Content uploaded by Karen Culcasi
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Karen Culcasi on May 08, 2024
Content may be subject to copyright.
Available via license: CC BY 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
URN:NBN::tsv-oa129457
DOI: 10.11143/fennia.129457
Gendered orientalism and the agency of Syrian,
Muslim women refugees
KAREN CULCASI
Culcasi, K. (2024) Gendered orientalism and the agency of Syrian, Muslim
women refugees. Fennia 202(1) XX–XX. https://doi.org/10.11143/fennia.129457
Orientalist discourses have long recirculated the idea that
Muslim women are oppressed victims of Islam; an idea that has
denigrated Muslims and positioned white, Christians as superior.
For Muslim women refugees specically, the gendered orientalist discourse
of victimization has reappeared on both sides of the debate on Syrian
refugee resettlement in the United States (U.S.) (and other Western
states). Within anti-resettlement circles, the narrative of Muslim women
as oppressed victims has been leveraged as a reason to stop Syrian
refugee resettlement; based on a rationale that their lifestyles and values
are incompatible with liberal, Western societies. Pro-resettlement circles,
on the other hand, often position Muslim women's victimization as a
reason to resettle them, because these women need to be ‘saved’ from
both war and gender oppression. In other words, the same homogenizing
essentialism that positions Muslim women as victims has been used to
both reject and to support Muslim refugee resettlement. Yet the
representations of Muslim women as oppressed victims of Islam exist in
stark contrast to the strong, capable, and resilient Syrian Muslim women
refugees scattered across Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA),
Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere. Building from postcolonial and feminist
literature, I illustrate the ways that gendered orientalism has fueled both
sides of the Syrian refugee resettlement debate. Then, I review literature
on Islamic feminism and Muslim women's agency, noting its divergences
from mainstream Western feminism. Lastly, drawing from interviews I
conducted with Syrian Muslim women refugees in Jordan, I highlight the
disconnect between the discourses on Syrian refugees in the U.S. and the
lives of these women who are coping with the traumas of war and
displacement with incredible strength and determination; and they have
done so in part through their faith.
Keywords: Islamic feminism, pinkwashing, refugee resettlement,
victimization, patriarchy
Karen Culcasi (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2576-9644), Department of
Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, USA. E-mail:
karen.culcasi@mail.wvu.edu
© 2024 by the author. This open access article is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2FENNIA 202(1) (2024)Research paper
Introduction
In the summers of 2014 and 2015, during the height of Syrians' mass displacement and Europe's so-
called ‘refugee crisis’ (Holmes & Castaneda 2016; Skop & Culcasi 2019; Squire 2022), I was conducting
eld work in Jordan on the many ways that Syrian refugee women were coping with displacement. The
Syrian refugee women I met had seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They were struggling with the
intersecting traumas of war, death, destruction, displacement, and impoverishment, as well as the loss
of many of their political and human rights. Nevertheless, these women exuded amazing strength,
resilience, and ingenuity. They were enduring and rebuilding their lives and the lives of their families.
Many of them charged forward with erce determination to improve their situations, which often
included learning new job-related skills and becoming the primary income earners for their families
(Culcasi 2019). Many of the women I met said that their faith was not only helping them to cope with
the trauma of war and displacement, but also that Islam assured them gender equality and the right to
lead and rebuild their lives.
I returned home to the U.S. in the summer of 2015 to a country riled in debate over Syrian refugee
resettlement. On the campaign trail for the upcoming 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump called
for a complete ban on Syrian refugees entering the U.S. and the removal of Syrians already within its
borders (Beydoun 2018; Tesler 2018; Aswad 2019). Spewing lies and hate speech about Muslims,
Syrians, and refugees more broadly (Nagel 2016; Gokariksel & Smith 2017; Bose 2022), he drew on a
longstanding gendered orientalist discourse that Muslim men are backward and violent; and more
specically that Syrian Muslim men might be terrorists.1 Syrian refugees were also framed as burdens
to the U.S. economy and as taking federal funds from U.S. citizens who deserved the money more
(Gorman & Culcasi 2021; Bose 2022), and sometimes as being cowards for eeing war. Trump and
many of his supporters supplemented their argument that Syrian male refugees were a security
threat by asserting that Muslim women are oppressed victims of Islam and Muslim men. As such,
pundits construed Syrian Muslims women and their lifestyles as incompatible to the United States'
culture and values (Rettberg & Gajjala 2016; Stone 2017; Yigit & Tatch 2017; Tesler 2018; Aswad 2019).
The argument follows that as potential neighbors and colleagues, Muslim women are victims-who-
are-threats and therefore must be denied resettlement. On the other side of the debate, there were
news agencies and humanitarian organizations that asserted that Syrian refugees needed and merited
assistance and resettlement. Women and children, as seemingly less threatening and more helpless
than adult men, are commonly featured in pro-resettlement narratives (Malkki 1996; Johnson 2011).
Indeed, Syrian refugees broadly, and women and children specically, were represented in left leaning
media and pro-refugee resettlement reporting as victims of a horric war (Terman 2017; Aswad 2019;
Chen et al. 2022). In some instances, Syrians' victimization due to war was supplemented with the
gendered orientalist discourse that Syrian women were also victims of Islam and of Muslim men
(Alhayek 2014; Athamneh et al. 2021; Gorman & Culcasi 2021). As such, Syrian Muslim women were
framed as victims-to-be-saved not only from war, but also from oppressive Islamic practices. While
starkly dierent in their goals, both the anti- and pro-resettlement sides of the debate in the U.S. drew
on gendered orientalist discourses that essentialize Islam and the gendered practices of Muslims. In
other words, the same homogenizing essentialism that positions Muslim women as victims of Islam
has been used to support and to reject Syrian Muslim resettlement in the United States.
While such narratives are not new nor necessarily surprising, the victim discourse on Muslim
women broadly, and of Syrian Muslim women refugees specically, stand in stark contrast to the lived
experiences of the strong, capable, and pious Syrian Muslim women I interviewed in Jordan. In this
paper, I illustrate the contradiction between the dominant discourse in the U.S. on Syrian refugees
and the lives of some of the Syrian women I interviewed. My goal is to help dispel the harmful
discourses that circulate within the U.S. (and elsewhere), about the lives and status of Muslim women
and Syrian, Muslim women refugees more specically. That is, I seek to expose ‘the gap’ between the
representation of Syrian Muslim women and their daily reality (Taha 2018). While I focus on the U.S.,
gendered orientalism is a global discourse that circulates in other states like France, Australia, the
Netherlands, China, and India and has similar impacts (Dunn & Hopkins 2016; Hancock & Mobillion
2019; Najib & Hopkins 2019, 2020a; Razack 2022; Shaker & Ahmadi 2022; Chaoui 2023).
