Sahar’s Reviews > The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women > Status Update

“The collusion of white feminism with 'counter-terrorism' frameworks harms Muslim women repeatedly - all in the name of security and safety. But security and safety for who? Because Muslim women don't feel secure or safe when we and our families are constantly surveilled and policed.”

“The state can give as much funding as it wants to protect mosques from Islamophobic attacks, but it's unlikely to make a difference when the normalisation and justification of Islamophobia is coming from the very top. At this point, it's sticking a plaster over a gaping wound.”

“Muslim children have been referred to Prevent for meaningless reasons, such as a teacher mistaking an eight-year-old's T-shirt slogan for ISIS propaganda, students wearing Free Palestine badges or reading books related to
'terrorism'.“

“However, according to official figures, 87 per cent of Prevent referrals don't meet the criteria for intervention and aren't adopted as Channel cases. Therefore, the policy isn't preventing 'extremism' or ‘radicalisation' but simply pulling people into a complex and intimidating system because someone had a 'gut feeling' about them.”

“Amnesty International, who are working on the global 'Ban the Scan' campaign, reported that Black people are most at risk of being misidentified by facial recognition software. It's not just the software itself but the police using it as a surveillance tool for communities of colour - for example, the Met Police using it for events likely to be attended by people of colour, like Notting Hill Carnival…”

“White feminism celebrates these 'wins' in terms of women like Theresa May, Priti Patel and Cressida Dick coming to power, whilst also allowing a dangerous environment to be enforced by these very same women and the systems they work in - structures that tend to disproportionately affect Muslims and racialised people.”

“For these women, feminism is not about achieving freedom and justice for Muslims […] Instead, it's about working within the existing structures which allow white women to sit at the top - it's a feminism of compromise rather than liberation.”

“The white saviour mindset of white feminism rarely reaches Muslim women migrants, though. There's so much rhetoric around 'saving' women in other countries, but as soon as those same women come to Western countries to seek refuge, the rhetoric is flipped on its head and it becomes a problem of integration…”

“White feminists & far-right movements usually sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but when it comes to Muslim women, both sit in a dangerously similar sphere of thinking. In the European context, this is the thinking that has now filtered all the way to the top & translated into sweeping legislation that surveils & controls the bodies of Muslim women, whilst also justifying violence against Muslims”

“White feminism regularly frames Muslim men as the epitome of misogyny and a danger to the Western way of life, which not only paints all Muslim men with the same brush, but also implies that Muslim women are passive agents who are doing nothing to push back on misogyny in our communities.“