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The Veil and its Materiality: Muslim Women’s Digital Narratives about the Burkini BanGiulia Evolvi Center for Religious Studies (CERES), Ruhr University, Bochum, GermanyUniversit?tsstra?e 90a44789 Bochum, GermanyGiulia.evolvi@rub.de@giuliaevolviORCID iD: 0000-0001-6928-5903Giulia Evolvi is a Research Associate in Religion, Media, and Materiality at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. She obtained her PhD in Media Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder, United States, where she was affiliated with the Center for Media, Religion and Culture, and also holds a Master’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of Padua, Italy. Her research interests are religious change in Europe, digital media, Islam and Islamophobia. The Veil and its Materiality: Muslim Women’s Digital Narratives about the Burkini BanIn summer 2016, around thirty French cities banned the burkini – swimwear used by Muslim women that covers the entire body and head – from public beaches. French authorities supported the ban by claiming that the burkini was unhygienic, a uniform of Islamic extremism, and a symbol of women’s oppression. Muslim head-coverings – including the burkini – are religious objects whose materiality points to complex semantic meanings often mediated in Internet discourses. Through a qualitative analysis of visual and textual narratives against the burkini ban circulated by Muslim women, this article looks at how digital media practices help counteract stereotypes and gain control on visual representations. Muslim women focus on two main topics: 1) they challenge the idea of Muslims being ‘aggressors’ by connoting the burkini as a comfortable swimsuit not connected with terrorism; 2) they refuse to be considered ‘victims’ by showing that the burkini holds different meanings that do not necessarily entail women’s submission. Muslim women’s digital narratives positively associate the materiality of the burkini with safety and freedom, and focus on secular values rather than religious meanings. Keywords: Islam; burkini; hijab; Internet; materialityWord count: 5,364 (6,854 with abstract and references)IntroductionIn July 2016, the French city of Cannes banned a bathing suit known as ‘burkini’ from its public beaches. Around thirty French cities followed the example of Cannes and also banned the burkini. The burkini covers the wearer’s body and head and is mostly used by Muslim women. The ban was issued to ensure that people maintain a beach dress code that “respects good customs and la?cité”, and that conforms to “hygienic and security rules” (Nice Matin, 11 August 2016). According to David Lisnard, the mayor of Cannes, the burkini is a “uniform of extremist Islamism” that symbolically refers to terrorism (The New York Times, 12 August 2016). French Prime Minister Manuel Valls supported the ban by claiming that the burkini ‘imprisons’ women (Le Monde, 26 August 2016) and that ‘Marianne’, the bare-breasted woman who symbolises the French Republic, is not veiled because she is free (Le Parisien, 30 August 2016). The ‘burkini ban’ was issued in the political context of French la?cité, namely the secularist ideology of separating church and state. It is in name of la?cité that, in France, symbols ‘ostensibly’ manifesting a religious belief are banned for civil servants and pupils in public educational establishments ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"VBURywiq","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Maeder, Dempsey, and Pozzulo 2012)","plainCitation":"(Maeder, Dempsey, and Pozzulo 2012)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1527,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1527,"type":"article-journal","title":"Behind the Veil of Juror Decision Making: Testing the Effects of Muslim Veils and Defendant Race in the Courtroom","container-title":"Criminal Justice and Behavior","page":"666-678","volume":"39","issue":"5","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"Recent case law has considered whether a Muslim woman who wishes to appear in court should be allowed to testify wearing a veil that covers part of her face (e.g., Muhammad v. Paruk, 2008, in the United States, R. v. N.S., 2009, in Canada). The current research sought to test the influence of a victim’s wearing of a veil while testifying on juror decision making in a sexual assault trial. In addition, the study tested for effects of defendant race using Middle Eastern and Caucasian as the target races, given that there is a paucity of research comparing these races in the juror decision-making literature. Results demonstrated that contrary to hypotheses, jurors were more convinced of the defendant’s guilt when the victim was wearing a burqa or hijab to testify than when she testified wearing no veil. Defendant race did not have an effect on any of the dependent variables in this research; however, mock juror gender was found to be influential. Potential reasons for these findings and directions for future research are discussed.","DOI":"10.1177/0093854812436478","ISSN":"0093-8548","shortTitle":"Behind the Veil of Juror Decision Making","journalAbbreviation":"Criminal Justice and Behavior","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Maeder","given":"Evelyn"},{"family":"Dempsey","given":"Julie"},{"family":"Pozzulo","given":"Joanna"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2012",5,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Maeder, Dempsey, and Pozzulo 2012). These prohibitions do not explicitly target Islam but mostly concern Muslims, who are estimated to comprise around 7.5 percent of the French population (Hackett ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"HysXm16K","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(comments 2016)","plainCitation":"(comments 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1231,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1231,"type":"post-weblog","title":"5 facts about the Muslim population in Europe","container-title":"Pew Research Center","abstract":"The Muslim share of Europe’s total population has been increasing steadily, growing from 4% in 1990 to 6% in 2010.","URL":"","author":[{"family":"comments","given":"Conrad Hackett509"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",7,19]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2016",8,10]]}}}],"schema":""} 2016). While the ‘burkini ban’ was based on general legal provisions pertaining to public order, many read it as an attempt to enforce the principle of la?cité in certain public spaces, specifically beaches (Le Monde, 24 August 2016)The 2016 burkini ban was eventually lifted, but the affaire du burkini captured the attention of the international press, which often framed the matter as discriminatory and Islamophobic (Le Monde, 16 August 2016). Pictures of a Muslim woman being forced to undress on a public beach by policemen armed with pepper spray and batons were published online and circulated worldwide. A number of Muslim women used the Internet to criticise the ban and support their right to wear the burkini.This article analyses blog posts, articles and YouTube videos created by Muslim women in protest against the French burkini ban, in order to explore the materiality and visibility of the hijab in its Internet mediations. In the following sections, I will first describe the complex semantic meanings of the hijab, focusing on its mediation in digital spaces and on material qualities. I will then discuss the relevance of qualitatively analysing narratives and images circulated by Muslim women online. I will continue by showing how Muslim women discuss the materiality of the burkini as connected neither to terrorism nor?to gendered oppression. The article concludes with reflections about how the Internet helps Muslim women challenge stereotypes, create communities, and talk about veiling as a practice compatible with Western society. Hijab: a Semantically Complex Material PracticeThe burkini is a body-covering swimsuit designated by Australian Muslim Aheda Zanetti ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"hP7BUXQ5","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Khamis 2010)","plainCitation":"(Khamis 2010)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1549,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1549,"type":"article-journal","title":"Braving the BurqiniTM: re-branding the Australian beach","container-title":"cultural geographies","page":"379-390","volume":"17","issue":"3","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"A cross between a bikini and a burqa, the BurqiniTM reworks a conventional symbol of Australian culture in terms consistent with Muslim modesty. In turn, the Burqini TM stakes a deeply ironic claim to one of the nation’s most revered sites: the beach. This article thus considers its significance in relation to two dominant stereotypes in recent Australian history: the ‘beach babe’, typically blonde, blue-eyed and bikinied; and a view of conservative Muslim culture that had taken shape in mainstream Australian media: as restrictive, regressive and misogynist. By appropriating the traditional bikini design for a contemporary Muslim clientele, the BurqiniTM is both a confronting cultural statement and a bold example of 21st century world fashion.","DOI":"10.1177/1474474010368608","ISSN":"1474-4740","shortTitle":"Braving the BurqiniTM","journalAbbreviation":"cultural geographies","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Khamis","given":"Susie"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",7,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Khamis 2010). The name, a portmanteau of the words ‘burqa’ and ‘bikini’ (and therefore also called ‘burquini’), refers to swimwear that conforms to Islamic hijab, a veil covering a woman’s hair, neck and chest for modesty reasons ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"1IYZYsSE","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Rahman 2009)","plainCitation":"(Rahman 2009)"},"citationItems":[{"id":933,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":933,"type":"article-journal","title":"Secularism and modernity: alienation and the renewal of values in political Islam","container-title":"Journal of Islamic Law and Culture","page":"38-51","volume":"11","issue":"1","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"In recent years, the West and Islam have often been characterized as polar opposites. The secularism of the West is seen as modern and forward‐looking, whereas Islamic ideas have been portrayed as idealizing a fossilized past and unresponsive to change. Such depictions reduce a complex relationship between the West and Islam to a cartoon‐like “clash of civilizations” and ignore the convergences and divergences between them and the extent to which each responds to questions the other raises. This article explores the modern account of secularism as it emerges in the work of John Locke and reads it through the writings of an earlier generation of Islamic liberal reformers and Sayyid Qutb, a leading thinker in political Islam, in an attempt to complicate the discourses of both the secular and the modern. The article focuses on Qutb’s diagnosis of the alienation engendered in the modern world by secular reforms and his arguments for a renewal based on a distinctive Islamic identity. In doing so, it aims to complicate the binary that marks conversations between the West and Islam on the terrain of modernity, using Qutb’s cross‐cultural critique to argue for a more complex account of multiple modernities.","DOI":"10.1080/15288170902857723","ISSN":"1528-817X","shortTitle":"Secularism and modernity","author":[{"family":"Rahman","given":"Smita A."