Category Archives: Fashion

SISTERS – The Green Edition: Faith, Families and Features

Screen shot 2013-03-26 at 20.27.29After lots of work and even more enthusiasm (well done Brooke!) the very lovely and very special green issue of SISTERS is out. It’s bursting with green quizzes, features, top tips for your home and also a round up of some great eco-Muslims organisations. I’ve  contributed an article on the issue of population growth and ask the whether large Muslim families are a blessing or a curse. Read on for more and also to download or buy your own copy.

Large Families SISTERS page 1Large families SISTERS page 2

My New Green Column At Sisters Magazine

Yep, the title says it all. Sisters Magazine contacted me a couple of months ago about writing a green column for them and, of course, I said yes! So for the next couple of months I’ll be lovingly putting pen to paper (more like fingers to keyboard) on topics such as eco-mosques, solar power, meat-eating, growing your own veg and spreading the green Dawah. So keep an eye out and here’s my first on eco-mosques of the world. Read the full article here. Continue reading

Green Prophet: The Do’s and Don’ts of Green Blogging for Muslims

Need some ideas to help inspire Muslims on environmental issues? Here are my ten top tips…

As much as I’d like to tell you that there is an easy and foolproof way to capture the imagination of every Muslim when talking about the environment, the reality isn’t so simple. Sadly, there’s no magic formula to dazzle every Muslim into going green or at least I haven’t found it yet! Fear not though, intrepid blogger, because there is something you can do to improve your chances of firstly tapping into a Muslim readership and secondly, encouraging them to green their way of life.

1.  Do Your Research- Whilst no one expects you to be an expert in Islamic jurisprudence, a basic understanding of Islam and Muslim culture will help you when you are blogging. Doing your research about the topic you’re discussing and referring to Green Islamic principles will show the reader that you’re serious about green Muslims and consequently they’ll take your work seriously. Continue reading

How Sharks Keep Us Breathing: An Interview with Filmmaker Jonathan Ali Khan

“What is happening to sharks around the world is the most shameful and biggest commercial sellout that man has ever perpetuated against the natural world” – Marine Conservationist and Film-maker Jonathan Ali Khan

Swapping fashion design for fish and wildlife, the film-maker Jonathan Ali Khan has been working on marine conservation in the United Arab Emirates for the past 25 years. His series ‘Arabia’s Cycle of Life’ reached 25 million viewers in the Middle East North Africa region and his latest project ‘Sharkquest Arabia’ is a 2-film TV documentary which uses natural history to communicate the issues facing sharks throughout Arabia’s waters. Green Prophet caught up with Jonathan Ali Khan to talk about the important role sharks play in keeping humans alive, what fisherman can do to protect sharks, the Japanese and Chinese lobby, and how TV and film may be the best way to reach a wide audiences about wildlife conservation.

Why are sharks important for preserving ecosystems and why should we be working for their conservation?

Jonathan Ali Khan: The role of sharks is to manage the food chain. It’s no mistake that these animals possess a formidable range of senses and qualities that have positioned them at the top of the aquatic food chain. As the apex predator, the role they play in the fundamental law of natural selection is in fact linked to the overall health of the seas of our planet. With 92% of our living biosphere being aquatic, almost 80% of our planet’s air is generated by the algae and microscopic phytoplankton that are found in the sea. Many thousands of fish species and other marine organisms feed on phytoplankton and algae. Sharks on the other hand prey on the fish that feed on plankton; right up through to the top of the food chain. So if we remove the sharks, as we are systematically doing at an unsustainable rate of over 70 million sharks a year, then it leaves the plankton feeders free of predation and free to gobble up the main source of our planet’s main oxygen supply! Therefore, it is in our interest to maintain a healthy source of oxygen and air, if we want to keep on breathing! Continue reading

MMW: Revisiting Marie Claire’s Coverage of Muslim Women

Muslimah Media Watch has published my article about the portrayal of Muslim women in Maire Claire- been planning to do a piece for them in a long time so it’s great to final get that done.  Even better, Mother Jones picked up on my article too. Here it is in full.

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Regular readers of Muslimah Media Watch may remember last year’s article criticizing the coverage of Muslim women in Marie Claire. Guest contributor Asma Uddin pointed out that the magazine’s coverage showed Muslim women as “sequestered, brainwashed, and victimized, if by no one else than their own, naive, unknowing selves.” She went on to assess four articles from the U.S. edition of the magazine that illustrated this, which you can read here.

This is where a confession comes in. When I was younger, I used to read Marie Claire, and I have vague memories of enjoying flicking through its pages—even getting excited at its coverage of Muslim women. For my masters in International Journalism, I wanted to look at the representation of Muslim women in the media, and I focused my research on the coverage of Muslim women in women’s magazines and Marie Claire in particular.