FENNIA 202(1) (2024) 3Karen Culcasi
I work towards my goal by rst describing and critiquing gendered orientalist discourse and how it
intersects with discourses on refugee resettlement in the United States. In doing so, I highlight that
Muslim women refugees have been framed as both victims-who-are-threats and victims-to-be-saved.
Secondly, I build from postcolonial, feminist literature broadly and from Mahmood's (2005) theory of
‘modalities of agency’ specically, to discuss some ways that Islamic feminism and Muslim women's
agency is practiced. This discussion includes an overview of ‘Islamic feminism’ and some of the main
debates within it and about it. In the third section, I draw on my research with Syrian refugee women
in Jordan to illustrate the many ways that these women's lives contradict the gendered orientalist and
refugee resettlement discourses that were circulating in the United States. I conclude by stressing that
there is a vital need to reject gendered orientalism, to recognize forms of feminism that do not
conform to mainstream Western feminist values, and to see Muslim women, and Muslim women
refugees, in all their complexity.
Gendered orientalism and Syrian refugee resettlement debates in the U.S.
Orientalism, broadly, is a eld of study that evolved within Europe in the 19th century. It focused on
the vague region of the ‘Orient’ – which includes much SWANA. In general, most orientalists embraced
an essentialist, cultural explanation of the Orient that denigrates the vague region (including its
dominant religion of Islam) and perpetuates a trope of Western superiority (Fernandez 2009). Within
orientalism, there is a commonplace gendered discourse that frames Muslim women as the victims
of Islam and of backward and violent Muslim men (Said 1997; Kahf 1999; cooke 2000; Steet 2000;
Razack 2004; Shaheen 2008; Holt & Jawad 2013; Mohammad 2013; Szanto 2016; Khan & Aurangzeb
2018). While there are countless challenges and critiques to this homogenizing, biased, and partial
framing, as I discuss in much of this paper, there remains a common perception in Western states
that Islam is exceptionally oppressive towards women and, thus, that Muslim women are victims of
their religion and Muslim men (Holt & Jawad 2013; Terman 2017). This gendered orientalist view was
recirculated and leveraged within debates on Syrian refugee resettlement in the U.S., albeit for two
very dierent goals.
Anti-Syrian, Muslim refugee groups and right leaning media employed gendered orientalist logics
to both men and women. Syrian men were commonly portrayed as dangerous threats to national
security and to the average American's safety (Park 2015; Rettberg & Gajjala 2016). In a study of 47,388
articles from online U.S. media about Syrian refugees from 2011–2021, Chen and co-authors (2022, 8)
found that 'right-leaning media' casted Syrian refugees as opportunistic young men "who could be
armed and dangerous Islamic terrorists." On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump regurgitated this view
by regularly asserting that Syrian men refugees could be terrorists. Reviewing anti-Syrian refugee
statements that Trump made during his campaign, De Genova (2018, 370) found that Trump referred
to Syrian refugees as being "devious vipers...inchoate menace- potential terrorists, rapists, and
criminals...". Trump fueled concerns about Syrian refugee resettlement by falsely claiming that most
Syrian refugees coming to the U.S. are single, military-age men. Thus, he sent a message that Syrian
men are not only security threats, but also that Syrian refugees are mostly men (Gomez 2017). However,
according to the State Department, as of November 2015, only 23% of Syrian refugees in the U.S. were
adult men (ibid.). While Muslim men are much more likely to be perceived as terrorists, Muslim women
have also been increasingly congured into the anti-immigration trope that relies on the fear that
Muslims could be terrorists (Tayyen 2017; Khan & Aurangzeb 2018; Ghumkhor & Pardy 2021).
While Trump did not make comments about Syrian women publicly, many of his supporters and
pundits in the anti-Syrian Muslim refugee circle did. They invoked the discourse that Muslim women
are victims of Islam and that their cultural practices were incompatible to the values and way of life in
the United States. For example, in an interview with President Trump on Fox news in January 2015,
Daniel Horowitz, of Conservative Review, stated that:
I would agree with the president. We're not at war with Islam. But the problem is – is there a clash
of cultures, if you grow up in a country under shari'a law, where women can't drive and must cover
themselves and women can't go out in public without a male relative or four male eyewitnesses
are needed for rape – is there a conict of cultures that makes it very dicult.... (FOX News 2015).
4FENNIA 202(1) (2024)Research paper
The script of incompatibility with Western values has long drawn on the image of ‘covered’ Muslim
women. The hijab, a female hair covering that pious Muslim women often wear, has long been
viewed in both orientalism and Western feminism as a symbol of Muslim women's oppression, of
Muslim women as ‘the other,’ and of Islam's incompatibility with Western values and society (Hopkins
2009; Cainkar 2021). Indeed, images of Syrian women refugees wearing a hijab signicantly aected
opinions about Syrian refugee resettlement. Partain and Weaver (2022, 2410) tested how the hijab
aected views of people in the U.S. and found that their participants were "less emotionally and
attitudinally sympathetic and felt higher levels of threat toward Syrian refugees" after seeing an
image of a Syrian woman wearing a hijab. The hijab, they explain, contributes "to designating Syrian
refugees as an outgroup, which in turn reduces participant emotional and attitudinal support for
Syrian refugees and increases perceived levels of threat," and thus rendered them “less desirable for
resettlement” (ibid., 2422).
Another way that Syrian Muslim women were construed as victims-who-are-threats was through a
cognate argument that focused on them as biological (and cultural) reproducers. Due to their high
birth rates, the argument goes, Syrian woman refugees could ‘plant seeds’ and become ‘population
bombs’ in the U.S. (Gorman & Culcasi 2021). In other words, resettled Syrian women refugees could
have so many Muslim children that the Muslim population in the U.S. would ‘grow’ or ’explode’
demographically to a point that Muslims would replace white, Christians. Further, as a new majority
in the U.S., Muslims could take over the political and legal systems and implement shari'a law for all
people in the United States. In this argument, orientalist framings intersect with the ‘great replacement’
theory (a white nationalist conspiracy theory that states that nonwhite individuals will ‘replace’ white
majorities) to claim that Muslim women, as biological reproducers, are a threat to the white, Christian
majority in the U.S. Therefore, Syrian Muslims must be excluded from resettlement.
