Amina Yaqin

Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity

Abstract This article explores the significance of a new Muslim lifestyle doll called Razanne who is being marketed over the internet as a role model for Muslim girls living in the West. While the doll is presented as an alternative to hedonistic Barbie, it bears a striking resemblance to her and participates in the same consumer culture. In contrast to Barbie, Razannes sexuality is downplayed and she has a headscarf (hijab) and full-length coat (jilbab) for outdoor use, which are designed to encourage modesty and emphasize her Muslim identity whilst at the same time allowing space for following the latest fashions for indoor wear. The doll participates in the creation of a normative visual stereotype of the Muslim, which has emerged both out of Western stereotypes of Muslims, and the self-stereotyping that occurs amongst Muslims living in Western contexts. In minority contexts, Muslims feel obliged to perform their Muslimness through dress and other actions. Razanne, it is argued is a stereotype of a stereotype. She participates both in the homogenization of a transnational Islamic identity and the conceptualization of a global Islamic community (ummah) that are taking place over the Internet.

MUSLIMS IN THE FRAME

‘Islam and Freedom: are they destined to clash?’(Newsweek). ‘Muhammad Cartoon row intensifies’ (BBC). ‘Burka makes women prisoners, says President Sarkozy’ (Times). ‘Universities urged to spy on Muslims’ (Guardian). The headlines that scream out at us every day from news hoardings and television screens seem unanimous in the picture they paint of Muslims: unenlightened outsiders who, while they may live and work in the West, still have an allegiance to values different from those recognized in Europe and North America. Whether the controversy is over veiling, cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel-Palestine, or protests about the knighthood given to Salman Rushdie, Muslims appear always as a problematic presence, troubling those values of individualism and freedom said to define western nations. In this issue of Interventions we seek to critically analyse such recurring yet reductive images. The Framing Muslims research project, which provided inspiration for this volume, seeks to interrogate the paradigms through which Muslim communities in the West are understood and represented. Most contemporary attempts to address this issue have focused on one or two particular genres of representation to construct an argument for the

Mohsin Hamid in Conversation

Mohsin Hamid grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. He received his higher education at Princeton University and Harvard Law School in the United States. He worked for several years in Management Consultancy in New York and then as a freelance journalist in Lahore. He now lives and works in London. His first novel, Moth Smoke, was published in the UK in 2000 by Granta and has been translated into more than ten languages. It won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Pen-Hemmingway Award. His second novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, appeared in 2007 with Hamish Hamilton. It is a story about an encounter between the narrator Changez, an American-educated Pakistani, and an unnamed and silent American interlocutor whose motivations are shadowy and who provides a listening ear for Changez’s narrative about his life in America and the impact of the 9/11 attacks. The novel was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. Mohsin is also a journalist whose essays have appeared in publications as diverse as Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and, in this country, The Independent and The Guardian.

Inside the Harem, Outside the Nation: Framing Muslims in Radio Journalism

Since 9/11, Muslims in the West have been repeatedly exposed to questions from various quarters about their supposed conflicting allegiances: first to the secular law of the nation-states in which they are resident, and secondly to ‘international’ Islamic or shariah law. The subjectivity of the Muslim community has been heightened by intensive media attention which frames their representation within the current context of the international war against terror. Inevitably, they are juxtaposed as the enemy within. I will argue that this frame of representation has been explored on BBC Radio 4 with a series of programmes on Muslims, including Inside the Harem (2004) and Taking the Cricket Test (2006). The limits of representation were also tested in the BBC Radio 4 series entitled Koran and Country aired in 2005, which included topics ranging from the ‘biography of a bomber’ to Muslim faith schools. I suggest that even in the ostensibly ‘liberal’ environment of BBC radio, and in programmes designed to mediate Muslim practices to a western audience, an ambivalence over the delimiting of areas of social custom is in evidence. These programmes feed into the current newsworthiness of Muslims and their truth claims are seemingly underlined by the ‘authenticity’ of the presenters. However, by relying on stereotypes and arranging them within the recognized frame – as a problematic body requiring both to be explained to wider society and bedded into the norms by which that society is understood to operate – do they really offer any kind of alternative critique of prevailing discursive orthodoxy?