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2009",3,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Rahman 2009). Because there are no specific indications in the Qur’an about sartorial practices ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"o0RzPqrK","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Akou 2010; Shirazi and Mishra 2010)","plainCitation":"(Akou 2010; Shirazi and Mishra 2010)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1417,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1417,"type":"article-journal","title":"Interpreting Islam through the Internet: making sense of hijab","container-title":"Contemporary Islam","page":"331-346","volume":"4","issue":"3","source":"link..colorado.idm.","abstract":"Hijab, the practice of modesty or \"covering,\" is one of the most visible and controversial aspects of Islam in the twenty-first century, partly because the Qur'an offers so little guidance on proper dress. This forces Muslims to engage in ijtihad (interpretation), which historically has resulted in vast differences in dress around the world. By transcending some of the boundaries of space, time and the body, the Internet has emerged as a place where Muslims from diverse backgrounds can meet to debate ideas and flesh them out through shared experiences. After discussing hijab in the Qur'an and other traditional sources, this article explores the use of cyberspace as a multi-media platform for learning about and debating what constitutes appropriate Islamic dress. The last section focuses on a case study of the multi-user \"hijablog\" hosted by thecanadianmuslim.ca, which represents one of the largest in-print discussions on hijab ever recorded in the English language. On this blog and other forums like it, ijtihad has become a critical tool for debate on matters such as hijab, which are important but sparsely discussed in the Qur'an.","DOI":"10.1007/s11562-010-0135-6","ISSN":"1872-0218, 1872-0226","shortTitle":"Interpreting Islam through the Internet","journalAbbreviation":"Cont Islam","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Akou","given":"Heather Marie"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",7,23]]}}},{"id":1558,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1558,"type":"article-journal","title":"Young Muslim women on the face veil (niqab): A tool of resistance in Europe but rejected in the United States","container-title":"International Journal of Cultural Studies","page":"43-62","volume":"13","issue":"1","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"In order to understand Muslim women’s views on veiling in the West, one must take into account historical and socio-political factors such as a country’s colonial/national history, the nature of its immigration regime, the demographic composition of immigrant groups, and how the nation operationalizes concepts such as secularism and citizenship. While academic literature and media reports on young Muslim women in Europe indicate that wearing the niqab or face veil is often viewed as an act of rebellion or a form of personal/political/religious identity, our in-depth interviews of young Muslim women in the United States reveal a different story. While half the participants in this study wore a headscarf or hijab, not one of them said they were interested in wearing the niqab. Instead, they believed the niqab was unnecessary in the American context. However, an overwhelming majority upheld the right of a woman to wear a niqab if she wanted to do so. Two American Muslim women narrated why they gave up wearing the niqab after wearing it for a short time.","DOI":"10.1177/1367877909348538","ISSN":"1367-8779","shortTitle":"Young Muslim women on the face veil (niqab)","journalAbbreviation":"International Jnl of Cultural Studies","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Shirazi","given":"Faegheh"},{"family":"Mishra","given":"Smeeta"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",1,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Akou 2010), the Islamic veil is subject to meaning negotiations, both by Muslims and non-Muslims, that make it “semiotically overcharged” ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ZhxlI2GI","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Tarlo 2007, 135)","plainCitation":"(Tarlo 2007, 135)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1562,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1562,"type":"article-journal","title":"Hijab in London: Metamorphosis, Resonance and Effects","container-title":"Journal of Material Culture","page":"131-156","volume":"12","issue":"2","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"This article is about the significance of dress as a visible indicator of difference in multicultural London. It focuses in particular on the hijab (Muslim woman's headscarf), suggesting that its adoption by middle-class Muslim women is often a product, not so much of their cultural backgrounds as of the trans-cultural encounters they experience in a cosmopolitan urban environment. The article explores the transformative potential of hijab, demonstrating how its adoption not only acts as a moment of metamorphosis in the lives of wearers, but also has significant effects on the perceptions and actions of others. These themes of metamorphosis, visibility and agency are explored in relation to the complex conflicting resonance of hijab in the West, and how that resonance is constantly being reshaped both through contemporary political events and their media coverage as well as through the actions and campaigns of hijab wearers.","DOI":"10.1177/1359183507078121","ISSN":"1359-1835","shortTitle":"Hijab in London","journalAbbreviation":"Journal of Material Culture","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Tarlo","given":"Emma"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2007",7,1]]}},"locator":"135"}],"schema":""} (Tarlo 2007, 135). Western social and media discourses often frame the hijab as a synecdoche to generalise the Muslim world (Rasmussen 2013), and overlook many of its religious and cultural meanings in favour of an emphasis on its connections to gender inequality ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"J2ZuDp5f","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Al-Saji 2010; Chakraborti and Zempi 2012; Friedman and Merle 2013)","plainCitation":"(Al-Saji 2010; Chakraborti and Zempi 2012; Friedman and Merle 2013)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1555,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1555,"type":"article-journal","title":"The racialization of Muslim veils: A philosophical analysis","container-title":"Philosophy & Social Criticism","page":"875-902","volume":"36","issue":"8","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"This article goes behind stereotypes of Muslim veiling to ask after the representational structure underlying these images. I examine the public debate leading to the 2004 French law banning conspicuous religious signs in schools and French colonial attitudes to veiling in Algeria, in conjunction with discourses on the veil that have arisen in other western contexts. My argument is that western perceptions and representations of veiled Muslim women are not simply about Muslim women themselves. Rather than representing Muslim women, these images fulfill a different function: they provide the negative mirror in which western constructions of identity and gender can be positively reflected. It is by means of the projection of gender oppression onto Islam, and its naturalization to the bodies of veiled women, that such mirroring takes place. This constitutes, I argue, a form of racialization. Drawing on the work of Fanon, Merleau-Ponty and Alcoff, I offer a phenomenological analysis of this racializing vision. What is at stake is a form of cultural racism that functions in the guise of anti-sexist and feminist liberatory discourse, at once posing a dilemma to feminists and concealing its racializing logic.","DOI":"10.1177/0191453710375589","ISSN":"0191-4537","shortTitle":"The racialization of Muslim veils","journalAbbreviation":"Philosophy & Social Criticism","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Al-Saji","given":"Alia"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",10,1]]}}},{"id":1525,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1525,"type":"article-journal","title":"The veil under attack: Gendered dimensions of Islamophobic victimization","container-title":"International Review of Victimology","page":"269-284","volume":"18","issue":"3","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"In the current climate, the veil is the key visual symbol of Islam. The veiled female body is central in the construction of discourses on the difference of the Muslim as ‘other’ with the non-Muslim ‘self’. The effect is that the multiple meanings of the veil are erased, and only one stands out: the veil as a symbol of gender inequality. This article explores the ways in which the visibility of the veil in the public gaze marks its wearers as particularly vulnerable to expressions of Islamophobia in a non-Muslim country such as the United Kingdom. Whilst the concept of Islamophobia is often understood in gender-neutral ways, evidence suggests that there are gendered dimensions to manifestations of Islamophobia in the public sphere. Stereotypes about veiled women’s subservience coupled with the assumption that their Muslim identity cannot be mistaken, denied or concealed, renders veiled women ‘ideal subjects’ against whom to enact anti-Muslim hostility. For victims, their families and the wider Muslim community, Islamophobic victimization can have significant and ongoing consequences. The article concludes that increased awareness of the gendered facets of Islamophobia unveils the targeted – yet hidden, often invisible – victimization of veiled Muslim women in public, as this victimization tends to fall under the criminal justice ‘radar’.","DOI":"10.1177/0269758012446983","ISSN":"0269-7580","shortTitle":"The veil under attack","journalAbbreviation":"International Review of Victimology","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Chakraborti","given":"Neil"},{"family":"Zempi","given":"Irene"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2012",9,1]]}}},{"id":1531,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1531,"type":"article-journal","title":"Veiled Threats: Decentering and unification in transnational news coverage of the French veil ban","container-title":"Feminist Media Studies","page":"770-780","volume":"13","issue":"5","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"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.","DOI":"10.1080/14680777.2013.838357","ISSN":"1468-0777","shortTitle":"Veiled Threats","author":[{"family":"Friedman","given":"Barbara"},{"family":"Merle","given":"Patrick"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013",11,1]]}}}],"schema":""} and terrorism (Al-Saji 2010; Chakraborti and Zempi 2012; Friedman and Merle 2013). Hijab-wearing women are paradoxically portrayed as being simultaneously victims of their patriarchal religion and threatening to Western values ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"geyV5kY9","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bilge 2010)","plainCitation":"(Bilge 2010)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1529,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1529,"type":"article-journal","title":"Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance: An Intersectional Approach to the Agency of Veiled Muslim Women","container-title":"Journal of Intercultural Studies","page":"9-28","volume":"31","issue":"1","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"Engaging with a figure that came to operate as a powerful cultural signifier of otherness in debates over migrant/Muslim integration across the West, the ‘veiled woman’; the paper questions the idea of agency that inheres in the contemporary feminist discourses on Muslim veil. After showing the shortcomings and adverse effects of two dominant readings of the Muslim veil, as a symbol of women's subordination to men, or as an act of resistance to Western hegemony, it explores an alternative avenue drawing on both the poststructuralist critique of the humanist subject and feminist intersectional theorising to answer the question of what kind of conception of agency can help us to think about the agency of the veiled woman without binding a priori the meaning of her veiling to the teleology of emancipation, whether feminist or anti-imperialist.","DOI":"10.1080/07256860903477662","ISSN":"0725-6868","shortTitle":"Beyond Subordination vs. Resistance","author":[{"family":"Bilge","given":"Sirma"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",2,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Bilge 2010; Galman 2013), thus representing an Islam that is incompatible with laic?té ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"3SDUizrd","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(ARDIZZONI 2004; Khiabany and Williamson 2008; Meer, Dwyer, and Modood 2010; Williamson and Khiabany 2010; Fredette 2015)","plainCitation":"(ARDIZZONI 2004; Khiabany and Williamson 2008; Meer, Dwyer, and Modood 2010; Williamson and Khiabany 2010; Fredette 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1728,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1728,"type":"article-journal","title":"Unveiling the Veil: Gendered Discourses and the (In)Visibility of the Female Body in France","container-title":"Women's Studies","page":"629-649","volume":"33","issue":"5","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","DOI":"10.1080/00497870490464440","ISSN":"0049-7878","shortTitle":"Unveiling the Veil","author":[{"family":"ARDIZZONI","given":"MICHELA"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2004",7,1]]}}},{"id":1524,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1524,"type":"article-journal","title":"Veiled bodies — naked racism: culture, politics and race in the Sun","container-title":"Race & Class","page":"69-88","volume":"50","issue":"2","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"The context in which the current `debate' about Muslim women and the veil is taking place, in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, is that of the new orthodoxy, the `clash of civilisations'. This attempts to explain much of the world's political turmoil in terms of a clash between the (`secular modern') West and the (`traditionalist religion') Islam. The increased visibility of veiled bodies in Britain today has stirred a response that draws on long-standing orientalist oppositions and reworks them in the current climate of the `war on terror', connecting them to parallel racist discourses about `threats' to British culture. Sections of the British media have homogenised the variety of Muslim veiling practices and have presented the veil as an obstacle to meaningful `communication'; an example of Islamic `refusal' to embrace `modernity'. Veiled women are considered to be ungrateful subjects who have failed to assimilate and are deemed to threaten the `British' way of life. This paper reviews the debate over the veil in