Pro-refugee resettlement groups commonly represent refugees as powerless victims of war and
displacement and whom need to be saved (Malkki 1996; Owens 2009). Indeed, numerous studies have
shown that aid organizations like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Oxfam
regularly portray refugees as victims who are weak, dependent, and without agency (Rajaram 2002;
Johnson 2011; Homann 2016). Representations of Syrian refugees during the height of their mass
displacement mirrored this traditional practice as being portrayed as victims-to-be-saved. For example,
Aswad (2019) found that the New York Times often took a pro-resettlement position towards Syrian
refugees and concurrently framed them as ‘victims’ of war and displacement. Chen and others (2022)
likewise found that ‘left-leaning’ media tended to highlight the struggles that Syrian refugees have
encountered, and generally represented them as ‘child victims’ who deserve sympathy and assistance.
This victimization discourse can be an eective way to acquire donations and support for refugee
resettlement, however, it concomitantly homogenizes and denigrates refugees by stripping them of
their individuality, agency, and capabilities. Moreover, the eectiveness of ‘the victim’ representation is
debatable. Two recent studies that focused on representations of Syrian refugees found the
victimization imagery that is common in pro-resettlement groups actually had a negative impact on
people's support for resettling Syrian refugees in the United States (Partain & Weaver 2022; Lui 2023).
Male refugees are featured as victims of war in pro-resettlement circles in general, but women and
children, as seemingly more vulnerable and weaker than men, are more commonly the focus of pro-
resettlement imagery (Rajaram 2002; Johnson 2011). For Muslim women refugees specically, the
framing of them as victims of war has occasionally been buttressed by the gendered orientalist view
that frames them as being victims of Islam and Muslim men. Thus, the message is that Muslim women
refugees need to be saved from war and displacement as well as from oppressive religious practices
embedded in Islam (Semati 2010; Culcasi & Gokmen 2011; Fluri 2011; Khalid 2017). For example,
Alhayek (2014) found that both global media and social media activists advocating for Syrian refugees
commonly portrayed Syrian women as being victimized by their own religion and cultural practices.
Female Syrian refugees, Alhayek continues, were repeatedly represented as powerless victims of men
in their families, men who would sell o their daughters as commodities for sexist men and would
force young women and girls into both temporary marriages and child marriages. This view of Muslim
women as victims of Islam who need saving is also a part of mainstream Western feminism (which I
discuss in the next section). When pro-resettlement and humanitarian groups portrayed Syrian
FENNIA 202(1) (2024) 5Karen Culcasi
Muslim women as victims-to-be saved from their religion, they are engaging in a form of ‘pinkwashing’
that not only assumes Western, Christian superiority (Puar 2017; Smith 2020), but also that it is the
Western, Christian world's responsibility to liberate Muslim women from their oppressive religion
(Razack 2022). In doing so, they are using gender issues to promote Western ideals and power.
While using the victimization discourse and engaging in a form of pinkwashing in support of refugee
resettlement is problematic, the groups that do so are generally working in an earnest attempt to
support refugees who were seeking resettlement. On the other hand, when anti-resettlement circles
represent women as victims of Islam (such circles do not often represent them as victims of war) these
women are rendered as threats to the values and demographics in the U.S., and therefore Muslim
women must be excluded from resettlement. While starkly dierent in their goals, both sides of the
debate of Syrian refugee resettlement have homogenized and essentialized countless Syrian Muslims
whom, as I elaborate in the next two sections, have diverse experiences with gender relations and
their faith, and whose lives and experiences readily contradict the discourses of victimization.
Islamic feminism and multiple modalities of agency
There are many forms of feminist thought and practice (e.g. Western, Islamic, transnational,
intersectional, and black feminisms). While each form has its own approaches and concerns, they all
share the view that gender issues and inequality stem from patriarchal norms and practices. Their
goals are similar as well, typically seeking to end gendered violence and oppression, and to improve
the quality of women's lives. Feminisms also similarly assert that women should have their own
agency, meaning that women should make decisions and act on their own accord.2 In this section, I
provide an introduction to ‘Islamic feminisms’ and Mahmood's articulation of ‘multiple modalities of
agency’ in order to better understand the experiences of Syrian Muslim refugees in Jordan, which
stand in contrast to Western feminism, and gendered orientalist discourses of Muslim women.
The term ‘Islamic feminism’ generally refers to a form of feminism that works toward women's
advancement, agency, and equality within an Islamic framework (Mizra 2002; Moghadam 2002;
Badran 2009; Abaday 2023). Since the early 1990s, Islamic feminism has evolved into dierent forms,
yet generally, as cooke (2000, 93) summarizes, it has a "double commitment: to a faith position on the
one hand, and to women's rights" on the other. More specically, Islamic feminisms draw on parts of
Islamic doctrine that underscore that men and women are guaranteed rights and equality. As Abu-
Lughod writes, Islamic feminisms use Islamic texts to underscore that Islam enshrines "justice,
equality, human dignity, and love and compassion among humans and in the family" (Abu-Lughod
2013, 192). Islamic feminism typically asserts that it is not Qur'an or other religious texts that oppresses
women, but the patriarchal interpretations of the texts by men and male clergy (Kynsilehto 2008). In
contradiction to gendered orientalist discourse, Islamic feminism see that oppression and violence
against Muslim women is caused by "insucient knowledge" or "incomplete adherence" to Islam, not
Islam itself (Abu-Lughod 2013, 192).
Islamic feminism – the term, its theories, and praxis – have been subject to substantial debate
(Mojab 2001; Barlas 2008; Kynsilehto 2008; Badran 2009; Gökariksel 2018). Western audiences who
have been indoctrinated by longstanding gendered orientalists discourses that position Islam as
uniquely oppressive towards women have often viewed Islam as incompatible with mainstream
Western feminism, which has dierent forms, but broadly, is a white, liberal, and secular based
movement (Valoy 2015; Beck 2021). Some Western sceptics of Islamic feminism have quipped that the
term is a ‘contradiction’ or ‘oxymoron’ (Mojab 2001; Badran 2009). Western feminism, like gendered
orientalism, commonly espouses the belief that for a woman to be liberated from patriarchal
oppression that she must adopt Western feminist ways of thinking, norms, and practices. This is
patently obvious in Western mass media when Muslim women are represented as ‘liberated’ when
they remove their hijab or burqa and adopt Western style clothing (Culcasi & Gokmen 2011; Fluri
2011; Navarro 2015; Ranjbar 2021).
