Understanding Gendered Islamophobia

This is the fourth lesson in a unit designed to help teachers have conversations with their students about contemporary Islamophobia in a safe, sensitive and constructive way. Use these lessons to help your students reflect on Islamophobia – how it manifests in contemporary society and its impact – and consider what needs to be done to challenge it.

In this lesson, students explore what gendered Islamophobia is and how it manifests. In the first part of the lesson, students reflect on identity; learn about intersectionality; and discuss gendered Islamophobia case studies to better understand how Islamophobia impacts women. In the second part of the lesson, students reflect on and discuss clothing and choice; consider how the religious clothing Muslim women wear is portrayed as oppressive; and read Muslim women’s views of religious clothing, before completing an Exit Card capturing how the lesson has impacted their thoughts and feelings. 

Giving students the opportunity to reflect on identity is an important step before introducing students to intersectionality, which highlights how people’s different social identities can mean they experience several forms of discrimination simultaneously. Learning about intersectionality can help students understand how Muslim women are targeted in different ways from Muslim men: they can experience gender oppression, in addition to religious and racial oppression. Furthermore, sharing relevant case studies helps students see how gendered Islamophobia manifests and the human impact of such discrimination. 

Moreover, inviting students to reflect on clothing and choice is a useful way of helping them connect with the importance of allowing people to choose what they wear and critically consider the problematic way in which Muslim women are targeted on account of religious clothing; hearing from Muslim women about their views on religious clothing highlights the diversity within the Muslim community and, importantly, foregrounds the voices of Muslim women, who are often excluded from debates on religious clothing; and giving students the chance to complete an Exit Card allows teachers to learn about how the content of the lesson has impacted them.  

We recommend that you do preparatory work on discussing Islamophobia and Islamophobic tropes by teaching at least the first two lessons Confronting Islamophobia and Exploring Islamophobic Tropes if you have not already done so.  

We also recommend that you revisit your classroom contract before teaching this lesson. If you do not have a class contract, you can use our contracting guidelines for creating a classroom contract or another procedure you have used in the past.

Before teaching this lesson, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process. 

Activity 1 Reflect on Identity

Explain to students that today they will be learning about gendered Islamophobia: Islamophobia that targets women. In the UK, the majority of victims of street-based hate crimes against Muslims are women. To begin, they will reflect on identity as a means of better understanding the unique discrimination Muslim women experience and how it is connected to different aspects of their identity.

Ask students to choose one or more of the following prompts to explore in a journal reflection: 

1. What is identity?
2. What different factors make people who they are? 

Then, lead a short class discussion capturing students’ ideas on the board. You might choose to do a mind map for ‘identity’, collecting all the different factors that make people who they are. If helpful, highlight the following factors: 

• Religious/spiritual affiliation
• Culture, race, or ethnicity
• Appearance/style
• Language or nationality
• Hobbies/interests
• Gender
• Sexual orientation
• Beliefs and values
• Group/organisation/community membership
• Personality traits
• Place
• Socio-economic class
• Work

Next, invite students to do a private journal reflection in response to the following questions: 

1. ​​Note down 7–10 features of your identity.
2. What parts of your identity do you choose for yourself?
   • What parts of your identity are determined for you by other people or by society?
3. Have you ever been expected to behave a certain way and/or been treated differently due to aspects of your identity? 
   • What happened? 
   • How did the situation make you feel? 

Before having volunteers share their ideas, acknowledge that it can be hard to share our ideas with others, and then model risk-taking by sharing something from your journal reflection with the class.

As this topic is potentially sensitive for some students, reiterate that they do not need to share it if they do not want to do so.

Activity 2 Learn About Intersectionality

Inform students that they will explore a concept called intersectionality to help them understand why women are more likely to be the victims of Islamophobia. Show students from 4:54 to 11:33 of professor, scholar and writer Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TED talk The Urgency of Intersectionality, inviting them to reflect on the following questions as they watch the talk excerpt: 

1. Why did Kimberlé Crenshaw coin the term intersectionality?
2. What does intersectionality mean? 
3. What different systems of oppression are there in society that can intersect?
4. Do you find the metaphor of the intersection helpful? Why or why not?

After students have watched the video, lead a short class discussion and then share the following definition of intersectionality, inviting students to write it into their books:

Intersectionality describes the way in which social identities (e.g. gender, race, sexual orientation, disability and class) and related systems of oppression overlap or ‘intersect’ in a way that means people experience discrimination on multiple levels.

