Veiled Muslim women manage anti-Muslim hate crime through concealment and social withdrawal.
Evidence
In this context, individuals appear to manage impressions of their Muslim identity in public and online mainly through concealment, with the aim of reducing the risk of future abuse. Zempi (2014) found that Muslim women who wear the niqab often try to become less ‘visible’ by taking the niqab off. Relatedly, Zempi (2014) found that the threat of anti-Muslim hate crime had long-lasting effects for individual victims, including making them afraid to leave their homes and leaving them feeling like ‘social lepers’ and ‘social outcasts’. As a result, common sensations cited by veiled Muslim women were those of panic attacks, worry, extreme anxiety and depression, which were said to derive from the fear of having to endure future victimization when in public. Thus women were often reluctant to leave the house through fear of being attacked, particularly on the street, in parks, in shops and on public transport. However, some women described feeling like ‘prisoners in their own home’. Although the experience and fear of anti-Muslim hate crime had ‘forced’ these women to withdraw from wider social participation, this was seen as the ‘only way’ to decrease their sense of vulnerability as they felt that there was nowhere else that they could be safe from the threat of anti-Muslim hate crime. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 368
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the lived-victim dimension of the definitional debate — this ‘fear of future abuse’ evidence is what anti-Muslim-racism frameworks use to ground Islamophobia in material harm rather than mere attitudes. — connects to: Islamophobic hate crime constrains Muslim women and harms bystander group members. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 151; Anti-Muslim hate crime drives victims to conceal Muslim identity and flee localities. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 367; Anti-Muslim hate crime targets veiled women partly for gender performance, not religion alone. — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 368 (+5 more)
Related
- Anti-Muslim hate crime drives victims to conceal Muslim identity and flee localities. (similarity 0.92)
- Anti-Muslim hate crime targets veiled women partly for gender performance, not religion alone. (similarity 0.89)
- Islamophobic hate crime constrains Muslim women and harms bystander group members. (similarity 0.88)
- Visible Muslim identity increases vulnerability to hate crime victimization. (similarity 0.85)
- Anti-Muslim hate crime forces spatial retreat and self-segregation that is coerced, not chosen. (similarity 0.83)
- Because anti-Muslim hate is identity-targeted, victims cannot dismiss it as random (similarity 0.81)
- Muslim men sought to hide religious identity while Muslim women resisted removal (similarity 0.80)
- Self-concealment by fearful Muslims inadvertently advances Islamophobia’s erasure mission (similarity 0.80)
- Surveillance pressure to represent an entire collective erodes hijabi women’s individuality (similarity 0.79)
- Anti-Muslim hate crime harms target victims’ intrinsic identity and reach the whole Muslim community (similarity 0.79)
- Muslim women veil for varied personal-political reasons silenced by rescue discourse (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Anti-Muslim hate crime creates parallel lives by preventing cross-community engagement
#expands(0.82) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 368 - Visible Muslim identity increases vulnerability to hate crime victimization.
#expands(0.78) — A. Hussain, N. Meer, Framing Muslim Integration, 360 - Gendered Islamophobia imposes the most distorted stereotypes on veiled Muslim women.
#expands(0.72)