Jasmine Zine and Anaya McMurray present various arguments on issues to do with double standards for men and women in the Muslim community. The two present their concerns about the effect these double standards have on the young Muslim women. While Anaya bases her discussion on the hip-hop generation, jasmine bases her discussion on the experiences of young Muslim women in the family and school settings. The two authors, therefore, discuss the lives of the young, black, Muslim women in an environment where the Muslims are a minority.
Anaya uses examples of young female Muslim hip-hop artists to describe the experiences of a Black Muslim woman in the hip-hop culture. These are Erykah Badu, Eve, and herself. Although there are many more of their kind who contribute to the hip-hop culture, they are mostly overlooked or just ignored.
The women are usually marginalized and widely misinterpreted when they tend to come out especially in hip-hop music. Some of the tools that lead to their marginalization include the “unchurched” being repressed in the mass media and black history, the popular image that a Muslim woman should have, and the roles of women and men in the hip-hop industry.
Jasmine Zine, on the other hand, explains ways through which the Muslim women create notions concerning religious identity and gender against and within the dominant practices promoted in the Islamic schools. Islamic schools are viewed as institutions that help construct the Islamic sensibilities and identities. There are many double standards when it comes to studying how Muslim women articulate who they are based on Islamophobic and fundamentalist representations. Therefore, Islamic women are forced to find their sense of femininity and womanhood. The patriarchal discourses promoted in the Canadian schools show how the female Muslim girls are expected to construct their own religious and gender identity.
Usually, it is next to taboo for a Black Muslim woman to be involved with the hip-hop music. However, there is a way through which the Muslim women have managed to balance the structures in Islam with the hip-hop way of life hence creating the “improvisation zones” (McMurray, 74). Through this way, the women have the ability to express the cultural and religious identities at the same time.
When considering issues that define the Black Muslim womanhood, the role of women as agents that helps negotiate the hip-hop culture and the Islamic religion is of great importance. The first significance is improvisation as a useful metaphor. It is important to note that organizing ideas -whether in music or daily conversations- is not easy.
However, improvisation has a communicative and collaborative quality that is crucial when is crucial when people’s histories and their musical sounds are mixed together. This concept thus defines the spaces through which the Islam religion can move through different cultures as a “boundary object” (McMurray, 75). This is possible as it can have recognizable structures while at the same time remain malleable enough to put together several meanings in different contexts. Though there are very rigid definitions of Islam, the Black Muslim women are currently creating a new meaning in their roles by mixing the hip-hop culture and their faith.
Women in Toronto, Canada, do face double standards. A perfect example is where Aqsa Parvas, a seventeen-year-old, was murdered by her father after a fight on whether she should or not wear a hijab. The media, however, termed the incident as “honor killing” (Zine, 36). This is double standards in the sense that the man is allowed to punish the woman to the point of death, yet he goes on unpunished. If this act was done by a woman, she could probably be sent to jail. Men are viewed as overly superior to women, yet they live in a society that boasts of equality to some extent. The Muslims, however, blamed Canada’s multiculturalism that allowed the different cultures to end up being misogynistic. It was until the public and media response to the issue when it changed from honor killing to an incident of domestic violence. If the case was however in a completely Islam dominated community, honor killing would have been upheld.
Black Muslim women and hip-hop refer to the Black Muslim women who are part of the hip-hop generation and create music. Erykah Badu is one of them and occupies the improvisation zone. The author refers to one of her songs “one” (McMurray, 77) where she sings with yet another Muslim but a male artist, Busta Rhymes. Their song reflects on the ideal family life while trying to embrace the idea of equality for both men and women, unlike what the Islam religion portrays.
The song’s title is a definite description that there is the need for unity, a quality that every family should embrace according to Islam. This song brings out the double standards in the Muslim community where the role of the woman is limited to the house where she is expected to take care of the children and be there for a man. It is absurd how then the society expects the woman to rediscover herself through a career or profession, yet she is supposed to remain indoors. Anaya used this particular song to show that the Islam religion is not static, and as time went by, the roles of both men and women would change.
Eve is the proper definition of improvisation. Although there many people who do not yet recognize her as a Muslim, her frequent quoting of the word “Allah” proves that she is. In her song “Heaven only knows” (McMurray, 80), Eve failed to bring out the ideas about religion like Erykah had. Through this song, she described her life as a stripper and later as a successful musician.
