The Amina Lawal stoning case became a face for the media’s oppressed-Muslim-woman trope

Evidence

On March 22, 2002, a Shari’a court in northern Nigeria sentenced Amina Lawal to death by stoning for having sex and a child out of wedlock. The father of the child did not face similar criminal charges because of a lack of evidence. The child served as evidence of Lawal’s crime. The case drew international attention and outrage and became headline news in the United States; the oppressed Muslim woman so often referred to in the news since 9/11 finally had a name and a face. The liberal organizations Feminist Majority Foundation and National Organization for Women protested at the Nigerian embassy to demand that the Nigerian government reverse the decision to stone Lawal. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 634

Categorization

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