, Shia, Sufi); or cultural and heritage area (with broad references to South Asian, Arab, British and so forth). I begin by outlining some of the women's reflections on negotiating working lives punctuated by a far-right Islamophobic event. I then discuss everyday encounters with intolerance and othering. In the following sections I move on to discuss digital films, a Muslim festival and writing group to reflect upon the various and multiple ways that the women in the study responded to hate with their own kinds of creative activism.

Mountz and Hyndman (2006) write how intimate forms of discrimination and racism are tied to global networks of exchange. The global geopolitical events of the rise of political Islam, terrorist attacks and Western imperialism in foreign and home policy, fuelled Islamophobia in Britain, with hijabi women most targeted (Alexander 2017; Najib and Hopkins 2019). In tandem, patriarchal attitudes and behaviours, including restricting women's mobilities, are afforded greater legitimacy through Islamophobia – anti-Muslim racism – where there are rational concerns about hostility and violence in public spaces (Alexander 2017; Najib and Hopkins 2019). Understanding the spatialising logic of Islamophobia in relationship to women's labour transitions might usefully be advanced through feminist thinking. External threats can encourage working from home.