Britain in the context of British foreign policy, attacks on civil liberties, the further marginalisation of poor communities and the politicisation of British Muslims, where the veil is an increasingly political image of both difference and defiance.","DOI":"10.1177/0306396808096394","ISSN":"0306-3968","shortTitle":"Veiled bodies — naked racism","journalAbbreviation":"Race & Class","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Khiabany","given":"Gholam"},{"family":"Williamson","given":"Milly"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2008",10,1]]}}},{"id":1521,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1521,"type":"article-journal","title":"Embodying Nationhood? Conceptions of British National Identity, Citizenship, and Gender in the ‘Veil Affair’","container-title":"The Sociological Review","page":"84-111","volume":"58","issue":"1","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"This article reports on a study of mediatised public discourses on nationhood, citizenship, and gender in Britain, and analyses the ways in which these accounts may be utilised in the cultivation of particular kinds of social identities. We distinguish our approach at the outset from other lines of inquiry to report on a macro level exploration of an event in which these value discourses were operative, namely the national the press reaction to the former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's 2006 comments on the Muslim face-veil or niqab. The article traces and analyses the interactions and intersections of completing but overlapping accounts of nationhood, citizenship, and characterisations of the role of Muslim women. It identifies interdependent clusters of responses that illustrate the ways in which the niqab is a ‘contested signifier’ in contemporary social and political life, and the ways in which nationhood, citizenship, and gender feature prominently in its signification.","DOI":"10.1111/j.1467-954X.2009.01877.x","ISSN":"0038-0261","shortTitle":"Embodying Nationhood?","journalAbbreviation":"The Sociological Review","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Meer","given":"Nasar"},{"family":"Dwyer","given":"Claire"},{"family":"Modood","given":"Tariq"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",2,1]]}}},{"id":1550,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1550,"type":"article-journal","title":"UK: the veil and the politics of racism","container-title":"Race & Class","page":"85-96","volume":"52","issue":"2","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"The veil has become an image of otherness, of a refusal to integrate and an example of the ‘failings’ of multiculturalism. As such, it has become an important symbol in the homogenisation and demonisation of Muslims in Britain. It is important to situate this ‘debate’ about the veil in the broader context of racism, immigration and imperialism, and neoliberal economic and political transformations. In the post-9/11 and 7/7 climate, public discussions of Muslims in Britain have centred on the twin issues of ‘integration’ and ‘terrorism’, at a time when racism is on the rise and poverty has increased for immigrant communities. How the veil is understood in this ‘debate’ is shaped by this wider context and, above all, by a history of colonialism and imperialism. This article examines the debate on the veil, showing that many garments and practices surrounding veiling are reduced in the British media to a threatening set of symbols of difference and otherness. It is argued that to detach gender issues and Islam from their wider social context leads to regressive, intolerant and overtly racist assumptions.","DOI":"10.1177/0306396810377003","ISSN":"0306-3968","shortTitle":"UK","journalAbbreviation":"Race & Class","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Williamson","given":"Milly"},{"family":"Khiabany","given":"Gholam"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",10,1]]}}},{"id":1542,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1542,"type":"article-journal","title":"Becoming a Threat: The Burqa and the Contestation Over Public Morality Law in France","container-title":"Law & Social Inquiry","page":"585-610","volume":"40","issue":"3","source":"Wiley Online Library","abstract":"Through an examination of legislative debate and court opinions, this article illustrates that the French understanding of public order policing as a bulwark of freedom and national sovereignty deeply informed the development of (and contestation surrounding) the 2010 ban on all facial coverings in public. This ban notably includes the burqa or niqab, garments worn by a small minority of Muslim women in France. This article has two aims. The first is to expand on the sociolegal argument about the contested nature of rights protections and constitutional constraints on legislative authority by highlighting how a nation's legal culture can profoundly shape that contestation. The second aim of this article is to show, through a technique called legal archaeology, how longstanding French views on rights confront current European-inspired alternative views that would give more weight to individualistic protections against state action than has traditionally been the case in France.","DOI":"10.1111/lsi.12101","ISSN":"1747-4469","shortTitle":"Becoming a Threat","journalAbbreviation":"Law Soc Inq","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Fredette","given":"Jennifer"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015",6,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Ardizzoni 2004). The hijab is often subject to greater discriminations than other religious symbols in public venues (Gatti 2016). Therefore, the hyper-visibility of the veil tend to paradoxically make Muslim women invisible subjects who are rarely asked to intervene in public debates ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"jFnyKeBt","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Allen 2015)","plainCitation":"(Allen 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1545,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1545,"type":"article-journal","title":"‘People hate you because of the way you dress’: Understanding the invisible experiences of veiled British Muslim women victims of Islamophobia","container-title":"International Review of Victimology","page":"287-301","volume":"21","issue":"3","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"Chakraborti and Zempi (2012) argued for the need to increase awareness of the gendered facets of Islamophobia in order to shed light on and improve understanding of the overlooked and negated ‘invisible’ victimisation of veiled Muslim women in the public spaces of contemporary western society. In seeking to shed light and improve understanding about this process, this article sets out the findings from a project that interviewed 20 veiled British Muslim women who had been victims of Islamophobia and had reported their experience to the British government-funded service Tell MAMA (measuring anti-Muslim attacks). Reflecting on what is contemporarily known about Islamophobia, and in particular what is known about Islamophobia’s relationship with gender, this article sets out the thematically considered empirical findings from the project in order to better understand why Islamophobic incidents against veiled Muslim women are ‘neither seen nor heard’. In doing so, the article considers the ways in which the visibility and invisibility of veiled Muslim women function in order to reduce and essentialise veiled Muslim women through the symbolism of the veil, thereby becoming seen as the physical embodiment of all that is considered to be problematic and threatening about Muslims and Islam per se.","DOI":"10.1177/0269758015591677","ISSN":"0269-7580","shortTitle":"‘People hate you because of the way you dress’","journalAbbreviation":"International Review of Victimology","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Allen","given":"Chris"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015",9,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Allen 2015). Digital Safe Spaces for Muslim Women Muslims often use the Internet to counteract lack of positive mainstream media representations in the West, circulate cultural meanings, and articulate their religious identities ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"0VxEwvzK","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Mitchell 2006; Echchaibi 2011)","plainCitation":"(Mitchell 2006; Echchaibi 2011)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1496,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1496,"type":"article-journal","title":"Posting images on the web: the creative viewer and non-violent resistance against terrorism","container-title":"Material Religion","page":"146-173","volume":"2","issue":"2","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"In this article I investigate how the web was used for expressing non-violent resistance in the wake of the July 2005 bombings in London. I first describe how one website, entitled “We are not afraid,” became a space for displaying and viewing responses to these attacks. My contention is that, to describe this phenomenon either as the creation of a fully fledged online community or simply as an electronic noticeboard is to oversimplify what is both a fluid and a social network. Indeed, the phenomenon is better described as a diverse collective representation in the face of shared trauma. In order to test this thesis out, I develop a taxonomy of postings showing the uses that these images are put to, including to console, to encourage, to explain and to exhort. Second, I look at the communicative ripples caused by this site, including the development of other sites that accepted the posting of satirical pictures and more explicit religious imagery. Third, I examine written responses to this web phenomenon, showing how these sites became catalysts for further interaction. On the basis of this analysis I make a number of observations, including that this represents a visually dominated, highly original and largely transitory network of resistance against terrorism.","DOI":"10.2752/174322006778053726","ISSN":"1743-2200","shortTitle":"Posting images on the web","author":[{"family":"Mitchell","given":"Jolyon"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2006",7,1]]}}},{"id":931,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":931,"type":"article-journal","title":"From audio tapes to video blogs: the delocalisation of authority in Islam","container-title":"Nations and Nationalism","page":"25-44","volume":"17","issue":"1","source":"Wiley Online Library","abstract":"ABSTRACT. Today, a new breed of charismatic and media-savvy religious figures are reinvigorating internal debates on Islam by drawing large audiences across the Muslim world and the Muslim diaspora in the West. Using satellite media, websites, blogs and video blogs, these new religious celebrities are changing the nature of debate in Islam from a doctrinaire discourse to a practical discussion that focuses on individual enterprise as a spiritual quest. These leaders have become religious entrepreneurs, with sophisticated networks of message distribution and media presence. From Amr Khaled and Moez Masood, two leading figures of Arab Islamic entertainment television, to Baba Ali, a famous Muslim video blogger from California, Islam has never been more marketable. Satellite television and the internet are becoming fertile discursive spaces where not only religious meanings are reconfigured but also new Islamic experiences are mediated transnationally. This delocalisation of Islamic authority beyond the traditional sources of Egypt and Saudi Arabia is generating new producers and locales of religious meaning in Dubai, London, Paris and Los Angeles. This article examines the impact of celebrity religious figures and their new media technologies on the relativisation of authority in Islam and the emergence of a cosmopolitan transnational audience of Muslims. I ask if this transnational and seemingly apolitical effort is generating a new form of religious nationalism that devalues the importance of national loyalties.","DOI":"10.1111/j.1469-8129.2010.00468.x","ISSN":"1469-8129","shortTitle":"From audio tapes to video blogs","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Echchaibi","given":"Nabil"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011",1,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Echchaibi 2011). Muslim women, in particular, employ the Internet to negotiate their role within Islam and the meanings of the hijab. Fashion blogs and online beauty tutorials made by hijab-wearing women not only discuss the stylist and material qualities of the veil, but also interpret the concept of ‘modesty’ as prescribed in the Qur’an ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"wqXSPkob","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Akou 2010)","plainCitation":"(Akou 2010)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1417,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1417,"type":"article-journal","title":"Interpreting Islam through the Internet: making sense of hijab","container-title":"Contemporary Islam","page":"331-346","volume":"4","issue":"3","source":"link..colorado.idm.","abstract":"Hijab, the practice of modesty or \"covering,\" is one of the most visible and controversial aspects of Islam in the twenty-first century, partly because the Qur'an