Mahmood's 2005 book The Politics of Piety is a groundbreaking book that makes the powerful
argument that we need to revise and ‘uncouple’ ideas of agency (and concomitantly liberty, freedom,
subversion, and resistance) from of normalized Western feminist, secular, and liberal views. Stemming
6FENNIA 202(1) (2024)Research paper
from her ethnographic eldwork on the women's pious movement in Cairo, Mahmood asserts that
women have "dierent modalities of agency" (ibid., 167), but Western feminism has ignored forms of
agency that do not t within its own values and goals. She highlighted that while the women in her
study had dierent opinions and experiences with gender and piousness, that these women all shared
the goal of being devout Muslims and maintaining or increasing their agency in their families and
communities. Mahmood asserted that these women are not passive nor victims, but active agents.
She shows that their acts of piousness can (re)create women's subordination (18) and the movement's
"participants typically accept the patriarchal assumptions at the core of the orthodox Islamic tradition"
(ibid., 153), including acts that are commonly deemed 'oppressive' in western terms (e.g. male
guardianship or prohibition of women from leading worship). Nevertheless, the women in Mahmood’s
study believe that Islam assures their equity as human beings, and they use Islamic texts to justify and
to assert their agency. Thus, these women's modality of agency is not about subverting or resisting
gender expectation, nor about changing conservative social structures of male domination, but
instead to be agents in control of their own religious practice and to take actions that allow them to
live pious lives (ibid.). Moreover, for some of the women in Mahmood's study, being pious conicted
with secular leaning policies of the state and with less religious members of their families. In such
cases, these pious women were asserting their agency to be devout against secular political structures
and family members (ibid.).
The women in Mahmood’s study were not espousing feminist ideologies, nor did she label them
‘Islamic feminist,’ but nevertheless these women worked towards securing their agency within an
Islamic framework. That the label ‘feminism’ is not a descriptor of the pious movement in Cairo signals
a debate within ‘Islamic feminism.’ More specically, that term is rejected by some scholars and
activists (and surely women outside those circles too) for two reasons. First, those people who argue
that Islam guarantees equality means that ‘feminism’ is a moot label. As Barlas (2008, 22) explained:
The Qu'ran contains principles of gender equality and wider issues of social justice, thus laying
grounds for challenging patriarchal traditions. Therefore, for some scholar-activists, referring to
feminism in order to challenge patriarchy would not be necessary.
Second, some reject the term ‘feminism’ because of its connotations to Western feminism, which is
not only secular, but has also too often perpetuated a cultural imperialism that – as noted above –
assumes that all women, otherwise known as the ‘global sisterhood,’ will nd liberation and agency by
adopting Western values and practices (Barlas 2008; Abaday 2023).
The pious women in Mahmood's study may have lifestyles and gendered practices that do not t
squarely within Western feminism, but these Muslim women do share the broad feminist goals of
securing women's agency and equality. The divergences within dierent forms of feminism and within
movements, practices, and ideologies that don't use the term ‘feminism’ but still seek equality and
agency for women are signicant, but nevertheless, they all share that same goal – that of equality
and agency. And as I illustrate below, Syrian Muslim women refugees in Jordan did not use the label
‘feminism’ nor ‘Islamic feminism,’ but nevertheless these women are quite pious and exert incredible
strength and agency.
The agency of Syrian, Muslim women refugees
Despite the common Western perception that Syrian Muslim refugee women (and Muslim women in
general) are victims of Islam, nearly all Syrian women I interviewed have demonstrated incredible
resilience, adaptability, ingenuity, and agency, whilst maintaining their faith. Between 2014–2018, I
conducted a research project on how Syrian refugees in Jordan were coping in displacement, but I
focused on women and particularly women who worked for an income. The 45 women I formally
interviewed all faced immense trauma and loss as a direct result of the brutal war that led to their
displacement. As is commonplace in war, some women have also been subjected to increased gender-
based violence, whether at the hands of soldiers, other refugees, or men within their households
(cooke 2000; Mertus 2000; Al-Ali & Pratt 2009; Abu-Assab 2017; Asaf 2017; Ayoub 2017; Freedman et
al. 2017; Ezer 2019). While my participants had all been victimized, they were not merely victims. In
FENNIA 202(1) (2024) 7Karen Culcasi
contradiction to representations circulating in the U.S., these strong and capable women were
overcoming incredible challenges. For example, many worked for an income inside and outside the
household to support their families. Some were the heads of their households, caring for family
members and providing nancially. A few had started businesses of their own, many learned new job-
related skills, and a few earned new degrees. Many of the women I met were also active in their new
communities in Jordan. Some organized Syrian women support groups, many helped each another to
nd paid work, and some created spaces in which they could practice and study their religion together.
None of these 45 women referred to themselves as feminists of any form, but, as I elaborate on
below, many of their actions and their views on gendered roles, practices, and inequality mirrored
those of Islamic feminism.
The Syrian women I interviewed live in a highly patriarchal society in which traditional gendered
roles are typically assumed. Several of the women I met shared stories with me of their experiences
with gender inequality, both inside and outside of the home. And in nearly all such instances, they
explained that gendered inequality stems from old, patriarchal views and/or men's misinterpretation
of Islam. For example, Laila, 36-year-old mother of four children, who was from a rural area outside of
Damascus, and who worked as a schoolteacher in Jordan, said her husband was "a strict traditional
man and hard to talk to." He had been working in Kuwait for nearly a year, so this woman had a lot of
responsibilities and independence in Jordan. As a result, she felt strong and condent. But Laila was
scared, because her husband was so patriarchal, that he would disapprove of her working outside the
home. Therefore, she kept her working outside the home a secret from him. Laila later explained that
some Muslims – like her husband – don't understand their religion correctly, but if men did, women
would have more freedoms like working outside the home. She continued that gender issues are not
because of Islam but because "society misunderstands the real concept of Islam." Paraphrasing from
the Qur'an, she said that "Allah gave the female absolute power over her life" and a bit later she
asserted that "the Qur'an guarantees us equal rights."