Truth, Fiction and Autobiography in the Modern Urdu Narrative Tradition

HISTORICIZING THE URDU NOVEL From its various beginnings in the nineteenth century and ever since the rise of print capitalism on the Indian subcontinent, the Urdu novel has become a prime medium of expression for writers seeking to fuse the narrative traditions of both the East and the West. As a hybrid genre which took shape during the nineteenth century, the Urdu novel’s early beginnings were associated with the theme of historical romance; this eventually gave way to the influence of realism in the first half of the twentieth century. By and large, the Urdu novel incorporates influences encompassingthefantasticaloralstorytellingtraditionofthedastanorthe qissa (elaborate lengthy heroic tales of adventure, magic and honour), the masnavi (a form of narrative poem), Urdu grammars, religious pamphlets and journals, and the European novel. 1 Proceeding initially from an historical overview of the Urdu novel, focusing on specific instances of its development, the main thrust of this essay will be the link between women and the novel; specifically, I wish to highlight the development of the ‘local narrative voice’ of Urdu fiction in women’s writing, including autobiography. Due to its greater availability in written form, which was facilitated by the new printing presses in India, Urdu prose writing enjoyed a considerable increase in readership during the period of British colonial rule. This boost in popularity was accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century in particular by the flourishing of such journals as Avadh Akhbar, Tehzibu’l Akhlaq and Avadh Panc. According to M. Asaduddin, the ‘intellectual-cultural-literary encounter between the East and the West’ first took place in the writings which appeared in these periodicals, reflecting a dialogic engagement with ‘the terms of colonial modernity’. 2 With their mixture of original writings, fiction and

From Islamic Fundamentalism to a New Life in the West: Ali Eteraz and the Muslim Comedy Memoir

This chapter analyses the Muslim memoir as a hybrid text that both authenticates and satirises the subjectivity of the narrator. Given the social capital of the memoir form, I argue that its trustworthiness is inverted by the author Ali Eteraz to question the premise of social trust. The memoir delineates social trust through the expression of piety and Muslim modernity articulated by the narrator in his different avatars. Eteraz’s satirical representations of himself invite the reader to read against the grain of the by now familiar Muslim fundamentalist-turned-Sufi story. He reverses the contexts of Islamist violence with the performativity of humour and it is in that humour that we can see traces of a multicultural coexistence and a rebuilding of social trust.

La convivencia, la mezquita and al-Andalus: An Iqbalian vision

Abstract This article offers a critical close reading of the Urdu poet philosopher Muhammad Iqbal’s poem “Masjid-e Qurtaba” (The Mosque of Cordoba), written in 1933 when the poet travelled to Spain. He was officially invited there to pray, a unique occurrence since the mosque’s conversion into a cathedral. The poem is illustrative of the period known as al-Andalus, celebrated for its cross-cultural spirit of la convivencia (coexistence) under the sovereignty of the Umayyad dynasty. The article argues that the secular and the religious are not diametrically opposed ideas in the Indo-Islamic tradition of Urdu, and that Iqbal’s poem articulates a historic cultural conversation at a time of political national identification in the 1930s.