offers so little guidance on proper dress. This forces Muslims to engage in ijtihad (interpretation), which historically has resulted in vast differences in dress around the world. By transcending some of the boundaries of space, time and the body, the Internet has emerged as a place where Muslims from diverse backgrounds can meet to debate ideas and flesh them out through shared experiences. After discussing hijab in the Qur'an and other traditional sources, this article explores the use of cyberspace as a multi-media platform for learning about and debating what constitutes appropriate Islamic dress. The last section focuses on a case study of the multi-user \"hijablog\" hosted by thecanadianmuslim.ca, which represents one of the largest in-print discussions on hijab ever recorded in the English language. On this blog and other forums like it, ijtihad has become a critical tool for debate on matters such as hijab, which are important but sparsely discussed in the Qur'an.","DOI":"10.1007/s11562-010-0135-6","ISSN":"1872-0218, 1872-0226","shortTitle":"Interpreting Islam through the Internet","journalAbbreviation":"Cont Islam","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Akou","given":"Heather Marie"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",7,23]]}}}],"schema":""} (Akou 2010), object to negative stereotypes about Islam in the West ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"WPEE1rNF","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Kavakci and Kraeplin 2016; Peterson 2016)","plainCitation":"(Kavakci and Kraeplin 2016; Peterson 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1554,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1554,"type":"article-journal","title":"Religious beings in fashionable bodies: the online identity construction of hijabi social media personalities","container-title":"Media, Culture & Society","page":"0163443716679031","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"A ‘hijabista’ – from the terms hijabi and fashionista – is a Muslim woman who dresses ‘stylishly’ while still adhering to the rules governing ‘modest’ apparel that coincides with Islamic dress code. A handful of these digitally savvy young women have established an online presence, becoming social media personalities with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of ‘followers’ who avidly consume (read) their personal blogs and/or social media posts. This study examines new media, faith, and fragmentation online, where virtual spaces facilitate the construction (re-construction) of a digital identity or persona. We employ an approach that combines netnography and case study to examine the content generated by three high-profile hijabistas, or hijabi fashion and lifestyle bloggers, and build upon identity theory to determine how each has negotiated an online persona that privileges her religious or fashionable self.","DOI":"10.1177/0163443716679031","ISSN":"0163-4437","shortTitle":"Religious beings in fashionable bodies","journalAbbreviation":"Media, Culture & Society","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Kavakci","given":"Elif"},{"family":"Kraeplin","given":"Camille R"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",11,21]]}}},{"id":1482,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1482,"type":"article-journal","title":"Beyond Fashion Tips and Hijab Tutorials: The Aesthetic Style of Islamic Lifestyle Videos","container-title":"Film Criticism","volume":"40","issue":"2","URL":"","DOI":"","ISSN":"2471-4364","shortTitle":"Beyond Fashion Tips and Hijab Tutorials","author":[{"family":"Peterson","given":"Kristin M."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",6]]}}}],"schema":""} (Kavakci and Kraeplin 2016) and “challenge via stylization the politicized hyper-visibility and stigmatization of Muslim dress” ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"X209HyVc","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Lewis 2015)","plainCitation":"(Lewis 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1537,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1537,"type":"article-journal","title":"Uncovering Modesty: Dejabis and Dewigies Expanding the Parameters of the Modest Fashion Blogosphere","container-title":"Fashion Theory","page":"243-269","volume":"19","issue":"2","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"Since the early 2000s modest fashion blogs and social media and related e-commerce have constituted a zone of women-led fashion mediation fostering dialogue within and across faiths and between religious and secular practitioners. Premised on a discourse of modest fashion as individual choice rather than compulsion, modest fashion incorporates style considerations into the quotidian practices of “everyday religion” characterized by blending, syncretism, and contradiction. This article examines how modest fashion discourse responds to the increasing numbers of women who choose to discard what have come to be the key signifiers of religious female modesty in Islam and orthodox Judaism, the hijab and the wig or hat, made prominent online by the wardrobe changes of two transnationally prominent USA-based bloggers, Nina Cohen of alltumbledown and Winnie Détwa of winniedetwaland. Interviews and blog and social media analysis demonstrate that contra mainstream orientalist presumptions that women who remove the veil have been saved from Muslim civilizational alterity, online debates within modest fashion seek to regard these modified forms of self-presentation as widening, rather than quitting, the frame of modest embodiment.","DOI":"10.2752/175174115X14168357992472","ISSN":"1362-704X","shortTitle":"Uncovering Modesty","author":[{"family":"Lewis","given":"Reina"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015",2,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Lewis 2015, 263). Muslim women use the Internet also as a ‘safe space’ to voice opinions about society and counteract marginalisation in non-Muslim countries. In particular, digital spaces help women articulating hybrid Muslim subjectivities ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"OpcHHAvt","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Echchaibi 2013)","plainCitation":"(Echchaibi 2013)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1123,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1123,"type":"article-journal","title":"Muslimah Media Watch: Media activism and Muslim choreographies of social change","container-title":"Journalism","page":"1464884913478360","source":"jou.","abstract":"This article explores media activism in the Muslim context by focusing on the blog, Muslimah Media Watch. It analyzes the significance of blogging as an activist tool used by a group of Muslim women to influence an ongoing and contested process of social change in Islam. Through interviews with the founder and bloggers of the site and a textual analysis of the blog posts, the author focuses on the aesthetic forms and discursive practices of digital Muslim activism and argues that projects such as Muslimah Media Watch should be evaluated not in terms of a revolutionary subversion of hegemonic discourse on gender in Islam, but rather as part of small but consistent disruptive flows of dissent which are significant precisely because of the nature of their intervention and the tactics of their resistance. The blog has also become a prime discursive and performative space where young Muslims debate and contest what it means to be modern in transnational settings.","DOI":"10.1177/1464884913478360","ISSN":"1464-8849, 1741-3001","shortTitle":"Muslimah Media Watch","journalAbbreviation":"Journalism","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Echchaibi","given":"Nabil"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013",3,5]]}}}],"schema":""} (Echchaibi 2013), performing a non-threatening Muslim female visibility ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"K7Ag3qyo","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Weber 2016)","plainCitation":"(Weber 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1507,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1507,"type":"article-journal","title":"Kübra Gümü?ay, Muslim digital feminism and the politics of visuality in Germany","container-title":"Feminist Media Studies","page":"101-116","volume":"16","issue":"1","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"Muslim women’s digital activism exists in complexly racialized visual contexts. This is exemplified in the journalism and activism of Kübra Gümü?ay, who first gained public attention as the purportedly first “hijabi columnist” in Germany. This essay draws on her series “50 Thoughts” as an entry point into her digital activism. I suggest that Gümü?ay uses this series to reveal the larger visual dilemmas with which she engages. Her digital activism functions by taking the risk to both expose and reconfigure the very conditions under which she is visible and comprehensible to her publics. In particular, I consider her activism as using digital spaces for self-poiesis (an imaginative remaking of self) as well as teleopoiesis (an imaginative reaching out to the other). This latter move functions both to gesture to an anti-racist community as well as to alliances among multiple feminisms.","DOI":"10.1080/14680777.2015.1093123","ISSN":"1468-0777","author":[{"family":"Weber","given":"Beverly M."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",1,2]]}}}],"schema":""} (Weber 2016), challenging feminist discourses about women’s bodies ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ysQEPnCg","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Baer 2016)","plainCitation":"(Baer 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1534,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1534,"type":"article-journal","title":"Redoing feminism: digital activism, body politics, and neoliberalism","container-title":"Feminist Media Studies","page":"17-34","volume":"16","issue":"1","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"This article investigates the renewed feminist politics that emerge from the interface of digital platforms and activism today, examining the role of digital media in affecting the particular ways that contemporary feminist protests make meaning and are understood transnationally, nationally, and locally. I consider the political investments of digital feminisms in the context of what Angela McRobbie has termed the “undoing of feminism” in neoliberal societies, where discourses of choice, empowerment, and individualism have made feminism seem both second nature and unnecessary. Within this context, I describe a range of recent feminist protest actions that are in a sense redoing feminism for a neoliberal age. A key component of this redoing is the way recent protest actions play out central tensions within historical and contemporary feminist discourse; crucial here is the interrelationship between body politics experienced locally and feminist actions whose efficacy relies on their translocal and transnational articulation. My discussion focuses on three case studies: SlutWalk Berlin, Peaches’ “Free Pussy Riot!” video, and the Twitter campaigns #Aufschrei and #YesAllWomen. My analysis ultimately calls attention to the precarity of digital feminisms, which reflect both the oppressive nature of neoliberalism and the possibilities it offers for new subjectivities and social formations.","DOI":"10.1080/14680777.2015.1093070","ISSN":"1468-0777","shortTitle":"Redoing feminism","author":[{"family":"Baer","given":"Hester"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",1,2]]}}}],"schema":""} (Baer 2016) and resisting headscarf-related stereotypes ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"MtjUvfUN","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Vis, van Zoonen, and Mihelj 2011)","plainCitation":"(Vis, van Zoonen, and Mihelj 2011)"},"citationItems":[{"id":134,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":134,"type":"article-journal","title":"women responding to the anti-Islam film Fitna: voices and acts of citizenship on YouTube","container-title":"Feminist Review","page":"110-129","volume":"97","issue":"1","source":"palgrave-","abstract":"In 2008, Dutch anti-Islam Member of Parliament Geert Wilders produced a short video called Fitna to visualize his argument that Islam is a dangerous religion. Thousands of men and women across the globe uploaded their own videos to YouTube to criticize or support the film. In this article, we look at these alternative videos from a feminist perspective, contrasting the gender portrayal and narratives in Fitna with those in the alternative videos. We contend that Fitna expressed an extremist Orientalist discourse, in which women are presented as the current and future victims of the oppression of Muslim men and Islam. In contrast, the YouTube videos give voice to women themselves who come from across the globe, are relatively young and often active Muslims. Second, they express different view points in generically new ways, criticizing and ridiculing Wilders or producing serious and committed explanations of their own understanding of Islam. Third, although relatively few women appeared in the videos, those that did speak for themselves, not only take on Wilders, but also claim their right to speak within Islam. We propose to understand these videos as acts of citizenships through which women constitute themselves as global citizens, in some cases by engaging