Manal, a 44-year-old woman from Homs, who was a widow, a mother of three boys, the head of her
household, and a children's counselor, referred to herself as independent both nancially and
emotionally. She had also just learned English when I met her so that she could "communicate with
the world and become successful." Yet her extended family was not supportive of her taking on non-
traditional gender roles. Reecting on her experiences with her family, she explained that their
resistance "… is not about religion per say, it is about the inherited patriarchal traditions." She later
explained that women are treated equally when Islam is properly understood, because Islam believes
that "we humans should treat each other with love and respect." This view that it is the practices of
men and not Islam that is oppressive was also evident in the controversial gendered issue of ‘temporary
marriages’ to Saudi men. The mistreatment of some Syrian women at the hands of Saudi men who
came to the Za'atari Syrian refugee camp to ‘buy’ Syrian women (see Alhayek 2014) was explained to
me by a few women as being anti-Islamic. One woman asserted that it was not only against Islam to
do such a thing, but that if these men really understood Islam, it would not be happening.
Many of the women I met said that practicing their faith helped them to cope with the traumas of
war and displacement. It also gave them a sense of community and sense of purpose in this time of
extraordinary hardship. A thirty-year old single woman told me that "Allah says that we should be
patient and that is what we are trying to do. We go to mosques and we pray and cry." Another woman,
in her mid-twenties, said that praying helps her to feel better and cope with the loss of her brother.
She stressed that displaced Syrians "need to rebuild their faith" in order to move on. Laila, the 36-year-
old mother of four quoted above, explained that "our prophet was forced to leave Mecca, even though
he loved it." She continued that he migrated and soon found:
a new place where he could share his thoughts peacefully without ghting, and it became his
homeland. Therefore, I feel that I can live anywhere, because land is not your home, home is the
place where you can serve others and do something benecial.
While the lives of all the 45 women I interviewed challenge the common portrayal of Muslim women
as victims of Islam, I chose to include a story of one Syrian woman's experiences of displacement,
agency, and faith to demonstrate this point. Asma was the only woman I interviewed that wore a
8FENNIA 202(1) (2024)Research paper
burqa in public. Afghan women were required to wear burqas under the Taliban's rst rule, and this
covering is commonly equated in Western states as proof that Muslim women are oppressed victims
of their religion. Thus, in commonplace Western views, Asma is the quintessential image of an
oppressed, victimized Muslim woman. Her life and experiences as a displaced woman, however,
indicate quite the opposite. I met Asma in the summer of 2014, on a day that the temperature soared
to 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius). My research assistant Dima and I had been waiting
outside Asma's small, meager apartment building in Irbid for our scheduled interview. Soon enough,
we saw her turn the corner swiftly and walk right toward us in her black burqa, which covered her
body from head to toe, including her eyes. While hair coverings are very common for Muslim women
in Irbid, and for Muslim women from southern Syria, where Asma was from, full black burqas are
quite uncommon in both these places.
Asma was originally from Homs, Syria, but had lived much of her adult life in Kuwait. She was
married to a Syrian man who worked in Kuwait and the two of them started their family together
abroad. She told me that her life in Kuwait was great. Their nancial status was strong; she had a
maid, and her children went to private schools. But she and her husband had a ght and her husband
divorced her and sent her back to Syria to live with her family there. Her move back to Syria happened
just before the Syrian war erupted. One year into the war, she decided to seek refuge, with her six
kids, to Jordan. Once in Jordan, she struggled with being a divorced woman, a displaced woman, and
a single mother of six. After a few months in Jordan, her savings ran out and, as she explained, her "life
started getting harder and harder." Working outside the home to earn money, she realized, was
necessary for her to care for her children. So, she started working, and she worked a lot. She
established her own beauty salon in Irbid, taught private lesson on Islam to several students in her
home, worked as a seamstress with a sewing machine that she obtained from a non-governmental
organization in Jordan (she specializes in wedding dresses), and she made pickled foods to sell at local
markets. Asma accomplished all this income-generating work while also caring for her six children,
and without the support from their father. Moreover, she was coping with the traumas of war and
displacement, and lacked both political rights and the right to work in Jordan.
Asma did not label herself a feminist nor an Islamic feminist, but she is a successful, condent, and
independent woman. Living as a single, woman refugee in Jordan, she had the agency to make
decisions about her and her children's lives. She felt that her primary responsibility was not only to
care for her family in the household, but to provide for them nancially too. Asma is deeply religious
and pious. Working for an income outside the home is atypical of for women in any traditional,
patriarchal society, but it was not, she explained, against Islam. Instead, Islam helped her justify her
working because she was working to care for her family. She wears a burqa in public regardless of
scorching temperatures for privacy and modesty from other men, but her burqa was not oppressive
to her because she wore it by choice. Like Islamic feminists, she knew that Islam gave her rights as a
human being, and as a woman. She explained that her husband's unequal power to divorce her was
not because of Islam, but because of patriarchy. Asma embraced Islam also to nd peace, meaning,
and direction as she faced many challenges as a displaced, single mother with six children. Her
victimization was due to the direct impacts of war and displacement, and lack political rights and the
lack of the right to work legally in Jordan, not, as Western feminism and gendered orientalists
discourses assume, because of Islam or her burka.
Conclusions: Recent Gendered Orientalism in the US
The mass displacement of Syrians during the 2014–16 period happened far from the borders of the
U.S., yet the possibility of Syrian Muslims being resettled in the U.S. was at the center of political
debates for years, and it had signicant political and personal consequences. Most notably was the
2016 presidential election, during which time Trump and many of his allies fueled anti-Syrian Muslim
refugee rhetoric that Muslim men are potential terrorists and that Muslim women were threats to U.S.
values and the harbingers of a demographic shift in the U.S. that could eventually lead to the
implementation of shari'a law (Considine 2017; Kishi 2017; Beydoun 2018; Bose 2022). Arguably, this
orientalist positioning helped Trump to win the election, and immediately afterward, he issued an
FENNIA 202(1) (2024) 9Karen Culcasi
executive order banning Syrian refugees (as well as Muslims from six other Muslim majority states)
from entering the United States. Concurrently, Muslims across the U.S. experienced a spike in hate
crimes, microaggressions, and discrimination (Itaoui 2020). Muslim women often bear the brunt of
such hostilities, because they are often highly visible through their modest dressing practices (Dunn
et al. 2007; Gokariksel 2017; Jamal 2017; Azam 2018; Beydoun 2018; McGinty 2020; Najib & Hopkins
2020b; Cainkar 2021). While pro-resettlement groups did not view Syrian women as threats, such
groups still commonly engaged in a form of pinkwashing that perpetuated the gendered orientalist
stereotype of Muslim women being victims of Islam and of the West being able to save them from
both war and their faith.