Desbaratar la nación: modelamiento genérico de la poesía urdu

A finales del siglo XIX la revolucion wagneriana sacudio toda Europa configurando no solo una nueva manera de entender el arte musical sino tambien permitiendo a una determinada clase social legitimarse y distinguirse del resto por medio de un «arte nuevo». El wagnerismo fue un movimiento urbano, burgues y ligado a ciertos aspectos de la intelectualidad. Por estas mismas caracteristicas pronto fueron muchos los que quisieron adherirse a la «nueva religion» por medio del snobismo cultural. A traves de estas paginas veremos como la mujer fue siempre vista como incapaz de comprender la nueva musica y, por tanto, condenada a ser el blanco de las criticas contra este snobismo: por una parte, por las costumbres teatrales de fin de siglo, que convierten los coliseos operisticos en los lugares ideales para ver y ser visto; por otra, por la creencia en la inferioridad intelectual de la mujer, que la incapacita para comprender este nuevo arte, sintesis de inteligencia y sentimiento, reservado solo para aquellos iniciados que siguen con fe «la musica del porvenir».Intentar comprender las situaciones que las mujeres, jovenes y mas mayores, procedentes de las migraciones turcas y magrebies viven en Francia al inicio del siglo M, implica plantearse la cuestion en el campo del amplio movimiento migratorio que ha permitido la llegada, sobre el suelo frances, de numerosos extranjeros entre los anos cincuenta y noventa del siglo pasado.Este articulo analiza el campo de la escritura de mujeres inmigrantes en Quebec. Tras una primera parte, que aborda el campo de la literatura de inmigracion en Quebec, desde el punto de vista de la creacion, de la recepcion y de la investigacion, la segunda parte plantea la especificidad de la escritura de mujeres inmigrantes y la tercera parte profundiza en la obra de tres escritoras provenientes de horizontes diversos: Marie-Celie Agnant, Abla Farhoud y Ying Chen.Resumen Este articulo se ocupa de analizar el uso de las nuevas tecnologias e Internet en el proceso de creacion de nuevos espacios de relacion, o colectivos en red, surgidos en la praxis feminista espanola online como una propuesta de activismo. El objetivo principal es mostrar un panorama de algunas de las comunidades virtuales en Espana que se sirven de Internet como un instrumento de activismo en relacion a la lucha contra la violencia hacia las mujeres. El articulo muestra como estos colectivos en red son usados para construir un proyecto colectivo de agencia femenina. El articulo analiza tambien el esfuerzo de la praxis feminista online a la hora de reescribir la esfera publica en el ciberespacio y como esta intencion manifiesta ha llevado a la creacion de espacios en la Red disenados por y para las mujeres que se constituyen en colectivos en red creados a partir de acciones civicas feministas en el ambito de la lucha contra la violencia hacia las mujeres. Palabras clave: colectivos en red; praxis feminista online; violencia contra las mujeres. Abstract This article explores the use of new technologies and the Internet in the process of creating new relational spaces, or online collectives, which have arisen in Spanish online feminist practice as an activist proposal in the particular sphere of activism fighting violence against women. Its main objective is to provide an overview of some of the diverse women’s communities online in Spain that are using the Internet for issues of activism in relation to violence against women. The article argues that these online collectives are used to preserve a sense of a project of female agency. This article also analyzes some of the Spanish feminist efforts to re-write the public sphere in cyberspace and the creation of women’s spaces on the Internet by and for women, which are constituted as online collectives created from the base of civic and feminist-oriented activities dealing with violence against women. Keywords: online collectives, feminist practices online, violence against women.Resumen Este trabajo aborda la realidad de la Brecha Digital (Digital Divide) desde una perspectiva de genero. Con ese termino se empezo a estudiar a mitad de la decada de los anos noventa todo lo relacionado con las especiales dificultades de acceso a las tecnologias de la informacion y la comunicacion, y a Internet en concreto, que presentan determinados colectivos o perfiles de usuario, en funcion de la edad, el sexo, el area geografica, las politicas publicas y privadas, la discapacidad, etcetera. Ello ha hecho que se evaluen los problemas o la falta de condiciones que originan esa brecha tanto a nivel endogeno como exogeno. Se justifica asimismo la necesidad de profundizar en la alfabetizacion digital tanto general como sectorial, como forma de ir avanzando en la superacion de la llamada Segunda Brecha Digital en el futuro mas proximo posible. Palabras clave: Brecha digital, genero, alfabetizacion digital, Internet. Abstract This work approaches the reality of the Digital Divide from a perspective of gender. With that term it started to study in the half of the decade of the nineties everything related to the special difficulties of access to the technologies of the information and the communication, and specially to Internet, that certain groups or user’s profiles present, depending on the age, the sex, the geographical area, the public and private policies, the disability, etc. It has made that the problems or the lack of conditions that originate that division are evaluated so much to endogenous as exogenous level. In