Challenging dominant depictions of Muslim sexuality in media and literature

What is it about?

We begin this article with a close look at some contemporary pictures of sexual life in the Muslim world that have been painted in certain sections of the Western media, asking how and why these pictures matter. Across a range of mainstream print media from the New York Times to the Daily Mail, and across reported events from several countries can be found pictures of sexual misery framing Muslim men as tyrannical and the wider world of Islam as culpable. Crucially, this is not the whole story. We then consider how these negative representations are being challenged and how they can be challenged further. In doing so, we will not simply set pictures of ‘sexual misery’ against their binary opposites, namely pictures of sexual happiness and liberation. Instead, we will search for a more complicated picture, one that challenges stereotypes about the sexual lives of Muslims without simply idealising its subjects. This takes us to the journalism, life writing and creative non-fiction of Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and the fiction of Ayisha Malik and Amjeed Kabil.

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Why is it important?

This is important because Muslims continue to find themselves at the centre of media scrutiny and political concern, much of it negative. This article seeks to complicate and contest dominant ideas about Muslim sexuality. It is crucial to hear from rather than just about Muslims if we are to challenge negative stereotypes with something more layered than a counter-stereotype.

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