When I cover myself, I make it implicitly difficult for people to judge me according to my appearance. I cannot be categorised because of my attractiveness or lack thereof. It is a myth that women in today’s society are liberated. What kind of freedom can there be when a woman cannot walk down the street without every aspect of her physical self being "checked out’’? Allah (swt) has provided the women in Islam with such boundaries so as to provide protection for us from the Kufar, evident in the following verse: "O Prophet! Tell your wives and daughters and the womenfolk of the Believers to draw their outer garments about themselves (when they go abroad). That is better, so that they may be recognised and not molested. And Allah is forgiving, Merciful." Al-Ahzab (33:59)

El-Gharib (1996-97) defined media simply as all means of communication, which disseminate information and messages from a conveyor source to a recipient with the aim of effectively convincing the recipient. The media spectrum dispenses in accordance with their intended audiences. This spectrum ranges from limited media scope requirements in limited sectors to worldwide masses of target population. International news agencies, television stations, radio broadcasting services, the press, and more recently, the Internet, dominate mass media.

Generally speaking, Muslims in Australia believe that they suffer from ‘bad press’, and that the media bear much of the responsibility for this. On the one hand, it is argued that the media is a barometer of community relations in Australia; however others believe that the media does more than just report – it also influences how people interact with each other.

Despite the aims and actions of the negative media towards the Muslim community, and in particularly ‘oppressed’ women, the incident of September 11 created a greater opportunity for the media to represent the oppressed women in the Islamic world. The so called ‘freedom campaign’ instigated by Bush and his allies sought first before anything to allow women to wear make-up and remove their head gear. The media depicted Islam to be filthy and evil, therefore generating a hostile atmosphere towards the Muslim community. The image of the Afghani women in their burqa is all too familiar to us as a symbol of oppression. The removal of the veil by the Afghani women was championed as a pursuit of freedom for women. The images of Muslim’s leading ordinary lives in the community are curiously lacking from our screens. Islam now breathed fear. The so-called war against terror became a war against Islam and more so against the orders of Allah towards Muslim women. Their values became immediately under scrutiny. Men in beards and women in veils now became the hard-line terrorists because they were against the tyranny of western civilisation infiltrating their homes.

Oppression, or the sense of inferiority, begins with the sense of not belonging. Muslims today in Australia are made to feel that they do not belong, despite being pioneers and amongst the earliest settlers in Australia’s harsh outback. This notion that we Muslims don’t belong in Australia should be demolished. This becomes difficult when the influential media continues to shape peoples’ opinions of us and even our opinions of ourselves.

For many years now, a trend has emerged in the media – the demonisation of Islam and Muslims. The word ‘Islam’ means ‘Peace’, as well as "the Submission to the will of Allah". As you are well aware, our way of life as Muslims is endowed with total harmony and fulfillment, yet the media does not portray this image. As El-Gharib (1996-97) also noted, television, books, newspapers and magazines are used to present Islam as being a backward and barbaric religion. It is seen as oppressive and unjust; and more than this it is seen as being most oppressive to women. These various forms of media misrepresent Islam in different ways, however overall achieve the same negative result – the creation of a growing barrier of misunderstanding and hostility between Islam and it’s followers, and the West.

In his draft to the book "Muslim Minority Communities: Demographic and Socio-Economic Profiles, Professor of Sociology at Monash University, Dr Gary Bouma, provided data on Australian Muslims. According to the 1996 Census, the Muslim population consisted of 1.13% of the total population of 17.7 million. Of these, the majority are Australian born Muslims. To date, 67 ethnic groups belong to the Islamic Religion, indicating those who were once non-existent in Australia, are very much becoming part of the Australian landscape. Although the majority of Muslims are blue-collar workers, the number of youth gaining an education has increased immensely.

This is partly due to the hard work of Muslim student associations such as the Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth (FAMSY). Muslim women students have had to interact with the western society. It is surprising to some that our religion allows us to be educated. Imagine what they would think if they knew that it is compulsory for Muslim women to seek an education, religious or otherwise.

Islam has made it a duty on every Muslim male and female to gain knowledge, considered to be a superior act of worship in Islam. Preventing a Muslim woman from gaining an education is therefore an un-Islamic act. A hasan hadith narrated by Ibn Majah states: "Seeking knowledge is a duty on every Muslim", is again evidence for this. The ignorance and lack of broad vision of today’s society is a major contributor to these negative stereotypes of our women. Most do not know anything about Islam and they do not want to become educated on what they don’t know.

The media has become an enemy towards Islam, only pursuing to exasperate Muslims living within Australia, as well as the rest of the world. The media plays a critical role in non-Muslim society. The news provides us with an insight into the world around us. A world where Mujahideen are called ‘terrorists’, where the Straight Path is called ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. The best solution to the threat of the media lies in active censorship and in education. We should become aware that what we are viewing is not necessarily the reality, rather an ignorant view of reality.