in ‘deliberation’ as it is understood in feminist political theory, in other cases by taking a ‘voice’ that can be responded to.","DOI":"10.1057/fr.2010.29","ISSN":"0141-7789","shortTitle":"women responding to the anti-Islam film Fitna","journalAbbreviation":"Fem Rev","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Vis","given":"Farida"},{"family":"Zoonen","given":"Liesbet","non-dropping-particle":"van"},{"family":"Mihelj","given":"Sabina"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011",3]]}}}],"schema":""} (Vis, van Zoonen and Mihelj 2011). The Internet can thus provide women with agency to circulate visual and textual narratives about their veiling practices. As gender becomes an increasingly relevant topic in the field of religion and media ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"AfIa93lz","properties":{"formattedCitation":"{\\rtf (L\\uc0\\u246{}vheim 2013)}","plainCitation":"(L?vheim 2013)"},"citationItems":[{"id":133,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":133,"type":"book","title":"Media, Religion and Gender: Key Issues and New Challenges","publisher":"Routledge","number-of-pages":"225","edition":"1 edition","source":"Amazon","abstract":"Media, Religion and Gender presents a selection of eminent current scholarship that explores the role gender plays when religion, media use and values in contemporary society interact. The book:surveys the development of research on media, religion and culture through the lens of key theoretical and methodological issues and debates within gender studies.includes case studies drawn from a variety of countries and contexts to illustrate the range of issues, theoretical perspectives and empirical material involved in current workoutlines new areas and reflects on challenges for the future.Students of media, religion and gender at advanced level will find this a valuable resource, as will scholars and researchers working in this important and growing field.","shortTitle":"Media, Religion and Gender","language":"English","editor":[{"family":"L?vheim","given":"Mia"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2013",6,3]]}}}],"schema":""} (L?vheim 2013), studying online narratives of hijab-wearing women can help better understanding digital media practices of minority religious groups. Therefore, I wish to explore the following research question:R1: How does the Internet allow for the self-representation of Muslim women in relation to the burkini ban? The Materiality of HijabThe hijab’s visibility in physical and Internet spaces connotes veiling as a religious practice whose relevance lies in materiality. Material aspects of religion have been explored by Birgit Meyer ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"dBhTJTS0","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(2010)","plainCitation":"(2010)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1215,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1215,"type":"book","title":"Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion, and the Senses","publisher":"Palgrave Macmillan","number-of-pages":"278","edition":"2009 edition","source":"Amazon","abstract":"This book examines the incorporation of newly accessible mass media into practices of religious mediation in a variety of settings including the Pentecostal Church and Islamic movements, as well as the use of religious forms and image in the sphere of radio and cinema.","ISBN":"978-0-230-62229-6","shortTitle":"Aesthetic Formations","language":"English","editor":[{"family":"Meyer","given":"B."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",10,17]]}},"suppress-author":true}],"schema":""} (2010), who considers religious objects to be “sensational forms” that help experience the transcendent and create communities around shared aesthetic practices. Hence, as Elisabeth Arweck and William Keenan assert, “the idea of religion itself is largely unintelligible outside its incarnation in material expressions” ( ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"yJT83R59","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Keenan 2006)","plainCitation":"(Keenan 2006)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1724,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1724,"type":"book","title":"Materializing Religion: Expression, Performance and Ritual","publisher":"Routledge","publisher-place":"Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT","number-of-pages":"264","source":"Amazon","event-place":"Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT","abstract":"The material symbol has become central to understanding religion in late modernity. Overtly theological approaches use words to express the values and faith of a religion, but leave out the 'incarnation' of religion in the behavioural, performative, or audio-visual form. This book explores the lived experience of religion through its material expressions, demonstrating how religion and spirituality are given form and are thus far from being detached or ethereal. Cutting across cultures, senses, disciplines and faiths, the contributors register the variety in which religions and religious groups express the sacred and numinous. Including chapters on music, architecture, festivals, ritual, artifacts, dance, dress and magic, this book offers an invaluable resource to students of sociology and anthropology of religion, art, culture, history, liturgy, theories of late modern culture, and religious studies.","ISBN":"978-0-7546-5094-2","shortTitle":"Materializing Religion","language":"English","author":[{"family":"Keenan","given":"William"}],"editor":[{"family":"Arweck","given":"Elisabeth"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2006",8,28]]}}}],"schema":""} 2006, 2–3). Material culture is the way objects participate in bodily sensations and practical experiences, thus performing cultural work and shaping social lives (Morgan 2016). Religious clothing is a material expression because it assumes the role of a “physical, tangible or embodied indication of lived religion” (Arweck 2016, 185). The veil holds both symbolic and material meanings, embedding simultaneously social, spiritual, and spatial elements ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ltCVeE6B","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Almila and Inglis 2017)","plainCitation":"(Almila and Inglis 2017)"},"citationItems":[{"id":3863,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":3863,"type":"book","title":"The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling","publisher":"Routledge","publisher-place":"London : New York","number-of-pages":"330","edition":"1 edition","source":"Amazon","event-place":"London : New York","abstract":"Veils and veiling are controversial topics in social and political life, generating debates across the world. The veil is enmeshed within a complex web of relations encompassing politics, religion and gender, and conflicts over the nature of power, legitimacy, belief, freedom, agency and emancipation. In recent years, the veil has become both a potent and unsettling symbol and a rallying-point for discourse and rhetoric concerning women, Islam and the nature of politics. Early studies in gender, doctrine and politics of veiling appeared in the 1970s following the Islamic revival and ’re-veiling’ trends that were dramatically expressed by 1979’s Iranian Islamic revolution. In the 1990s, research focussed on the development of both an ’Islamic culture industry’ and greater urban middle class consumption of ’Islamic’ garments and dress styles across the Islamic world. In the last decade academics have studied Islamic fashion and marketing, the political role of the headscarf, the veiling of other religious groups such as Jews and Christians, and secular forms of modest dress. Using work from contributors across a range of disciplinary backgrounds and locations, this book brings together these research strands to form the most comprehensive book ever conceived on this topic. As such, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students of fashion, gender studies, religious studies, politics and sociology.","ISBN":"978-1-4724-5536-9","language":"English","editor":[{"family":"Almila","given":"Anna-Mari"},{"family":"Inglis","given":"David"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017",6,28]]}}}],"schema":""} (Almila and Inglis 2017). The hijab is thus a material object that functions as a ‘mediator’ among cultures, genders, and civilizations ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"MOnmExYs","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Gould 2014, 222)","plainCitation":"(Gould 2014, 222)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1560,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1560,"type":"article-journal","title":"Hijab as commodity form: Veiling, unveiling, and misveiling in contemporary Iran","container-title":"Feminist Theory","page":"221-240","volume":"15","issue":"3","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"This article considers how state-mandated veiling and unveiling reinforce modern capitalism. State regulations regarding veiling incorporate the female body into the political economy of the commodity form. In addition to serving as an empty signifier to be filled with exchange value for the male observer, the veil operates as an ideological apparatus of the state. In showing through fieldwork conducted in Iran how the fault lines of political agency are inscribed into the veil, I argue that subverting its commodity function radically relativises its meaning. Because the veil is an empty signifier lacking intrinsic content, its meaning must be determined contingently. By combining a critique of secular discrimination against veiling with a critique of state-mandated veiling, I show how European and Iranian societies incorporate the veil into the capitalist world-system and use it to suppress women’s agency.","DOI":"10.1177/1464700114544610","ISSN":"1464-7001","shortTitle":"Hijab as commodity form","journalAbbreviation":"Feminist Theory","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Gould","given":"Rebecca"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2014",12,1]]}},"locator":"222"}],"schema":""} (Gould 2014, 222) and helps the performative process of religious community and identity formation by tangibly symbolising religion in everyday life ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"LdXqsYNU","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Tarlo 2010)","plainCitation":"(Tarlo 2010)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1480,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1480,"type":"chapter","title":"Multicultural muslim fashions","container-title":"British Asian Style Fashion & Textiles / Past & Present","publisher":"V&A Publications","publisher-place":"London","source":"research.gold.ac.uk","event-place":"London","URL":"","ISBN":"978-1-85177-619-1","author":[{"family":"Tarlo","given":"Emma"}],"editor":[{"family":"Breward","given":"C."},{"family":"Crill","given":"R."},{"family":"Crang","given":"P."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2010",10]]},"accessed":{"date-parts":[["2017",2,10]]}}}],"schema":""} (Tarlo 2010). Material culture is based on production and circulation of objects, and characterised by processes of mediation. As Tim Hutchings ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"U0Z03OrI","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Hutchings and McKenzie 2016)","plainCitation":"(Hutchings and McKenzie 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1566,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1566,"type":"book","title":"Materiality and the Study of Religion: The Stuff of the Sacred","publisher":"Theology and Religion in Interdisciplinary Perspective Series in Association With the Bsa Sociology of Religion Study Group","publisher-place":"New York","number-of-pages":"260","source":"Amazon","event-place":"New York","abstract":"Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a significant theoretical concern for the study of religion. This book contributes to and evaluates this material turn, presenting thirteen chapters of new empirical research and theoretical reflection from some of the leading international scholars of material religion. Following a model for material analysis proposed in the first chapter by David Morgan, the contributors trace the life cycle of religious materiality through three phases: the production of religious objects, their classification as religious (or non-religious), and their circulation and use in material culture. The chapters in this volume consider how objects become and cease to be sacred, how materiality can be used to contest access to public space and resources, and how religion is embodied and performed by individuals in their everyday lives. Contributors discuss the significance of the materiality of religion across different religious traditions and diverse geographical regions, paying close attention to gender, age, ethnicity, memory and politics. The volume closes with an afterword by Manuel Vasquez.