Continue reading

Green Prophet: Covering Eco-Islam In the Middle East

Well, about a month ago I joined Green Prophet as their “Eco-Islam Affairs Editor” which is a very fancy title for saying someone who will cover Muslim related Environment news. So far, its been great!

I’ve always felt that the green message of Islam never gets enough coverage and now, hopefully I will be contributing to righting that wrong. I’ve been getting very nosy and asking people to tell me what fascinating things they are getting up to. And this is what I’ve found out so far!

There was a great campaign called ‘Inspired by Muhammed’ which was attempting to end the association of Islam with terrorism by highlighting the prophet’s love of the environment.

I also broke the story of Cambridge’s plans for a faulous Eco-Mosque with stunning skylights and renewable energy- this story got picked up far and wide and even got picked up by Treehugger! Woohoo!

I’ve had the opportunity to speak to two lovely eco-Muslimahs about how Islam inspires them and also their intiatives towards changing attitudes towards climate change in the environment. Rianne spoke to me about how to ‘Green’ a Muslim wedding and Kristiane about her journey from globetrotting MTV presenter to spreading the eco message of Islam.

I’ve pondered on the (very slowly) changing attitudes towards climate change in the Middle East and also reported on a young Muslimah in Jordan who wanted to promote vegetarianism- wearing a suit of lettuce.

It’s been fun and I have lots of ideas for future posts- I will be looking at organic hijabs and the rise in ethical Muslim fashion as well as sustainable Arab designers making waves in the design world. So I guess stay tuned in and check out my work at Green Prophet!

Veiled Threat at B*tch Magazine

Well, its finally here! The piece I put together for Bitch Magazine on Princess Hijab is on their website. It’s so great to see it published as it was a challenging one, not only in terms of content but also having to overcome language barriers (Princess Hijab is French afterall).

Thankfully, the people at Bitch were great and Andi Ziesler was so generous with her time and getting useful feedback to me. Being a young freelancer, the one thing I crave is feedback! Constructive, of course I am only human :)

Enjoy. And feedback anyone?

Veiled Threat

The guerrilla graffiti of Princess Hijab
Veiled Threat
Article by Arwa Aburawa, appeared in issue Art/See; published in 2009; filed under Art.

Since 2006, the elusive guerrilla artist known as Princess Hijab has been subverting Parisian billboards, to a mixed reception. Her anonymity irritates her critics, many of whom denounce her as extremist and antifeminist; when she recently conceded, in the pages of a German newspaper, that she wasn’t a Muslim, it opened the floodgates to avid speculation in the blogosphere. If her claim of being a 21-year-old Muslim girl was only partially true, some wondered what the real message was behind her self-described “artistic jihad.”

In her online manifesto, PH declares that she “acts upon her own free will” and is “not involved in any lobby or movement, be it political, religious, or to do with advertising.” The Princess insists that, like the ape-masked Guerrilla Girls and Mexico’s balaclava-clad Zapatistas, by being nobody, she is free to be anybody. But as liberating as this anonymity may seem, it does leave her work open to conflicting—and occasionally unflattering—interpretations. On the popular blog Art21, critic Paul Schmelzer points to Princess Hijab’s work as an example of right-wing street art, surmising that her motivation is to cover the “shame of omnipresent (and often sexualized) ads.” Another blogger, Evil Fionna, argues that if Princess Hijab were acting as a fundamentalist Christian, her work would be recognized as “religious extremis[m]” that demonizes women and makes them ashamed of their bodies. And a commentator on the anti-Islam site Infidel Bloggers accused the artist of urging women to submit to the “tyranny of Islam.”

These observers also allude to the uncanny similarity between the work of Princess Hijab and that of conservative religious groups that have historically used less literal hijabizing to police the female form. In Saudi Arabia, the 80-year-old government agency known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice is tasked with, among other things, blacking out bare skin wherever it shows up. In line with Sharia law, women in the pages of magazines, on billboards, and in other public images are painstakingly covered up: Katy Perry may be sporting high-waisted hot pants and a tiny top on her cd cover, but once the Committee gets through with it, she’s garbed in a long-sleeved shirt with matching leggings. (The group, notorious for beating up men and women engaged in “immoral behavior,” have also made headlines for banning Valentine’s Day and restricting the sale of cats and dogs, lest they be used by men to attract women’s attention.)

And in the U.K. in 2005, the activists behind Muslims Against Advertising (MAAD) began daubing blobs of paint on the underdressed models in street ads for the likes of Dove and Wonderbra, and in some cases ripping down the posters altogether.