The real reality, however, is quite staggering to observers of this religion. There are many stories of conversions to the deen of Allah. Many are very touching and poignant and serve us as a reminder that Allah guides whom He wills often in ways and in circumstances we would never imagine.

Considering the intense anti-Islamic and hostile media propaganda these past few years, some with a particularly strong emphasis on the ‘supposed’ degrading position of women in Islam, we feel that those women are exceptional who accept Islam and who were able to separate the negative stereotyping and nonsense from the reality of faith. Women are most clearly the signposts of Islam and whether Muslim men like it or not, they are often judged by the perception people have of just how men treat their women. Muslim women stand out more so than men when they fully practice their religion, one reason obviously being their observance of Islamic dress or hijab.

Muslim women, especially reverts, are by no means the empty-headed, submissive, rejects of western society that some essays and articles written by so-called journalists and researchers would have us believe. Most of those non-Muslim writers in many cases just seek to find the sensational or even make it up to sell books or papers or to serve their own preset agendas or to validate their own philosophical or ideological positions. They usually fail miserably to understand or relate the true underlying reasons for so many Muslim women’s acceptance of and strict adherence to Islam.

Much of what is written by such people, especially the women amongst them, stems from their inability to face the reality of the true motivations of intelligent, thoughtful, western women, both young and old, for accepting Islam. Biased, slanted, and incomplete reporting is often due to this plain old ignorance and significant doses of arrogance and pride. Western culture pretends to have liberated women and the western media frowns upon Islam as oppressive to female rights. The reality, however, is the opposite.

At the age of 14 I remember being unable to fully participate in the social and cultural environment. I became extremely conscious of my appearance at all times, insecure about the shape of my body and the clothes I was wearing. Substantial pressure is placed on women in the west to correspond to an impracticable ideal of beauty. Women are not allowed to grow old and their bodies are for public scrutiny. Eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia nervosa) are very common. At the same time they have to have brilliant careers and be good partners to their husbands, boyfriends and children. Therefore we have two clashing expectations. The West is lost in search for the solutions.

In western countries, non-Islamic ideologies are more prevalent than Islamic education. The literature about Islam found in Australia has been written mainly by non-Muslims, or so-called Muslims who have been heavily influenced by Western education, or obtained degrees in Islamic Education under the training of non-Muslims. Throughout western society, the practice of Muslim women going about with Hijab has resulted in extreme points of view towards their so-called oppression and lack of freedom. Despite apparent negative portrayal of Muslim women, there continues to be an abundance of Western women reverting to Islam. Firstly, Islam has given women the basic right to freedom of speech. In the early days of Islam, the leaders of the Islamic State regarding legal issues consulted women. Rights that were appointed to Muslim women since the beginning of time are only just surfacing for non-Muslims. The wearing of hijab by Muslim women would have to be one of the most distorted images ever fabricated by the media in Western Society. Despite the similarity between the dress code for Christian Nuns and Muslim women, the media fails to recognise this, and deforms their image. For some reason, the practice of religion is exclusive to a hierarchy of the church.

Islam believes we are ALL equally accountable for our deeds. The battle to degrade the oppressive image of Muslim women continues to rage. A television producer recently approached a group of women, wanting to produce a documentary about Muslim women in Australia. The condition for the interview was that all women involved MUST wear a black chador. All the women declined the interview, as none of the women usually wear a black chador. This is not a pantomime. What are the intentions of the media? What image of Muslim women do they want to portray? An oppressed image to coincide with the typical stereotypes non-Muslims have of Muslim women in Australia. Another case involved a Muslim woman, who was again approached for an interview, however she also declined as they demanded she wear a niqab for a television interview, when she normally does not wear hijab.

As Adbel-Fattah (2001), a member of the Australian Arabic Council, wrote in an article for The Age (06/12/01), predominately one of Australia’s major newspapers, many have come to perceive the Muslim woman’s mode of dress as a sign of inferiority, attributing it to male oppression. Nothing could be further from the truth. Frances Riggs, a resident leaving to work in a women’s group in Indonesia, strongly believed that women are seen as property, blaming the Islamic religion as the cause of this. The crisis in the Gulf War in 1992, was the starting point for discrimination against Muslims in general. In accordance with this, a Muslim women’s conference was held by the Muslim Women’s Association (MWA) in September 1992 to identify recommendations to combat racism.

The background history between Islam and the west will shed some light as to why Muslims are portrayed so negatively in the media. Some strong contributing factors are the medieval western conflict, the crusades, the oil crisis of the 1970’s, the Lebanese civil war, the Iranian revolution, the Gulf war and the explosive Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All of these events have caused Islam to be consistently associated with violence and unresolved conflict. And the view of Muslims as being violent typically explains why we are seen to pose a threat to the West. While we view Islam’s rapid global growth as wonderful, the media perceives the fact that many around the world are embracing Islam, as dangerous. One of the most effective ways the media attempts to somehow prevent Islam being seen in a positive frame is to develop propaganda against Muslims and our faith.