\"","ISBN":"978-1-4724-7783-5","shortTitle":"Materiality and the Study of Religion","language":"Englisch","author":[{"family":"Hutchings","given":"Tim"},{"family":"McKenzie","given":"Joanne"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016"]],"season":"Dezember"}}}],"schema":""} (2016) asserts, the Internet is not a disembodied space, but an infrastructure of everyday life featuring the creation and mediation of digital religious objects. Both digital technologies and online contents hold material qualities as they sustain the religious experience in ways complementary to physical objects. The materiality of the hijab is thus relevant to religious practices in its digital mediation too ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"4sh1gRq3","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Peterson 2016)","plainCitation":"(Peterson 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1482,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1482,"type":"article-journal","title":"Beyond Fashion Tips and Hijab Tutorials: The Aesthetic Style of Islamic Lifestyle Videos","container-title":"Film Criticism","volume":"40","issue":"2","URL":"","DOI":"","ISSN":"2471-4364","shortTitle":"Beyond Fashion Tips and Hijab Tutorials","author":[{"family":"Peterson","given":"Kristin M."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",6]]}}}],"schema":""} (Peterson 2016). I would argue that the Internet embeds the materiality of the hijab on different levels: the veil, per se a material object that functions as a medium for the articulation of religious meanings and identities, is further mediated through the circulation of aesthetic narratives on the Internet. Rather than erasing materiality, the Internet offers a space for discussing the meanings beyond the hijab’s material aspects and facilitates community and identity articulations around shared stylistic practices. Because a focus on material religion helps explore mediations between individuals, communities, and traditions (Hutchings and McKenzie, 2016), the study of the veil’s materiality on the Internet can contribute to existing literature on media and religion. I thus seek to answer a second research question:R2: How is the materiality of the burkini and hijab discussed in digital spaces? Exploring Muslim Women’s Voices OnlineThe New York Times (2 September 2016) collected Muslim women’s thoughts on the French burkini ban, gathering more than a thousand spontaneous submissions. Many of them thank the newspaper for hearing Muslim women’s opinions, which are seldom taken into account even in issues that affect them. It is indeed true that the French authorities in support of the burkini ban tended to ignore Muslim women’s opinions and framed the issue in terms of religious fundamentalism and women’s oppression. Therefore, hearing Muslim women’s voices is a way of allowing a different narrative about the ‘burkini affair’. This article analyses online discourses against the burkini ban which were created by women who publicly self-identify as Muslim and live in non-Muslim countries. The analysis takes into account 71 sources – including 15 videos, one podcast, and 55 articles – that have either been created by Muslim women or that feature Muslim women’s experiences told from a personal point of view. All the contributions were written or filmed in 2016, especially in July and August of that year; two of them preceded the burkini ban but are nonetheless taken into account because they refer to French authorities’ critiques of the burkini and therefore position themselves within the debate. With most of the women based in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, or Canada, they speak and write either in English (50 sources) or in French (21). Some of the women have a public role – such as Faeeza Vaid, executive director of Muslim Women’s Network UK – while others are merely citizens who want to make their opinions public. While the majority of the women wear hijab and burkinis, some of them are not veiled but nonetheless criticise the ban’s discriminatory character against Muslim women. Because there are Muslims who support anti-hijab laws and instances of women coerced into veiling ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"CroOV91C","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Body-Gendrot 2007; Killian 2007)","plainCitation":"(Body-Gendrot 2007; Killian 2007)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1461,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1461,"type":"article-journal","title":"France Upside Down over a Head Scarf?","container-title":"Sociology of Religion","page":"289-304","volume":"68","issue":"3","source":"academic.","DOI":"10.1093/socrel/68.3.289","ISSN":"1069-4404","journalAbbreviation":"Sociol Relig","author":[{"family":"Body-Gendrot","given":"Sophie"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2007",10,1]]}}},{"id":1457,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1457,"type":"article-journal","title":"From a Community of Believers to an Islam of the Heart: “Conspicuous” Symbols, Muslim Practices, and the Privatization of Religion in France","container-title":"Sociology of Religion","page":"305-320","volume":"68","issue":"3","source":"academic.","DOI":"10.1093/socrel/68.3.305","ISSN":"1069-4404","shortTitle":"From a Community of Believers to an Islam of the Heart","journalAbbreviation":"Sociol Relig","author":[{"family":"Killian","given":"Caitlin"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2007",10,1]]}}}],"schema":""} (Body-Gendrot 2007; Killian 2007), the dataset does not claim to be representative of the totality of Muslim women’s opinions about the burkini ban. References to “the women” or “Muslim women” in the following sections pertain solely to the authors of articles and videos analysed within the dataset. I quote the real names of the women behind these narratives, after having exchanged emails about my research with several of them.The present article looks at Internet practices in order to understand the ways Muslim women actively navigate different spaces beyond traditional media representations. Assuming an approach that considers media practices to be embedded in people’s sociocultural practices within a context of media ubiquity (Couldry ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"8yfGRrev","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Couldry 2012)","plainCitation":"(Couldry 2012)"},"citationItems":[{"id":811,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":811,"type":"book","title":"Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice","publisher":"Polity","publisher-place":"Cambridge ; Malden, MA","number-of-pages":"242","edition":"1 edition","source":"","event-place":"Cambridge ; Malden, MA","abstract":"Media are fundamental to our sense of living in a social world. Since the beginning of modernity, media have transformed the scale on which we act as social beings. And now in the era of digital media, media themselves are being transformed as platforms, content, and producers multiply. Yet the implications of social theory for understanding media and of media for rethinking social theory have been neglected; never before has it been more important to understand those implications. This book takes on this challenge.Drawing on Couldry's fifteen years of work on media and social theory, this book explores how questions of power and ritual, capital and social order, and the conduct of political struggle, professional competition, and everyday life, are all transformed by today's complex combinations of traditional and 'new' media. In the concluding chapters Couldry develops a framework for global comparative research into media and for thinking collectively about the ethics and justice of our lives with media. The result is a book that is both a major intervention in the field and required reading for all students of media and sociology.","ISBN":"978-0-7456-3921-5","shortTitle":"Media, Society, World","language":"English","author":[{"family":"Couldry","given":"Nick"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2012",6,18]]}}}],"schema":""} 2012), I looked at platforms that allow Muslim women to blur boundaries between mainstream and alternative media production. For example, British journalist Remona Aly was able to establish her voice in the burkini debate through her personal website, articles in national newspapers, and interviews on TV channels (later posted on her YouTube channel). I explored this kind of networked narratives by analysing digital venues – including personal blogs, interfaith forums, online fashion magazines, feminist websites, YouTube channels and digital news outlets – where Muslim women can decide how to create and circulate their opinions in their medium of choice.While social media platforms can be used as spaces for religious dialogue ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"UdonsEad","properties":{"formattedCitation":"{\\rtf (Illman and Sj\\uc0\\u246{} 2015)}","plainCitation":"(Illman and Sj? 2015)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1435,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1435,"type":"article-journal","title":"Facebook as a Site for Inter-religious Encounters: A Case Study from Finland","container-title":"Journal of Contemporary Religion","page":"383-398","volume":"30","issue":"3","source":"Taylor and Francis+NEJM","abstract":"The aim of this article is to analyse the social networking site Facebook as a possible platform for inter-religious dialogue. Building on a case study—an attack on a Buddhist temple in Turku, Finland, and the consequent interaction that took place online immediately following the attack—the article investigates the strengths and limitations of social networking sites such as Facebook for encountering and connecting with religious others. The ethnographic material—consisting of both Internet material and interviews with concerned parties—is discussed in close connection with current research on religion, social media, and discussions online. Themes that are highlighted include stereotypes and superficiality as assumed aspects of online conversations, the role of power in dialogue—both offline and online, and symbolic communicative actions and social networking sites.","DOI":"10.1080/13537903.2015.1081341","ISSN":"1353-7903","shortTitle":"Facebook as a Site for Inter-religious Encounters","author":[{"family":"Illman","given":"Ruth"},{"family":"Sj?","given":"Sofia"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015",9,2]]}}}],"schema":""} (Illman and Sj? 2015), this research looks at textual and visual personal narratives rather than interpersonal interactions. I perform discourse analysis on written and spoken texts by considering them as social spaces for both cognition and representation of the world ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"mBCcogRv","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Fairclough 1653)","plainCitation":"(Fairclough 1653)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1468,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1468,"type":"book","title":"Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language","publisher":"Addison Wesley Publishing Company","source":"Amazon","shortTitle":"Critical Discourse Analysis","author":[{"family":"Fairclough","given":"Norman"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["1653"]]}}}],"schema":""} (Fairclough 1995). Previous research suggest that text analysis needs to be integrated with image analysis (Chojnicka 2016), especially given that the playful use of images and graphic styles in digital venues unveils gendered identity performances ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"AEvQSoNq","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(2011; Vaisman 2016; Dhoest, Szulc, and Eeckhout 2016)","plainCitation":"(2011; Vaisman 2016; Dhoest, Szulc, and Eeckhout 2016)"},"citationItems":[{"id":1463,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1463,"type":"book","title":"Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media","publisher":"Oxford University Press","publisher-place":"Oxford ; New York","number-of-pages":"408","edition":"1 edition","source":"Amazon","event-place":"Oxford ; New York","abstract":"Digital Discourse offers a distinctly sociolinguistic perspective on the nature of language in digital technologies. It starts by simply bringing new media sociolinguistics up to date, addressing current technologies like instant messaging, textmessaging, blogging, photo-sharing, mobile phones, gaming, social network sites, and video sharing. Chapters cover a range of communicative contexts (journalism, gaming, tourism, leisure, performance, public debate), communicators (professional and lay, young people and adults, intimates and groups), and languages (Irish, Hebrew, Chinese, Finnish, Japanese, German, Greek, Arabic, and French). The volume is organized around topics of primary interest to sociolinguists, including genre, style and stance. With commentaries from the two most internationally recognized scholars of new media discourse (Naomi Baron and Susan Herring) and essays by well-established scholars and new voices in sociolinguistics, the volume will be more current, more diverse, and more thematically unified than any other collection on the topic.","ISBN":"978-0-19-979544-4","shortTitle":"Digital Discourse","language":"English","editor":[{"family":"Thurlow","given":"Crispin"},{"family":"Mroczek","given":"Kristine"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2011",10,26]]}},"suppress-author":true},{"id":1462,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1462,"type":"article-journal","title":"Pretty in pink vs pretty in black: blogs as gendered avatars","container-title":"Visual Communication","page":"293-315","volume":"15","issue":"3","source":"SAGE Journals","abstract":"Blogs are usually treated