Misogyny, Racism, and Islamophobia: Street Harassment at the Intersections

• Author: Irene Zempi,Hannah Mason-Bish
• DOI: 10.1177/1557085118772088
• Published date: 01 December 2019
• Date: 01 December 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085118772088

Feminist Criminology

2019, Vol. 14(5) 540 –559

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1557085118772088

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Article

Misogyny, Racism, and

Islamophobia: Street

Harassment at the

Intersections

Hannah Mason-Bish1 and Irene Zempi2

Abstract

Veiled Muslim women are at an increased risk of street harassment in the current

political and economic climate. Their visibility, combined with their popular portrayal as

culturally dangerous or threatening means that they are vulnerable to receiving verbal

and physical threats, which can be misogynistic and Islamophobic in nature. Drawing

on 60 individual and 20 focus group interviews with Muslim women in the United

Kingdom who wear the niqab (face veil) and had experienced harassment in public,

this qualitative study details their lived experiences. It argues that an intersectional

analysis is crucial to understanding the nuances of their lived experiences and the

impact street harassment has on their lives. The findings demonstrate that street

harassment can produce a hostile environment for veiled Muslim women, which can

have a terrorizing effect, limiting their full participation in the public sphere.

Keywords

hate crime, Islamophobia, Muslim women, intersectionality, misogyny

Introduction

Within the current post-Brexit climate, veiled Muslim women are facing increased

risks of attacks in the United Kingdom. The anti-Muslim hate monitoring group Tell

MAMA reported in their annual survey for 2016 that there was a significant rise in

hate crimes against Muslims being reported to them after the vote to leave the European

Union. Research found that not only are Muslim women more likely to be attacked

1University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

2Nottingham Trent University, UK

Corresponding Author:

Hannah Mason-Bish, Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Freeman Building, Falmer, Brighton

BN1 9RH, UK.

Email: H.Mason-Bish@sussex.ac.uk

772088FCXXXX10.1177/1557085118772088Feminist CriminologyMason-Bish and Zempi

research-article2018

Mason-Bish and Zempi 541

than Muslim men but also their experiences demonstrate misogynistic and Islamophobic

undertones (Zempi & Chakraborti, 2014). The number of people identifying as Muslim

has increased by 1.2 million between the 2001 and 2011 census sweeps (Casey, 2016).

Our research took place at a time when Muslims are having their faith and beliefs

questioned more vocally by some sections of society. A 2016 ComRes poll noted that

43% of 2,000 adults surveyed felt that Islam was a negative force in the United

Kingdom. A recent government report suggested that this was partly caused by con-

cerns over integration, immigration, and perceptions of backward religious practices

(Casey, 2016).

Certainly, not all Muslim women wear the headscarf and/or face veil, and some are

not covered at all. However, as Perry (2014) points out, Muslim women and girls are

extremely vulnerable to street violence motivated by their visible status as Muslims.

This also has to do with the controlling images of veiled Muslim women that render

them especially attractive and available targets. Bullock and Jafri (2002) highlight

three “personas” that Muslim women are perceived to occupy in the popular imagina-

tion, and, thus, define what Muslim women “are supposed to be and do”:

The first is the “harem belly-dancer character,” the mysterious and sexualized woman of

the “Orient”; the second is “the oppressed Muslim woman,” often represented as the

hijab (headscarf) wearer or the woman who is unable to drive; and, finally, there is the

“militant Muslim woman,” often shown in hijab with a gun and military clothes. (p. 36)

Along similar lines, Zempi & Chakraborti (2014) point out that veiled Muslim

women are routinely portrayed as oppressed, “culturally dangerous,” and “threaten-

ing” to the Western way of life and to notions of public safety and security by virtue of

being fully covered in the public sphere. Correspondingly, the visibility of veiled

Muslim women must also be understood in the current climate of international legal

reforms, which have attempted to criminalize wearing the niqab in public places.

France was the first to ban face covering, when, in 2009, then president Nicolas

Sarkozy said that such clothing was “not welcome” and that legislation would protect

women who were being forced to wear it. There have been calls by some members of

parliament (MPs) to ban the niqab in Britain, following recent bans in other European

countries such as Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, and Bulgaria. Such

legislation alludes to a need to protect Muslim women from an oppressive male family

member, which infantilizes them and makes them appear weak. Furthermore, it pro-

motes a message of intolerance and indicates that Muslim women who wear the niqab

do not belong in secular Western countries. Both messages have a similar impact

which is to encourage Muslim women to stay home and out of public view.

Although there is increasing literature on street violence against women generally,

there is relatively little scholarly work examining the experiences of Muslim women

who wear the niqab. Allen’s (2015) study provided a significant contribution to this

gap by interviewing veiled Muslim women about their experiences and concluding

that incidents were often at the intersection of religion and gender. However, there still

exists a lack of engagement with wider literature on street harassment, which draws