While some Muslim women, including some Syrian Muslim women refugees, have been victimized
and oppressed by patriarchal interpretations of religious doctrine (Mernissi, 1987; Abu-Lughod 2013),
the gendered orientalist view that Muslim women are uniformly oppressed by their religion is
challenged by robust literature on Islamic feminism (and cognate literature that does not use the term
‘feminism’). Likewise, the lives of the Syrian refugee women that I interviewed in Jordan – women who
exude strength and resilience amongst struggles and diculties, and who do so while embracing their
faith – contradict the victim narrative. The recycling of the old, homogenizing discourse that Muslim
women are oppressed victims is more indicative of U.S. politics, culture, and biases than it is telling of
Syrian Muslim women refugees (Butler 2017). Likewise, the decisions about who to grant refugee and
asylum status to compared to who is labeled a security or cultural threat reveal more about the
perspectives and goals of those in power and those creating the discourse, than it does about refugees,
Syrians, or Muslims. While there are some groups and people that are critical of gendered orientalist
views of Muslim women, there is a crucial need to expand and mainstream such views (Falah & Nagel
2005; Nusair 2009; Schenk et al. 2022). As feminist scholar Abu-Lughod (2013) has asserted, it may be
dicult, but it is crucial to reconcile the dominant discourses circulating in ‘American media’ about
Muslim women, with their actual lives and practices.
In summary, we need to see Muslim women and Muslim women refugees in all their complexity, to
reject gendered orientalism, and to not apply Western feminist values to all women. Such a view can
have material consequences. For example, the U.S. has recently resettled 80,000 Afghans since its
withdrawal from Afghanistan in late August 2021 and there are now tens of thousands Afghan women
and girls – who are for the most part pious Muslims – remaking their lives in the U.S. (Waddell 2021).
Rejecting gendered orientalist discourse and seeing these women and girls in their complexity can
garner respect and understanding that can hopefully reduce any further trauma that they might
experience as they adapt to their lives in the U.S.
Notes
1 The term, idea, and production of the categories men and women typically exists as a binary. While
I use these terms in this manner in this paper, this is a problematic simplication as gendered identities
and performances, which are much more complex, overlapping, and intersectional.
2 For discussions about what is meant by ‘agency’ within the SWANA region, see Sadiqi and Ennaji
(2011) and Ghabrial (2016).
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Brittany Cook and Anna Secor for organizing a special session on Mahmood’s Politics
of Piety during the AAG conference in 2019. That session helped me to formulate many of the ideas
in this paper. Also, to Kirsi Pauliina Kallio for her support and for facilitating a most productive review
process. Both Anitta Kynsilehto and Kawsar Ali provided me extremely helpful feedback that allowed
me to improve this paper and to reect more deeply on the meanings of feminism. Lastly, I thank the
Syrian women I met several years ago now. They taught me so much about gender and feminism,
without even necessarily meaning to do so.
10 FENNIA 202(1) (2024)Research paper
References
Abaday, D. U. (2023) Critical pious agency and Muslim feminists’ activism in the age
of authoritarianism: the 2019 Feminist walk in Turkey. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 19(1)
26–49. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-10256141
Abu-Assab, N. (2017) Destabilising gender dynamics. In Freedman, J., Kivilcim, Z. & Baklacioglu, N. Ö.
(eds.) A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis, 16–25. Routledge, New York.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315529653-2
Abu-Lughod, L. (2013) Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University, Cambridge.
https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674726338
Al-Ali, N. & Pratt, N. (2009) What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq. University of
California, Berkley. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pnft4
Alhayek, K. (2014) Double marginalization: the invisibility of Syrian refugee women's perspectives
in mainstream online activism and global media. Feminist Media Studies 14(4) 696–700.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.935205
Asaf, Y. (2017) Syrian women and the refugee crisis: surviving the conict, building peace, and taking
new gender roles. Social Sciences 6(3) 110. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci6030110
Aswad, G. N. (2019) Biased neutrality: the symbolic construction of the Syrian refugee in
the New York Times. Critical Studies in Media Communication 36(4) 357–375.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2019.1628996
Athamneh, W., Masud, M. & Moosa, E. (2021) Deance in Exile: Syrian Refugee Women in Jordan.
University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame.
Ayoub, M. (2017) Gender, social class and exile: the case of Syrian women in Cairo. In Freedman, J.,
Kivilcim, Z. & Baklacioglu, N. Ö. (eds.) A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis, 77–104.
Routledge, New York. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315529653-2
Azam, H. (2018) Islamic Feminism between Islam and Islamophobia. Journal of Middle East Women’s
Studies 14(1) 124–128. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-4297177
Badran, M. (2009) Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences. Oneworld Publications,
Oxford.
Barlas, A. (2008) Engaging Islamic Feminism: provincializing Feminism as a master narrative. In
Kynsilehto, A. (ed.) Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives, 15–24. Tampere Peace Research
Institute, Tampere.
Beck, K. (2021) White Feminism: From the Suragettes to Inuencers and Who They Leave Behind. Atria
Books, New York.
Beydoun, K. A. (2018) American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear. University
of California, Berkeley. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520970007
Bose, P. (2022) White nationalism and the specter of the refugee. In Nilsen, S. D. &
Turner, S. E. (eds.) White Supremacy and the American Media, 169–185. Routledge, New York.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003215172-12
Butler, D. (2017) Refugees in focus. Nature 543 22–23. https://doi.org/10.1038/543022a
Cainkar, L. (2021) 'Dangerous women/ women in danger. In Suleiman, M., Joseph, S. & Cainkar, L. (eds.)
Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal, 432-461. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse.
Chaoui, S. (2023) Embodied faith and the limits of female agency in Randa Abdel-Fattah’s
'Does my head look big in this?' Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 16 23–39.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-022-00359-5
Chen, K., Babaeianjelodar, M., Shi, Y., Janmohamed, K., Sarkar, R., Weber, I., Davidson, T., Choudhury, M.