as texts, despite the expressive potential of their visual elements through which ideology is often not expressed straightforwardly, but encoded in the imagery. This study offers an analysis of blog design themes and blog sidebar ‘badges’ produced by Jewish-Israeli girls aged 11 to 16 on Israblog, Israel’s largest blogging community. By looking at the blog as a ‘digital body’ or an avatar of the blogger, the author examines design elements as resources of identity performance and contextualizes the findings within the fields of girl studies and feminist theory. She argues that under the surface of the distinctive subcultural styles often presented as adversarial lies the same hegemonic Western girlhood model; however, global girlhood models may be interpreted as subversive in the Israeli cultural context.","DOI":"10.1177/1470357216643909","ISSN":"1470-3572","shortTitle":"Pretty in pink vs pretty in black","journalAbbreviation":"Visual Communication","language":"en","author":[{"family":"Vaisman","given":"Carmel L"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",8,1]]}}},{"id":1628,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":1628,"type":"book","title":"Lgbtqs, Media and Culture in Europe","publisher":"Routledge","publisher-place":"S.l.","number-of-pages":"280","source":"Amazon","event-place":"S.l.","abstract":"Media matter, particularly to social minorities like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Rather than one homogenised idea of the global gay, what we find today is a range of historically and culturally specific expressions of gender and sexuality, which are reflected and explored across an ever increasing range of media outlets. This collection zooms in on a number of facets of this kaleidoscope, each chapter discussing the intersection of a particular European context and a particular medium with its affordances and limitations. While traditional mass media form the starting point of this book, the primary focus is on digital media such as SNS (Social Networking Sites), blogs and online dating sites. All contributions are based on recent, original empirical research, using a plethora of qualitative methods to offer a holistic view on the ways media matter to particular LGBTQ individuals and communities. Together the chapters cover the diversity of European countries and regions, of LGBTQ communities, and of the contemporary media ecology. Resisting the urge to extrapolate, they argue for specificity, contextualisation and a provincialized understanding of the connections between media, culture, gender and sexuality. \"","ISBN":"978-1-138-64947-7","language":"Englisch","author":[{"family":"Dhoest","given":"Alexander"},{"family":"Szulc","given":"Lukasz"},{"family":"Eeckhout","given":"Bart"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2016",12]]}}}],"schema":""} (Vaisman 2016). While taking the differences between visual and textual production into account, I will analyse articles and videos for both their narrative content and the pictures they feature. In so doing, this article looks at discursive and visual representations of the hijab and burkini as a way of displaying and discussing materiality. Neither Aggressors nor Victims: Digital Discourses against the Burkini BanMuslim women often talk about the burkini ban by mentioning a picture of the woman forced to undress on a beach in Nice, which went viral on the Internet. The picture shows the woman sitting on a towel and surrounded by three standing policemen, while taking off a long-sleeved light-blue top that reveals a black tank top underneath. The woman remains anonymous and never publicly talked about her experience, but her picture was digitally circulated to tell a story that is mostly not her own. For example, she was often mistakenly identified as Siam, another woman who was fined on a French beach, and who granted interviews to various media outlets without showing her face. In addition, even though the picture was taken and published without the woman’s consent, media outlets and social networks circulated it worldwide. I decided not to reproduce the viral picture in this article after an e-mail exchange with blogger Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, who used the picture on her own website The Brown Hijabi in a post later re-published by The Independent (23 August 2016). Manzoor-Khan explained that she planned to remove the picture from The Brown Hijabi out of respect for the woman’s wishes. Further circulating her picture could indeed indirectly be imposing a visibility on the woman that she never asked for. However, while the story and the woman’s intentions have often been misinterpreted, the picture became a way for other Muslim women to talk about their own experiences. Author Shelina Zahra Janmohammed comments that “[t]he photograph was a lightening rod for so many of the year’s themes for Muslim women” (The National, 29 December 2016), because it symbolises how all discourses about Islam and terrorism are often reduced to images solely showing veiled Muslim women. By sharing and commenting the picture, Muslim women discuss the burkini ban through different narratives styles. Some narratives encourage women to continue wearing the burkini and fight for their rights, in certain cases also eliciting activism through online petitions, hashtag campaigns, and physical protests. Videos and pictures (including personal images) support the textual narratives by showing headscarf-wearing women as they go about their everyday lives and displaying some of the material aspects of the burkini. Despite using various narrative forms, Muslim women similarly challenge the assumptions that the veil can connote them as being simultaneously “victims” of an oppressive religion and “aggressors” who are still sympathetic to its aims ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"YpDUYuKq","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Almila and Inglis 2017)","plainCitation":"(Almila and Inglis 2017)"},"citationItems":[{"id":3863,"uris":[""],"uri":[""],"itemData":{"id":3863,"type":"book","title":"The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling","publisher":"Routledge","publisher-place":"London : New York","number-of-pages":"330","edition":"1 edition","source":"Amazon","event-place":"London : New York","abstract":"Veils and veiling are controversial topics in social and political life, generating debates across the world. The veil is enmeshed within a complex web of relations encompassing politics, religion and gender, and conflicts over the nature of power, legitimacy, belief, freedom, agency and emancipation. In recent years, the veil has become both a potent and unsettling symbol and a rallying-point for discourse and rhetoric concerning women, Islam and the nature of politics. Early studies in gender, doctrine and politics of veiling appeared in the 1970s following the Islamic revival and ’re-veiling’ trends that were dramatically expressed by 1979’s Iranian Islamic revolution. In the 1990s, research focussed on the development of both an ’Islamic culture industry’ and greater urban middle class consumption of ’Islamic’ garments and dress styles across the Islamic world. In the last decade academics have studied Islamic fashion and marketing, the political role of the headscarf, the veiling of other religious groups such as Jews and Christians, and secular forms of modest dress. Using work from contributors across a range of disciplinary backgrounds and locations, this book brings together these research strands to form the most comprehensive book ever conceived on this topic. As such, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students of fashion, gender studies, religious studies, politics and sociology.","ISBN":"978-1-4724-5536-9","language":"English","editor":[{"family":"Almila","given":"Anna-Mari"},{"family":"Inglis","given":"David"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017",6,28]]}}}],"schema":""} (Prodanovic and Khamis 2017). The paradox of Muslim women being “victims” and “aggressors” at the same time is discussed through descriptions of the materiality of the burkini and the implications beyond its material aspects. On the one hand, as explored in the first section below, women refuse to be framed as “aggressors” by connoting the burkini as clothing whose materiality does not symbolise terrorism. On the other hand, as described in the second section, they reject the “victims” narrative by showing that beyond the materiality of the burkini (and the hijab in general) there are different personal stories that cannot be connected solely to Islamic patriarchal oppression. In both cases, the Internet facilitates the circulation of discourses and pictures that help women create their own narratives about the burkini. “Radically Happy”: Challenging the ‘Aggressors’ NarrativeThe assumption that the burkini is ‘unsafe’ – both because it could put women at risk of drowning and because it is connected to terrorist ideologies – is contrasted by descriptions of the material qualities of the burkini. By explaining that it is only a piece of clothing designed for swimming, Muslim women refuse to accept the negative meanings certain French authorities associate with the burkini.Muslim women explain that the burkini is neither ‘unhygienic’ nor ‘unsafe’ because it was created specifically as swimming beachwear. Often quoting creator Aheda Zanetti, who claims both that the burkini is a positive symbol of integration and that it is comfortable for swimming (AFP, 19 August 2016), women frame the burkini as a garment that allows them to enjoy public life rather than excluding them from society. The French Bondy Blog describes the experience of burkini-wearing student Mouna:I am free to move. I am also relaxed, as I know that this clothing cannot slip off. In addition, it is waterproof, and it feels much better than a wet dress. I can jet-ski, diving, teach my little brother to swim, have fun, and enjoy the sea where I go once per year. I thank with all my heart the person who had the good idea to invent this clothing. (Ichou, Bondy Blog, 19 August 2016)Mouna is described as an average French girl who enjoys spending time at the beach and is fully integrated with her peers’ activities – not despite but rather because of the burkini. As in Mouna’s story, many descriptions of the burkini insist on its material qualities and its similarities to a diving suit. For example, a widely distributed picture features an Australian life guard wearing a yellow and orange burkini and holding a surf (Wasty, FemiNisa, 26 August 2016). By showing the burkini on a person who potentially saves people from drowning, the picture positively associates the burkini with fitness, safety and leisure activities. Comparisons between the burkini and a diving suit expose the Islamophobic character of the ban. British YouTuber Dina Tokio elaborates on the point by saying:Imagine this: I’m not a Muslim, I’ve got a skin condition and it gets really bad when I go into the sun, so I’m gonna wear a diving suit when I go swimming, and I also want to cover my hair because sun is not particularly good for your hair, you’re gonna come up and tell me I can’t wear this and I need to show my skin? (Dina Tokio YouTube Channel, 19 August 2016)By mentioning people with skin diseases, Tokio provides a practical example of how the same clothing –a diving suit –becomes problematic only when it fulfils a religious role, as in the burkini, but poses no concerns when used for other reasons, for example skin and hair protection. During the video, Tokio also shows a picture of herself in a pool, which was used by a newspaper to talk about the burkini. She explains that the newspaper showed little knowledge of what the burkini really is, because in the picture she is actually wearing a cycling outfit and not a burkini. Tokio’s reflection resonates with the experience of the aforementioned Siam, who explains that when she was fined and asked to leave the beach, she was dressed not in a burkini, but rather leggings, a long-sleeved top, and a scarf on her head, which she was asked to take off and “wear as a bandana” instead (Journal du Musulman, 23 August 2016). This is the same outfit that the woman in the viral picture appears to be wearing. The fact that women targeted by the ban are wearing hijab and not a burkini, and that Siam was asked to remove only her headscarf, demonstrates that the burkini ban is arguably a way of extending prohibitions on the Islamic veil to public beaches, spaces usually associated with exposure of women’s bodies. This reveals the paradoxical character of the ban: French authorities framed the burkini as a “uniform of extremist Islamism” and implied that it needs to be prohibited for having more radical religious connotations than the veil, but the police displayed ignorance of what the burkini even is and fined women for wearing a veil instead. Muslim women address this paradox by framing the burkini as a beachwear adaptation of the hijab that functions as a compromise between faith and everyday activities. Australian author Shafeen Mustaq rejects the notion that a religious object alone can symbolise terrorism, writing that the burkini makes her “radical … radically happy” (Surreal Soliloquies, 6 September 2016). Describing the comforts of swimming in a burkini, Mustaq challenges the stereotype of veiled women endorsing radical ideologies by ironically asserting that she is “radically happy” instead of radically religious. She