It is hard to identify with her as a Muslim for she hardly covers herself and has body tattoos, traits that Islam does not condone. This is double standards since most Muslim rappers have the tattoos and yet they are never condemned. Another situation of double arises when Eve get condemned for her dressing yet men can freely use vulgar language in their music, indulge in premarital sex, and yet, get no condemnation. .
Anaya, the author, on the other hand, uses her song, “more than usual” (McMurray, 83), to describe race, class, gender and music politics. She addresses the issue of overlooking the female thinkers in the hip-hop culture just because they do not promote capitalism. She also refutes the idea that the lives of women revolve around men as described by the five percenters. Her spirituality primarily influences the song and her evaluation of her surroundings.
The main objective of Islam is to provide spiritual awareness, justice, and individual development among other qualities. However, this only applies to men’s case, as most women are limited in seeking growth in the hip-hop culture. This in itself is double standards, as the black women are not given the same equal platform as the men as they are viewed as lesser beings.
Schooling girls are required to take up their roles in contradictory ways. Jasmine’s work described how these roles are created through active negotiations and struggles that design the complex constructions that these girls later become. The main issue is that there are already stipulated traits that they are expected to learn that form the basis for their character development.
Certain discourses are what shape these young girls to become “somebody.” They are expected to comply with the normal standards. Jasmine described the elements that shape the pious Muslim woman as faith and dress code. The elements are supposed to ensure that the female is guided according to the conservative cultural norms. The issue of double standards arises in this case as the women are expected to be judged in relation to dress, actions, and behaviors.
The Islam culture tends to ignore the modern woman who is capable of doing much more than remain conservative and in the house. Judging her as so while allowing men to move with the current trends is discriminative. Cultural codes of conduct are somehow a true definition of a pious Muslim girl, but this is not always the case. Sometimes, it is only a “public performance of piety” (Zine, 41).
Policing the pious Muslim girl is criticized by the two authors. In both cases, the Muslim woman, both black or non-black, is expected to follow a strict dress code that consists of a headscarf and a long overcoat. Girls are not allowed to mingle with the boys in order to discourage mingling of different sexes. Any interactions have negative consequences on the honor of women, mostly. In jasmine’s work, a twelfth-grade student, Rehana notes the level of double standard in the Islam schools in regard to how male students behave (Zine, 46). Their behaviors are not scrutinized like the females. They are also not sanctioned when they commit any mistakes, unlike the women.
Although Canada is a freer country, unmarried women mostly are needed to act in discretion to avoid getting much attention from any relatives or fellow Muslims. Their moral behavior is usually more scrutinized than that of the boys. This is another sign of double standards in the Muslim society. The character of girls is highly policed an act Haw refers to as “brandari gaze” (Zine, 46).
The girls automatically learn how to stay disciplined. The girls are viewed to be as fragile as a glass and once her reputation is broken, it cannot be fixed. For this reasons, her every move should be monitored. This in itself causes stigmatization among the girls, as they fear to do anything that may lead to punishments. In short, their freedom is limited, which is another example of double standards, as this case does not apply to the males.
In conclusion, both authors are justified to criticize the controls and limits on the young Muslim women, whether black or white. The world is changing, and some cultural practices should be abandoned. Double standards in the Muslim society cause the stigmatization of the Muslim woman causing her to underperform, therefore not maximizing her full potential. Although some of the practices promote good behavior among the Muslim women, most of them usually discriminate against the women. In the world of hip-hop, women’s effort should not be overshadowed simply because they are Black Muslim women. They should not be criticized simply because their mode of dressing is not similar to that of Muslim women in Arabic speaking countries as described by Anaya. The society should stop having double standards only because culture advocates for some practices. For many years, the Islamic religion has treated men and women differently, and the women who seem to go against the grain are heavily criticized. They are accused of immorality while men doing the same things are not condemned. The experiences of Eve and Anaya just highlight the double standards that women face, especially the Islamic women in the hip-hop industry.
Works Cited
McMurray, Anaya. (2008). Hotep and Hip-Hop: Can Black Muslim Women Be Down with Hip-Hop? Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. 2008, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 74–92].
Zine, Jasmin. 2008. “Honor and Identity: An Ethnographic Account of Muslim Girls in a Canadian Islamic School.” Topia, 19, spring: 35-61.