Muslims are most obvious in their affiliation to Islam, which has often been ridiculed by our society tending more towards the cynical approach. We wear the hijab, and we are seen as fundamentalists and extremists. Because of this, the media is able to use our hijab as a means of exploiting Muslim women, and degrading them. The media assumes automatically, that the actions of one Muslim is representative of the general Muslim population in Australia. This sets a precedent for members of society to abuse and degrade Muslims, particularly Muslim women with hijab. In current affairs programs, we are constantly bombarded with images of Muslims as savage terrorists, killing innocent people with no remorse. What results from this is that the common people, the viewers of these programs, recognise and accept only the labels, and therefore with Islam they immediately associate negative images.

Myself for example, I am a practicing Muslim woman yet I also adopt some Western ideas having been born and brought up in the West. I therefore represent many Muslims who are rarely depicted in the media; proud of my Islamic identity though aware of my position in the West. Directly related to this, an issue that is close to the heart, is how the media depicts Muslim Women. Kabbani (1994), in the introduction to "Imperial Fictions: Europe’s Myths of the Orient," discusses how a journalist from the magazine Vanity Fair came for her material on an article about Islam. When this article was published Kabbani was disappointed to say the least. "It was one more unrelieved catalogue of horrors about Islam…. It ignored any of the important debates within Islam about the rights of women. It distorted every sentence I had uttered…" being subject to the enormity of degradation as a Muslim Woman, it is the aberration that hurts the most.

With no insight into Islam, journalists and writers condemn the religion’s attitude towards women. In all forms of media, we are constantly portrayed as being weak and submissive to a religion, which seeks to oppress and dominate. Muslim women who choose to cover themselves are pitied, and depicted as victims of a patriarchal system. This is not the case. In Islam we have a place of respect and equality. Despite the beliefs advocated by the media, our religion does not offer us as a lower status than men, and the Qu’ran clearly states: "And for women are rights over men/ similar to those of men over women." (2:26)

Where the public believes that they are being presented with educational material about Islam from a reputable and reliable source, all that they are being provided with are the confused opinions of individual producers and journalists - many of whom begin their research with preconceived ideas and aims.

Why does the media choose to misrepresent Islam and Muslims, particularly Muslim women, in such a manner? The question is one with no determined answer. Many may ponder that this frequent theme of ignorance is at its roots. That those in control of the media are simply uneducated on Islam, evident in the articles and programs they produce. However, on further reflection this argument can easily be dismissed. There are too many good resources from which the true Islam can be researched, and found.

Unfavorable views of Islam and Muslims naturally leads to the lack of sympathy towards the suffering of Muslims everywhere in the world. The most serious damage however, is referring to the hidden damage, which happens to the mentality of the Muslim youth, our younger brothers and sisters who have been raised in this country and who have been subjected to a flood of spiteful publicity against Islam and its followers. Many of our youth have lost the self-assurance and self-esteem a Muslim should posses. So enormous is the damage caused by the media’s misconceptions of Islam, that a brother took some time before he realised that jihad isn’t terrorism, and it isn’t killing Jews and Christians. Alhamdulillah, we have organizations such as FAMSY in Australia to assist the youth in dealing with the pressures faced with them being in western society. The Muslim Women’s Association is also available as an avenue and resource to promote the values of Muslim women in Australian society. The aim of this organisation is to pursue the rights of Muslim women in Australia, rather than seek any special privileges.

InshaAllah our aim is to not lose sight of the bigger picture – we are all here to strengthen the Ummah, and please Allah (swt). May He help us to lead those who have gone astray, and help us educate the non-Muslims about this wonderful way of life called Islam. A life abundant in rewards, happiness, rights and freedom. Not just a religion, but a way of life consisting of an amazing blend of simplicity and rationality. THIS is Islam.

Abdo, M. 1992, Bridging the gap - National Muslim Womens Conference 9-10/10/92, Muslim Womens Association, Sydney.

Bawany, I. 1997, Islam – Our choice, Turkish Religious Foundation, Ankara.

Bouma, G. [et.al] (2000) Muslims in Australia : A Socio-demographic profile, Institute of Minority Muslim Affairs, Sydney.

Cleland, B. 2001, ‘Spreading the message of Islam in Anglo-Australia’, SALAM, March-April 2001, p.6-8.

El-Gharib, K. 1997, ‘The Role of Friday Khutbah in the Islamic Media’, Nidaúl Islam Magazine, December – January 1996-97, Sydney.

Kabbani, R. 1994, Imperial Fictions: Europes Myths of the Orient, Pandora, London.

Maududi, A. 1981, The meaning of the Qu’ran, Islamic Publications Ltd., Lahore.

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