reinforces her narrative by posting personal pictures of herself standing on a boat, relaxing on the beach, enjoying the seaside, and snorkelling while wearing a pink and blue burkini, and sometimes a sunhat, too (Fig. 1, Surreal Soliloquies, 26 August 2016). The photos, which simply show a young woman enjoying her holidays, are accompanied by the text “Tell me do I look oppressed, unhygienic or like a terrorist […] to you?”These pictures and narratives of women having fun on the beach with family and friends help to illustrate the unthreatening nature of the burkini. Bushra Wasty, the editor of Muslim website FemiNisa, describes these discourses as being completely antithetical to the ideologies of terrorist groups: [F]ar from the burkini being allowed [by Daesh], wearing any item of clothing that’s even slightly form-fitting would most likely result in the rape and killing of women who do so. Furthermore, anyone who is mentally disturbed enough to pledge an allegiance to terrorist organisations would most likely deem visiting a beach filled with half-naked men and women as forbidden and a frivolous activity. It seems that France has missed a trick with their idiocy. (FemiNisa, 26 August 2016) Wasty differentiates burkini-wearing women from terrorist groups. The French authorities that hold the burkini to be the uniform of “extremist Islamism” are mistaking Islam for a monolithic entity and overlooking the fact that women taking part in “frivolous activity” on the beach represent a moderate type of Islam. In addition, far from fighting terrorism, prohibiting the burkini may paradoxically produce the same results terrorist groups seek: the ban makes Muslims feel they are not welcome in Western societies and indirectly pushes them towards anti-Western religious ideologies. The supposedly ‘unsafe’ character of the burkini is described in relation to its material characteristics and the meanings beyond its materiality. The similarities with a diving suit make the burkini ‘safe’ for swimming and symbolically connect it with happiness and leisure. Women show pictures of the burkini to normalise it as an unthreatening object, and deny that its materiality could point to terrorist ideologies. By stressing the positive characteristics of the burkini and rejecting its negative associations, Muslim women gain agency over their representations and their choices. “Control My Body”: Challenging the ‘Victims’ NarrativeMuslim women refuse to be considered ‘victims’ who need to be freed from their religious garments. Materiality is used in such discourses to show that the burkini –and hijab in general –is an object that does not necessarily symbolise patriarchal Islam. Personal stories beyond the materiality of the veil challenge stereotypes of a monolithic Islam and show that Muslim women alone are entitled to define meanings of the burkini. Muslim women share personal experiences about the veil to show that it is often not imposed. Journalist Nargess Moballeghi, for example, describes how her open-minded Muslim parents let her and her sisters decide for themselves about veiling. She writes, “No man was involved in my decision to put on my hijab. No man should be involved in telling me to take it off.” (The New Arab, 25 August 2015). Moballeghi depicts a type of Islam that is not necessarily patriarchal, one that leaves women free to wear (or not wear) the veil for a plethora of personal reasons. Indeed, many of the narratives consider the burkini ban to be not only Islamophobic, but also inconsistent with the principles of secular democracy such as religious freedom and freedom of expression. Prohibiting the burkini is a way of controlling women’s bodies, independent of their religion. Therefore, Muslim women underscore the fact that when France attempts to control their bodies, it is comparable to non-democratic Muslim countries. American human-rights activist Alaa Basatneh explains that non-Muslims want her to stop wearing the ‘oppressive’ hijab, while Muslims consider her too ‘westernised’. She comments that the two groups of people “Hold opposing views, but fundamentally have the same goal: to control my body” (Fusion, 26 August 2016). Basatneh reveals her struggles in coming to terms with her Muslim–Western identity by implicitly comparing France’s attitude to that of conservative Muslims who deny women their freedom of expression. The control over women’s bodies is further problematized by the predominance of white men in the burkini debate. Frenchwoman Ndella Paye describes the issue as follows:Who has the right to decide who is free and who is not? Guys that are really male and really white and that refuse to share their power with women? Because I am waiting the election of a [female] President of the la?que and feminist French Republic. […] Isn’t our body supposed to belong to us? Cannot we do what we want with our body? (Les mots sont importants, 12 September 2016)In her reflection on women’s freedom, Paye criticises France’s lack of gender equality. By making a piece of clothing the sole symbol of women’s oppression, French (and Western) authorities often refuse to acknowledge more urgent gender-related social issues such as the scarcity of women in key political positions. In addition, bearing in mind the French colonial past, white men taking decisions on behalf of Muslim women exercise a form of power that tends to be influenced by racial stereotypes. Muslim women, therefore, criticise white feminism because the effort of ‘saving’ them from their burkini erases their voices and connotes them as orientalist subjects instead of empowering them. Narratives that claim the right to wear the veil as a form of freedom of expression tend to frame the burkini as a fashion item rather than a religious object. By discussing fashion, Muslim women normalise the presence of the burkini within Western society and connote it as an unthreatening symbol of femininity. These narratives suggest that the burkini, as with women’s clothing in general, is not an indicator of a woman’s personality. They criticize people’s –and, in particular, men’s –tendency to impose superficial judgements and make assumptions on both Muslim and non-Muslim women for the way they look. Some of the narratives about the veil, indeed, not only refuse to consider it as a symbol of submission, but claim that it can also be a feminist fashion choice. Stylist Hana Tajima writes in this respect:It [the hijab] was a small resistance to the endless consumption of beauty. I get to choose which parts of me I show to which people, and I get to make that decision every day. I still have issues with body image, and they come and go as they did before, but I have never felt more ownership over my body. Never felt more in command of this wonderful home I find myself in. (The Telegraph, 24 August 2016) Tajima overturns some of the common assumptions about headscarves by saying that far from being an act of submission, covering up is a way of taking control of her own body. She refuses to subscribe to the idea that female nakedness equals empowerment and covering up is a symbol of submission, as implied by Prime Minister Valls when he claimed the bare-breasted ‘Marianne’ as a symbol of freedom. According to Tajima, wearing the burkini can be an act of resistance against the male gaze and the often-unattainable beauty standards set for Western women. Such discourses are reinforced by pictures of good-looking veiled women, as for example the fashion photos of a burkini-wearing model (Fig. 2) published in the fashion magazine Elle (Elturk, 3 May 2016). The pictures present the burkini as a fashionable alternative for women who subscribe to a different understanding of beauty and seek to reclaim their attractiveness while refusing to show their naked bodies.Muslim women challenge the ‘victims’ narrative by negotiating the meanings beyond the materiality of the burkini. On the one hand, they frame the burkini and hijab as fashion items that they should be able to wear in the name of freedom of expression, regardless of religious meanings. On the other hand, they show that the headscarf does not necessarily symbolise submission, but rather unveils different meanings, including the empowerment of women. In both cases, Muslim women claim their agency to determine the meanings of the headscarf without having other people – and especially white men – telling their stories. ConclusionWhen the picture of the woman on a beach in Nice went viral, it encouraged other Muslim women to voice their opinions and tell their experiences. They were metaphorically challenging the lack of storytelling power of the woman in the picture, whose experience and appearance were digitally circulated in terms that were not her own. While digitally sharing images can create problems with lack of consent, the picture’s mediation is also symptomatic of the Internet’s potential to define meanings and values through collectively negotiated narratives. The picture not only sparked conversations about the ‘burkini affair’ per se, but also allowed Muslim women to talk about visible Muslim identities and bodies in secular Western spaces. The Internet becomes a venue for creating these discourses in two main ways.First, in relation to the first research question, the Internet helps Muslim women negotiate their representations by permitting conversations around certain themes, with the ‘aggressors’ and ‘victims’ narratives being the predominant topics. While some of the women engage in activist campaigns, it is arguable that their major achievement lies in the visibility of their media practices, which include creating, sharing and circulating stories in various forms across different platforms. While the Internet does not radically subvert mainstream media representations, it does amplify Muslim voices that are seldom heard by society at large. Muslim women form transnational digital communities and address Islamophobia in global terms. In showing solidarity and identifying with the women fined on French beaches, and reclaiming an agency to their narratives that was denied to the woman in the viral picture, they collectively articulate a hybrid identity and form a virtual community around the same stylistic practices.Second, regarding the second research question, these digital media practices connote the Internet as an embodied space where the materiality of the veil is displayed, mediated and negotiated. The Internet both embeds forms of religious materiality and helps define the meanings beyond such materiality. By choosing the images and narratives they wish to make public, Muslim women take control of their hyper-visibility and challenge the idea that wearing a veil makes them invisible subjects. In writing their own stories, Muslim women connote the hijab as an embodied indication of their lived religion and claim the right to negotiate the complex semantic meanings it represents. While the veil’s materiality, as a religious object, points to religious meanings, Muslim women often present it in non-religious terms. On the one hand, they refuse to connote the burkini negatively by claiming that a piece of clothing – like a diving suit or a fashion item – is a simple material object that cannot be used as a symbol of terrorism or oppression. On the other hand, by associating the burkini with images and experiences of women who are successfully integrated within society, they connect the materiality of the burkini to purely positive meanings, such as comfort, freedom of expression and female empowerment. The analysis of burkini-related narratives shows that Muslim women often refrain from openly mentioning religious authorities and sacred texts in an implicit endorsement of la?cité. While further research on veiling practices might produce different results about religious meanings of the hijab, the narratives analysed in this article suggest that Muslim women subscribe to a type of religiosity that, despite its public visibility, belongs to the private sphere of practice. They challenge the idea that Islam is incompatible with a secular public sphere and that the burkini does not “respect good customs and la?cité”, as French authorities assert. They show they have internalised the language of la?cité by criticising the burkini ban through the very same concepts – such as human rights and gender equality – that French authorities employ to justify it. By discussing these concepts, which are familiar and unthreatening to a non-Muslim public, they shift the focus from Islam to multiculturalism, tolerance and integration. As a result, Muslim women attempt to change the conversation about hijab by showing and describing the materiality of the burkini not as a visible mark of religious incompatibility, but as a way to mediate cultural and gender meanings in Western society.Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. AcknowledgmentsWhile writing this article, I benefited from the stimulating and challenging conversations I had with my colleagues from the Center of Religious Studies at Ruhr University. I would like to thank my friend and former colleague Krissy Peterson for suggesting relevant literature for this article. Nicola Morris greatly improved my writing with her editing. I would also like to thank Dr. Mauro Gatti for invaluable support of many kinds. Most importantly, I thank all the women I talked about in this article, and I wish them best of luck with their blogs, articles, and videos. 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