The ongoing conflict over hijabs in her home country does give Princess Hijab’s work an inescapable political context, or what she calls a “shade of provocation.” France’s hijab debates first erupted in 1989 when three high-school girls were suspended after they refused to remove their Islamic headscarves at a school in a suburb of Paris. Successive years of controversy led to former President Jacques Chirac passing a bill in 2004 banning “religious symbols” in schools on the grounds that they clashed with France’s cherished notions of secularization; more recently, President Nicolas Sarkozy upheld the ban on burqas and headscarves in public spaces, stating, “The burqa is not a religious symbol, it is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission of women. I want to say solemnly that it will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic. We cannot accept women in cages, amputated of all dignity, on French soil.”

But Princess Hijab insists that anyone confusing her work with that of either conservative culture-jammers or Muslims supporting freedom of religious expression is missing the mark. “My work supports right-wing radicalism like Taxi Driver support cabbies. I’m using the hijab for myself.” And looking through her catalog of work, neither label seems right. If her goal really is to cover up the skin-flashing women in ads, then why leave slinky legs on display underneath the painted-on hijabs? And if she’s aiming to make a statement about the dignity of Muslim women, why hijabize male models in Dolce & Gabbana briefs with shoulder-length chadors, leaving their tanned, oiled abs and legs even more preposterously exposed?

A Dolce & Gabbana ad featuring young men in underwear has been hit by Princess Hijab. Their upper-bodies have been spray-painted with black hijabs and headscarfs. The paint drips down their exposed lower-bodies.In fact, Princess Hijab asserts, her dressing up of billboards is a symbolic act of resistance meant to reassert a “physical and mental integrity” against what she calls the “visual terrorism” of advertising. Arguing that the human right of expression has been displaced by publicists, advertisers, and the machinery of capitalist, commodified culture, she offers that, “My work explores how something as intimate as the human body has become as distant as a message from your corporate sponsor.”

“Like that poster of Farah Fawcett,” she continues, “with her teeth clenched in fear above her perfect polyester swimswuit. When she revealed her cancer, we had to see her and her body as something capable of tragedy. It’s that sort of re-humanization that I aim for with hijabization.” Princess Hijab later admitted that this example, and equating wearing the hijab with physical suffering, was a clumsy one, but wanted the point to stand: Her work attempts to remove the hijab from its gendered and religious context and convert it into a symbol of empowerment and re-embodiment.

Equally central to her work is the goal of social equality. She notes that, in France, “You’re always being asked your origin, which religion you follow. It’s something that is very French, actually; you don’t see it in New York or Berlin.” Hinting that she is a racial outsider in France, Princess Hijab states that she is never taken at face value, but instead pushed into a homogeneous social group and then judged by a corresponding set of stereotypes. With stratification by gender, religion, place of origin, and sexuality, she asserts, comes groups that are closed off from one another’s experiences. Even during her time at university, she recalls her modes of expression being explained away by her origins: “I would be told [that it was] ‘natural,’ given my background, that I would work on [one] topic and not on another. I felt trapped.” But by highlighting everyone’s potential “outsider” status by imposing the hijab on public figures, PH asserts that she is “trying to create a connection with and between people.”

Another poster by Princess Hijab featuring the woman in the heascarf. Here her headscarf is black and the text beneath her face reads HIJAB-ADBack when Princess Hijab was believed to be a Muslim, blogger Ethar El-Katatney of Muslimah Media Watch noted, “I’d actually love it if it turns out she’s not a Muslim, because it lends credibility to the idea that the dislike of being exposed to ‘visual aggression’ is not necessarily rooted in religious belief. Fed up with women being used to sell products, hijabizing ads could be a way to ‘take back’ women’s rights to their bodies.” Indeed, in Princess Hijab’s marked-up art, the headscarf is an agent not of covering but of exposure—of the oppressive nature of the advertising industry, of the displacement and disempowerment of women who are repeatedly told that they are not good, skinny, beautiful, sexy, or rich enough. It’s work that owes much more to Adbusters or No Logo than to the Taliban.

Though Princess Hijab’s work has gained international notice, like much street art it still actively resists a simplistic reading. And that she uses such a contested icon to wreak artistic revenge on the dual constructs of advertising and social prejudice means her work is ultimately as much about the interpretation of others as it is about her own intent. “People are confused by me,” admits PH. “Some say I am pro-feminist, some say I am antifeminist; some say I am pro-Islam, others that I am anti-Islam. It’s all very interesting—but at the end of the day, I am above all an artist.”

Arwa Aburawa is a freelance journalist based in the United Kingdom.

Link to the Article on the Bitch website.