the same way, it is justified the need of going into the digital literacy, both general and sectorial literacy, as a way of advancing in the overcoming of the called Second Digital Divide in the as near as possible future. Keywords: Digital divide, gender, digital literacy, Internet.This paper aims at exploring from an interdisciplinary theoretical framework the development of the representation of conciliation of work, leisure and family time in Spanish advertising, in general, and in Spanish advertising addressed to children, in particular. Our argument is structured in four parts: firstly, we tackle the relevance of looking at advertising when presently discussing the theme of conciliation of public and private spheres; secondly, we focus on the stereotypes upon which contemporary advertising constructs its discourse; afterwards, we revise how those stereotypes have been historically informed and how they have evolved; and, finally, we analyse children’s advertising as a case study, since, given children’s vulnerability before media messages, the research in this area is highly needed.In this paper we analyzed the presence and the professional labour of jurist women in the Codificatiori General Comission, the most important consultant medium of Justice Ministery, during the last years of franquism. It is of big interest the labour done by the lawyer Maria Telo in such Comission and her efforts to improve the juridic situation of women in civil law, that toke the form in the law of the 2nd of may 1975.Historicamente las mujeres han estado unidas al espacio domestico- privado. En los valores de genero tienen una gran importancia los referidos a las divisiones espaciales, las cuales se han marcado tradicionalmente siguiendo unas oposiciones binarias en funcion del genero: lo publico frente a lo privado, el trabajo exterior frente al interior. Todo ello forma parte de un sistema de organizacion social fundamentado en una red de simbolos compleja. En el arte, hay muchas mujeres que trabajan y reflexionan en sus proyectos artisticos sobre el espacio domestico o privado. La reclusion de la mujer en la esfera privada durante siglos ha sido muy importante a la hora de abordar por parte de la mujer determinados temas en sus producciones artisticas como: el espacio de la casa y los roles que ha desarrollado habitualmente la mujer en dicho espacio.En 2005, a propuesta del Ministerio de Trabajo y por acuerdo del consejo de Ministros, Ma Angeles Duran Heras recibio la Medalla de Oro al Merito en el trabajo.El articulo presenta la obra de Nathalie Gassel. Esta novelista, poeta, fotografa y culturista belga del siglo XXI, cuyos trabajos podrian ser definidos como «autoficciones», aborda conceptos relacionados con la teoria y la cultura queer, tales como performatividad, S/M o postpornografia. El objetivo de este articulo es definir como esos conceptos son mostrados en los trabajos de Gassel, especialmente en su relacion con la concepcion postmoderna de un cuerpo queer.El tema escogido para este articulo es el analisis de la peculiar relacion laboral que se establece entre mujeres en el caso del empleo de hogar; una relacion que, para empleadas y empleadoras, se presenta como algo mas que un trabajo, pero algo menos que un empleo. El empleo de hogar genera una situacion de dependencia asimetrica entre mujeres que constituye un escenario optimo para observar como las desigualdades derivadas de la division sexual del trabajo (desigualdades inter-generos) se presentan atravesadas por las de clase y etnia (desigualdades intra-genero) en un contexto de capitalismo global.The article looks at the history of the construction of «private life» since the sixteenth century in order to demonstrate that this sphere is linked, on the one hand, to the difference between men and women, i.e. the construction of sex and gender, and, on the other, h to the residential and urban spaces familiar to Western readers. This historical overview enables us to observe how sexual identity and the creation of «privacy» are both essential to the triumph of moral notions, ideas about the «good life» and the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. It also shows that this culture is in decline, although we do not have sufficient information to analyze what kind of culture is replacing it, or the effects of this replacement on everyday and collective life. With the triumph of the private sphere over the public, both the idea of intimacy and the idea of politics paradoxically disappear. With their disappearance, urban differentiation ends, and perhaps the difference between men and women becomes irrelevant as it is superceded by other spaces and other identities.Resumen En la Granada moderna, en un momento historico en que la mujer estaba muy limitada legal y socialmente, se pueden encontrar casos excepcionales en los que estas se convirtieron en promotoras de importantes espacios concebidos como sepultura de sus familias. Normalmente sus nombres no salieron a la luz, escondidos tras los de sus maridos o tras el apellido del linaje al que pertenecian. Algunos de estos lugares habilitados como capillas funerarias en el interior de los templos granadinos dificilmente podrian ser ahora identificados como tales, y menos aun, dar testimonio del alcance, de la importante actuacion de mecenazgo llevada a cabo por aquellas mujeres que los gestionaron. Palabras clave: mujer, Antiguo Regimen, mecenas, tumba, capilla. Abstract In modern Granada, at a time in history when women were very restricted in legal and social terms, there were some