D., Huang, J., Yadav, S., Khudabukhsh, A., Nakov, P. I., Bauch, C., Bauch, C., Papakyriakopoulos, O.,
Khoshnood, K. & Kumar, N. (2023) Partisan US news media representations of Syrian refugees.
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 17(1) 103–113.
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2206.09024
Considine, C. (2017) The racialization of Islam in the United States: Islamophobia, hate crimes, and
“ying while brown.” Religions 8(9) 165 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090165
cooke, m. (2000) Multiple critique: Islamic feminist rhetorical strategies. Nepantla: Views From South
1(1) 91–110.
Culcasi, K. (2019) “We are women and men now”: intimate spaces and coping labour for Syrian
women refugees in Jordan'. Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers 44(3) 463–478.
https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12292
Culcasi, K. & Gokmen, M. (2011) The Face of danger: beards in the U.S. media’s representations of
Arabs, Muslims, and Middle Easterners. Aether: The Journal of Media Geography 8 B 82–96.
Dunn, K. & Hopkins, P. (2016) The geographies of everyday Muslim life in the West. Australian
Geographer 47(3) 255–260. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2016.1191138
FENNIA 202(1) (2024) 11Karen Culcasi
Dunn, K. M., Klocker, N. & Salabay, T. (2007) Contemporary racism and Islamaphobia in Australia:
racializing religion. Ethnicities 7(4) 564–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796807084017
Ezer, O. (2019) Syrian Women Refugees: Personal Accounts of Transitions. McFarland, Jeerson.
Falah, G. W. & Nagel, C. R. (eds.) (2005) Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion, and Space.
Guilford, New York.
Fernandez, S. (2009) The crusade over the bodies of women. Patterns of Prejudice 43(3–4) 269–286.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220903109185
Fluri, J. (2011) Armored peacocks and proxy bodies: gender geopolitics in aid/development spaces of
Afghanistan. Gender, Place & Culture 18(4) 519–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2011.583343
Freedman, J., Kivilcim, Z. & Baklacioglu, N. Ö. (eds.) (2017) A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee
Crisis. Routledge, New York. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315529653
Ghabrial, S. (2016) Gender, power, and agency in the historical study of the Middle East and North Africa.
International Journal of Middle East Studies 48(3) 561–564. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743816000507
Ghumkhor, S. & Pardy, M. (2021) Imagining Muslim women in secular humanitarian time. Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46(2) 387–416. https://doi.org/10.1086/710809
Gökariksel, B. (2017) The body politics of Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” Journal of Middle East Women’s
Studies 13(3) 469–471. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-4179133
Gökariksel, B. (2018) Thinking women, feminism, and Muslim identity through bodies and space in Turkey.
Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 14(1) 116–123. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-4297168
Goökariksel, B. & Smith, S. (2017) Intersectional feminism beyond U.S. ag hijab and pussy hats in Trump’s
America. Gender, Place & Culture 24(5) 628–644. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1343284
Gomez, A. (2017) Trump's executive order suspends the entry of Syrian refugees into U.S.
USA Today 27.01.2024. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/27/president-trump-refugee-
ban-terrorist-countries/97145776/ 25.03.2024.
Gorman, C. S. & Culcasi, K. (2021) Invasion and colonization: Islamophobia and anti-refugee
sentiment in West Virginia. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 39(1) 168–183.
https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654420943897
Hancock, C. & Mobillion, V. (2019) “I want to tell them, I'm just wearing a veil, not carrying a gun!”
Muslim women negotiating borders in femonationalist Paris. Political Geography 69 1–9.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.11.007
Homann, S. (2016). International humanitarian agencies and Iraqi migration in preconict Syria.
International Journal of Middle East Studies 48(2) 339–355. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743816000076
Holt, M. & Jawad, H. (2013) Woman, Islam, and Resistance in the Arab World. Lynne Rienner, Boulder.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781626376588
Hopkins, P. (2009) Muslims in the West: deconstructing geographical binaries. In Phillips, R. (ed.)
Muslim Spaces of Hope: Geographies of Possibility in Britain and the West, 27–40. Zed Books,
London. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350221451.ch-002
Itaoui, R. (2020) Mapping perceptions of Islamophobia in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. Social
& Cultural Geography 21(4) 479–506 https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1633684
Jamal, A. (2017) Trump(ing) on Muslim women: the gendered side of Islamophobia. Journal of Middle
East Women's Studies 13(3) 472–475. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-4179144
Johnson, H. L. (2011) Click to donate: veisual images, constructing victims and imagining the female
refugee. Third World Quarterly 32(6) 1015–1037. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2011.586235
Kahf, M. (1999) Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagan to Odalisque.
University of Austin Press, Austin.
Khalid, M. (2017) Gender, Orientalism, and the 'War on Terror': Representation, Discourse, and
Intervention in Global Politics. Routledge, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315514055
Khan, A. & Aurangzeb, W. (2018) Need to counter gendered Orientalism: the case of Muslim women
caricatures on e-media. Al Basīrah 7(2) 23–39.
Kishi, K (2017) Assaults against Muslims in U.S. surpass 2001 level. Pew Research Center 15.11.2017.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/11/15/assaults-against-muslims-in-u-s-surpass-
2001-level/ 25.03.2024.
Kynsilehto, A (ed.) (2008) Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives. Tampere Peace Research Institute,
Tampere.
Lui, J. (2023) Framing Syrian refugees: examining news framing eects on attitudes toward
refugee admissions and anti-immigrant sentiment. Newspaper Research Journal 44(1) 6–25.
https://doi.org/10.1177/07395329221077251
Mahmood, S. (2005) Politics of Piety. Princeton: Princeton.
Malkki, L. (1996) Speechless emissaries: refugees, humanitarianism, and dehistoricization. Cultural
Anthropology 11(3) 377–404. https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1996.11.3.02a00050
12 FENNIA 202(1) (2024)Research paper
McGinty, M. (2020) Embodied Islamophobia: lived experiences of anti-Muslim discourses
and assaults in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Social & Cultural Geography 21(3) 402–420.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1497192
Mernissi, F. (1987) Beyond the Veil, Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society. Indiana
University Press, Bloomington.
Mertus, J. A. (2000) War's Oensive on Women: The Humanitarian Challenge in Bosnia, Kosovo, and
Afghanistan. Kumarian Press, Bloomeld, CT.
