Soon after the fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban and the Texas anti-abortion law, liberals started to dust off their orientalist images of niqabi women. These individuals continue to use Muslim female bodies for references of women’s subornation despite Muslim women constantly remarking that our bodies are not yours to use. The niqab or face veil is most often used in these orientalist artworks, this is because the niqab is associated with women’s oppression within the West.

Let me make this clear, Islam allows abortion and prioritizes the mother’s life over an unborn child. Jewish theology also holds similar beliefs. While life is sacred within Islam, a fetus in the womb is not considered having a soul until 3 months in. Islam also allows for birth control. So in other words telling Americans that Texas is under sharia law IS islamophobic and ignorant of what Muslims actually believe.

So when we use the images of the niqab to point out the injustices of American women or Western women we are stereotyping women who wear the veil as oppressive. Sahar Ghumkhor in The Political Psychology of the Veil states, “Images of veiled women portray and over-emphasize the lack that human rights promise to fill.” (Ghumkhor 84) Saba Mahmood (2009) continues on Ghumkhor’s point in her piece “Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Islam and the War on Terror” in which the Western world seeks to justify its domination of the world by posing as a “liberator” for non-white women who come from patriarchal cultures. Western women may not accept war anymore, but they blatantly accept that Islam equals female victims, both in the West and in the Muslim world.

Muslim women’s role becomes whatever is convenient to suit political needs and wants at the time. In essence, the veiled woman, usually always Muslim, is a screen used for ideological projection. Laura Bush, about the justification of the War on Terror, said, “Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment….the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” (Hussein, 2019) The western woman projects her own insecurity upon the Muslim female body because at home within the West she has no real power, her power stops once she tries to challenge the white male. To point out her frustrations within the Western society, but not to directly challenge her fellow white man, she turns her frustration onto the Muslim female (or Black woman, Asian woman, Trans woman, etc.).

Western feminists interact with islamophobia and orientalism, they use the Muslim female body for political gains. Non-Western and non-whites are expected to adopt a new culture and identity to remedy misogyny that apparently “does not exist” in Western society. In this case, western women enact psychological projection. Psychological projection is considered a mechanism that individuals subconsciously deploy to cope with complex emotions and feels. This phenomenon is related to racism, prejudices, and fears of others and the unknown. Alienated groups like Muslim women become the scapegoats for people who want to ignore their own personal flaws. An individual may “see” in another person the negative flaws that they don’t want to see in themselves because they project their own negative qualities onto the subject. People can accuse others of being irrational, angry, judgmental when the person they are accusing is perfectly calm, and it is the accuser who is being irrational. It has been shown previously that Muslim women do in fact become productive members of any society they belong to, as would be expected by any member of society who is given resources to achieve. Yet white women continue to claim that Muslim women are childlike. In a white society or white patriarchy, the white woman has no power, the power she has is what was given to her. White women know that in the Western world they too have to worry about rape, walking home in the dark, abuse, molestation, over-sexualization, lower pay, etc. This inferiority that they feel can not be openly vocalized to the white male because the white woman would lose the power she has. Yet, it is the portrayal of white women as racial victims that allows them a role in racial politics but at the same time does not challenge the traditional role of the white female. (Hamad, 2020) So this means that white women openly benefit from projecting onto the Muslim body and representing themselves as innocent because with that they can critique their own society or fears without the repercussion of losing their power.

This is why we see images of the burqa reproduced after the anti-abortion laws in Texas were passed. White Liberal women are frustrated with such discriminatory laws being passed and instead of actually engaging with the problematics of the law, they instead use the image of the niqab to represent the oppression of white women. They can do this because in the Western psyche the niqab symbolizes women’s subordination. Yet this reproduction of the niqab as negative further stigmatizes women who wear the niqab.

In the piece written by Maliha Aqueel (2008) titled “Muslim Women Speaking Up Against Violence are Silenced. We Must Amplify Their Voices”, says Muslim women exist in a marginalized space where white feminist disregards their voices and also at the same time use their voices to justify Islamophobia.  Western feminists, or in the case white feminists, sexualize the Muslim female body by reproducing the male gaze. For the scholars Coramae Richy Mann and Lance Selva, “Sexualized racism is not independent of the issues of power and domination. The manifest character of sexualized racism many best be understood within the context of exploitation and control. To generate white hegemony, Black people have been (and are still exploited), and to be exploited they must be controlled either by direct or indirect means…” (Farris, 2017) The Muslim female is sexualized by her alleged oppression by her Muslim male or Muslim community. By attacking her, the West is attacking the Muslim male. At the same time, the West expects the Muslim male to enforce Western patriarchy upon his Muslim female. They are to shed their cultural background to assimilate white cis-patriarchal norms. We see this in the fines placed on Muslim fathers when their daughters break the French veiling laws. The Muslim male has to be “oppressive” to his female by forcing her to unveil herself. Oppression is fine, as long as it is under a white Western context.

Female “empowerment” is seen through the lens of White feminist perspectives that disapproves of veils. Even if women choose to wear a veil of their own free will, it is reasoned that there must be some cult-like mentality that voids the women’s ability to choose. Feminist platforms are built upon women’s rights to choose their own clothing. When that clothing counters their idea of “freedom,” they make counterintuitive arguments that contradict the right to choose to clothe. The terms of empowerment are only defined along the lines that benefit white feminist agendas and politicians. Feminist groups cannot acknowledge that they play a vital role in oppressing other women. (Khan, 2020) The veiled woman threatens the white gaze because they cannot sexualize and objectify the female through the act of looking. White gaze is learned by all peoples in the Western world and imported into former Colonies. The modern Muslim woman is being constructed by the West, she is a Muslim woman who wears no veil and leaves her religion behind. The Muslim male gaze is presented differently from the White male gaze. The “other” male’s gaze is one where he is unable to control his sexuality, while the white male gaze is controlled.

One researcher discovered that even subtle variations in women’s clothing in rigid social contexts can symbolize resistance against patriarchal control. (Marcangeli, 2015) Women who wear similar outfits will have different views as to why they chose such outfits. Clothing choices act beyond the intended purposes of protection and hiding/revealing nudity. Fashion in itself acts as a means to miniplate gender, it enforces or formulates a gender stereotype or ideal. Diana Crane found that clothing preferences are subliminally imposed through cultural norms. (Marcangeli, 2015)  In the West, the female gender has a set of clothing that is required of her to wear at any given time. Clothing designs that might appear masculine will have buttons or closings on different sides than male clothing does. This practice is due to the European Christian idea of the genders not dressing as each other. In modern fashion, this practice may not even be given a second glance because it has been so normalized in society. The hijab or niqab counteracts the subliminal message imposed by modern Western dress. Women throughout history have experienced their bodies in various different ways. The body and clothing choices have been interpreted through various means in a woman’s life enforced by patriarchy, religion, capitalism, liberalism, globalization, islamophobia, and racism.

So in this case the resurfacing of the veiled woman in the United States is just the same old same old islamophobia that has been constantly replayed out since 9/11. The Taliban’s regime and its oppression of women then becomes a political tool by Western women and Liberals as means to critique their own society without actually directly challenging the status quo. The imagery also is supposed to make us feel sorrow for the “poor” oppressed woman, and reinstate our own superiority. In this sense, we should be happy that “atleast we are the Taliban” and at the same time we should be afraid that we might become the other. If you like this talk I recommend you all to check out my book Demystifying the Niqab.