exceptional cases in which they became the instigators of important spaces which were conceived as burial places for their families. Their names were not normally made public, as they were hidden behind the names of their husbands or the surname of their lineage. It would be difficult to identify some of these places endowed as funeral chapels inside Granada’s churches, and even more difficult to understand the scope of the important patronage undertaken by the women who were their benefactors. Keywords: woman, Ancient Regime, benefactor, tomb, chapelIn the twenties, the new mass society brought about the fact that a greater number of citizens not only had access to education, but also benefited from the consumer society and new leisure spaces. Women also managed to gain greater access to the public sphere as they started to take the jobs that were traditionally held by men. This phenomenon meant that fashion was readjusted to the new needs of women. Women’s cultural image underwent a revolutionary change: it became defeminised in order to be masculinised as a symbol of liberation. All this process favoured the secularisation of society. The church hierarchy reacted inflexibly in the face of what it considered to be moral corruption. The church hierarchy resorted once more to its best mediators to maintain its level of influence: Catholic women. If these exercised moral maternity in their families by passing on certain values, now they had to put these values into practice and try to defend the Catholic doctrine.The sociability in the blasquist republicanism was conceived like an important instrument of popular education and the social emancipation. Also, it was used fundamently for the men were educated in the exercice of a more complete citizenship. l-lowever, the sociability also facilitated to the women too —overall by means of family activities— enjoying of a cult leisure time in relation with cultural and political life of the republicanism. The femenine associations connected to the blasquism were also an important instrument of social action from which a minority of women began to organize and demanded own emancipation.Este estudio aborda un recorrido por la obra poetica de Nancy Willard centrandose en el caracter marcadamente visual de su imaginacion, y estableciendo conexiones entre su obra y la de mujeres poetas norteamericanas que la precedieron, sobre todo Elizabeth Bishop. El frecuente recurso a la fantasia y la perspectiva infantil es comun a ambas, y ello establece un nexo facilmente explotable. Willard es capaz de recrear en su poesia un retorno a la infancia, a la inocencia que interpreta desde los ojos del nino una serie de situaciones ordinarias para el adulto, y logra a traves de estas estrategias de desfamiliarizacion que el lector disfrute de nuevo con acontecimientos triviales que adquieren una nota de aventura y magia.The opposition between the family and the job, particulary for the women, gibven the current socialization o the female identity, is illustrated in this work. We argue that women find obstacles in their career prospects from both theorethical and empirically perspectives, due to that opposition. We deal with gender, subjectivity and identity.La mujer esta muy en el discurso periodistico sobre el Otro. La mujer arabe es un tema noticiero porque hace referencia a otros temas discursivamente adyacentes. En este trabajo planteo unas reflexiones tras observar la aparicion de la mujer arabe en el discurso periodistico.This article deals with the unequal feminine prominence in the field of the secular culture, such as the socialist and anarchist movements, the freemasonry or the republicanism, through the study of some form of heterodox sociability, specifically the register of the children, the matrimonies and the civil burials. The rites are elements of an alternative way of life to the. catholic one, as private acts with public implication. The participation of women in these ceremonies was very frequent, especially in the labor movement. This feminine presence cannot be explained only as an acritical acceptance of the values of the male members, but, in a context of great social pressure on the feminine moral and religiousness, must be interpreted as the fruits of the taking of stands of many women, identified with the laicism and the progress that publicly expressed their ideals.Painting is an essential source for the history and a revealing factor for research into women´s role in society throughout history. This short study is a broad analysis of the dialogue between women, architecture and painting during the transition from the Modern to the Contemporary Era.The melodramatic biography of La Fornarina raises a large number of the burning issues of the first fifteen years of the 2Oth century: the establishment of a new musical genre —the so-called one-person song— the social ascent of women, together with their difficulties in establishing sexual freedom, the extreme poverty of the lower levels of Spanish society, the various faces of prostitution, the changes in social life that would give rise to new forms of entertainment and shows in urban settings and would result in vaudeville... In the Spanish imagination at the beginning of the century, La Fornarina represented the first popular erotic myth, and an image of modernity for many intellectual people who acclaimed and adored her.Jo tinc un desig etern de fugida i un arrap de mort en les entranyes que deserten migdies i coloms, un grapat de mots coent-se en el forn de les hores fosques, i la fel nua.