Mizra, Q. (2002) Islamic feminism, possibility and limitations. In Strawson, J. (ed.) Law After Ground
Zero, 108-122. Glass House Press, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781843144847-8
Moghadam, V. (2002) Islamic feminism and its discontents: toward a resolution of the debate. Signs:
Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27(4) 1135–1171. https://doi.org/10.1086/339639
Mohammad, R. (2013) Making gender ma(r)king place: youthful British Pakistani Muslim women’s
narratives of urban space. Environment and Planning A 45(8) 1802–1822. https://doi.org/10.1068/a45253
Mojab, S. (2001) Theorizing the politics of ‘Islamic Feminism’. Feminist Review 69(1) 124–146.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01417780110070157
Nagel, C. (2016) Southern hospitality?: Islamophobia and the politicization of refugee
in South Carolina during the 2016 election season. Southeastern Geographer 56(3) 283–290.
https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2016.0033
Najib, K. & Hopkins, P. (2019) Veiled Muslim women's strategies in response to Islamophobia in Paris.
Political Geography 73 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.05.005
Najib, K. & Hopkins, P. (2020a) Where does Islamophobia take place and who is involved?
Reections from Paris and London. Social & Cultural Geography 21(4) 458–478.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2018.1563800
Najib, K. & Hopkins, C. T. (2020b) Geographies of Islamophobia. Social & Cultural Geography 21(4)
449–457. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1705993
Navarro, L. (2015) Intersection of sexism and Islamophobia. In Mirhosseini, S-A. & Rouzbeh, H. (eds.)
Instances of Islamophobia. Lexington Book,: Lanham, MD.
Nusair, I. (2009) Gender mainstreaming and feminist organizing in the Middle East and North Africa.
In Al-Ali, N. & Pratt, N. (eds.) Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives,
131–157. Zed Books, London. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350224056.ch-004
Owens, P. (2009) Reclaiming ‘bare life’?: Against Agamben on refugees. International Relations 23(4)
567–582. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117809350545
Park, H. (2015) Paris attacks intensify debate about how many Syrian refugees to allow into the U.S.
New York Times 19.11.2024. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/21/us/where-syrian-
refugees-are-in-the-united-states.html 25.03.2024.
Partain, L. P. B. & Weaver, A. J. (2022) (Un)Veiling our biases: activating religious, emotional, and
contextual cues in news media representations of Syrian refugees. International Journal of
Communication 16 2410–2430. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/17215 25.03.2024.
Puar, J. K. (2017) Terrorist assemblages: homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press,
Durham, NC. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371755
Rajaram, P. K. (2002) Humanitarianism and representations of the refugee. Journal of Refugee Studies
15(3) 247–264. https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/15.3.247
Ranjbar, A. M. (2021) Soapboxes and stealth on revolution street: revisiting the question of ‘freedom’
in Iran’s hijab protests. ACME 20(4) 346–365. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/
view/1903 25.03.2024.
Razack, S. H. (2022) Nothing Has to Make Sense: Upholding White Supremacy Through Anti-Muslim
Racism. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Razack, S. H. (2004) Imperilled Muslim women, dangerous Muslim men, and civilized
Europeans: legal and social responses to forced marriages. Feminist Legal Studies 12 129–174.
https://doi.org/10.1023/B:FEST.0000043305.66172.92
Rettberg, J. W. & Gajjala. R. (2016) Terrorists or cowards: negative portrayals of male Syrian refugees in
social media. Feminist Media Studies 16(1) 178–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1120493
Sadiqi, F. & Ennaji, M (eds.) (2011) Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Agents of Change.
Routledge, New York.
Said, E. (1997) Covering Islam, How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest
of the World. Vintage Books, New York.
Schenk, C. G., Gökarıksel, B. & Behzadi, N. E. (2022) Security, violence, and mobility: the embodied
and everyday politics of negotiating Muslim femininities. Political Geography 94 102597.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102597
Semati, M. (2010) Islamophobia, culture and race in the age of empire. Cultural Studies 24(2) 256–275.
https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380903541696
FENNIA 202(1) (2024) 13Karen Culcasi
Shaheen, J. G. (2008) Guilty: Hollywood's verdict on Arabs after 9/11. Olive Branch Press, Northampton.
Shaker, R. & Ahmadi, D. (2022) Everyday embodied othering experiences of young Muslims
in the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 48(19) 4567–4585.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2096577
Smith, S. (2020) Political Geography: A Critical Introduction. Wiley Blackwell, Oxford.
Steet, L. (2000) Veils and Daggers: A Century of National Geographic's Representation of the Arab World.
Temple University Press, Philadelphia.
Stone, M. (2017) Snake and stranger: media coverage of Muslims and refugee policy. Harvard
Kennedy School 22.06.2017. https://shorensteincenter.org/media-coverage-muslims-refugee-
policy/ 25.03.2024.
Szanto, E. (2016) Depicting victims, heroines, and pawns in the Syrian uprising. Journal of Middle East
Women's Studies 12(3) 306–322. https://doi.org/10.1215/15525864-3637532
Taha, D. (2018) Methodology, reexivity and decolonizing refugee research: reections from the
eld. CARFMS/ACERMF 14.11.2018. https://carfms.org/methodology-reexivity-and-decolonizing-
refugee-research-reections-from-the-eld-by-dina-taha/ 25.03.2024.
Tayyen, S. (2017) From orientalist sexual object to burkini terrorist threat: Muslim women through
evolving lens. Islamophobia Studies Journal 4(1) 101–114. https://doi.org/10.13169/islastudj.4.1.0101
Terman, R. (2017) Islamophobia and media portrayals of Muslim women: a computational text analysis
of US news coverage. International Studies Quarterly 61(3) 489–502. https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx051
Tesler, M. (2018) Words of wisdom: Islamophobia in the 2016 election. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and
Politics 3(1) 153–155. https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2018.8
Valoy, P. (2015) Transnational Feminism: why feminist activism needs to think globally. Everyday
Feminism 28.01.2015. https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-we-need-transnational-
feminism/ 25.03.2024.
Waddell, B. (2021) States that have welcomed the most refugees from Afghanistan. U.S. News.
14.09.2015. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-09-14/afghan-refugee-
resettlement-by-state 25.03.2024.
Yigit, I. H. & Tatch, A. (2017) Syrian refugees and Americans: perceptions, attitudes and insights.
American Journal of Qualitative Research 1(1) 13–31. https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/5789
