Critical Questions

1. How did 9/11 make Islamophobia more socially acceptable? What Islamophobic sentiments existed prior to 9/11?

2. Why are Muslim women viewed as both in need of saving from Islam and as foreign threats to the Western world?

3. In what ways does Islamophobia impact the South Asian community? What about South Asian Muslim women, specifically?

4. What Islamophobic attitudes do South Asian Muslims face from other South Asians?

5. How do “mainstream” Western feminist movements interact with Islamic feminist movements? How do their goals and values differ, and how does this impact Western perceptions of Islamic feminist movements?

6. How do Muslim-American women work against Islamophobia in the U.S.? How do they conduct intersectional and antiracist analyses?

Background Research

We familiarized ourselves with the issue through readings, most of which were recommended to us by Professor Chatterjee:

• https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/shadya/muslimfeminism.html

• https://www.albany.edu/faculty/jhobson/wss308/veil.html

• https://onbeing.org/programs/leila-ahmed-muslim-women-and-other-misunderstandings/

• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/22/this-isnt-feminism-its-islamophobia

• https://thebrownhijabi.com/2018/06/02/when-feminism-islamophobia-are-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/