Activity 3 Learn About Gendered Islamophobia

Explain to students that gendered Islamophobia is Islamophobia that targets women, impacting how they are treated in the UK. In the world of work, for example, one in eight Pakistani women are asked about marriage and family aspirations in job interviews compared to one in thirty white women, ¹ while 50% of women wearing the hijab feel they have ‘missed out on progression opportunities because of religious discrimination’. ² In 2018, Muslim women were targeted in 58% of Islamophobic incidents. ³ In the street, the verbal and physical violence women face includes insults, being spat at or having their hijab pulled off. Muslim women can be discriminated against as a consequence of their gender, ethnicity and religion. 

Inform students they will be learning more about how Islamophobia impacts women by reading some case studies. Divide students into groups and distribute your chosen version of the handout The Gendered Islamophobia Case Studies (Versions One and Two) asking students to read the text and answer the accompanying connection questions. There are three case studies, so some groups will need to have the same case studies.

Finally, lead a short class discussion using the following questions as prompts: 

1. What overlapping social identities intersect in each of the case studies? 
2. How do these social identities impact the treatment and opportunities of the women?
   • Which systems of oppression do they link to? 
3. Which, if any, Islamophobic tropes are referred to by the perpetrators?  
4. How does the content of these case studies make you think/feel?

Activity 4 Reflect on Intersectionality

Next, ask students to reflect on the following questions: 

1. What is intersectionality? 
2. Which different oppressions might intersect when it comes to Muslim women? 
3. Why is it important to keep intersectionality in mind when reflecting on an individual’s experiences of oppression?
4. What can be done to tackle gendered Islamophobia? 

If there is time, field answers from the class or check their responses in their books after the lesson to check for understanding.

• 1Šeta, Forgotten Women: The Impact of Islamophobia on Muslim Women, p. 3.
• 2Ibid.
• 3Gendered Anti-Muslim Hatred and Islamophobia, p. 3.

Activity 1 Reflect on Clothing and Choice

Inform students that a large amount of gendered Islamophobia revolves around religious dress, and that before exploring this in further depth, they will reflect on clothing and choice. Distribute the handout Clothing and Choice: Anticipation Guide or project the following prompts on the board (it is worth asking students to think beyond school uniform, so that this does not become their sole focus): 

1. Complete the following sentence: ‘An item of clothing that is important to me is … because ...’
2. On a scale of 1–5, 1 being strongly agree and 5 strongly disagree, how far do you agree with the following statements? 
   • There should be laws on what clothes people can and cannot wear. 
   • Clothes are an important form of self-expression. 
   • People are responsible for other people’s responses to the clothes they wear. 
   • People are not defined by the clothes they wear.
   • Feminine presenting people face more criticism for their clothing choices than masculine presenting people.
3. Choose one or two statements and explain your view. 

Lead a short class discussion, inviting students to share their responses with the class. Alternatively, you may choose to allow students to share their views on some of the statements using the Barometer teaching strategy or the Four Corners teaching strategy, inviting students to take a position in the room according to how far they agree with a chosen statement. You can then ask students to explain why they have stood where they have. Please note, this will require advance preparation as you will need to make signs labelling different parts of the room to represent different levels of agreement (i.e. strongly agree/strongly disagree). 

Debrief the activity with the class by facilitating a whole-group discussion based on the following questions:

1. On which statements was there the most agreement/disagreement in the class?
2. What did the responses suggest about clothing and choice? 
3. What did the responses suggest about how people respond to the clothes of others? 
4. What did the responses suggest about how different genders are treated?

Activity 2 Watch a Video on the Islamophobic Trope: Oppression of Women

Explain to students that in the West, the Islamophobic trope that alleges women in Islam are oppressed is often related to what women wear. To explore this further, show students the Get the Trolls Out! video Islamophobic Narratives: Oppression of Women.

Once students have watched the video, ask them to discuss the following questions in pairs before inviting some students to share their responses with the class: 

1. How does the media present the religious clothing of Muslim women?
   • What are the dangers of such representations? 
   • What narratives do they fuel?  
2. How does creating laws on what women cannot wear impact them? 
3. Why is it important to hear from Muslim women about religious clothing?
4. What stories about Muslim women are often missing from the media/history lessons? 
   • What impact might this absence have on people’s impressions of Muslim women?

Activity 3 Read Muslim Women’s Views on Religious Clothing

Explain to students that women are often targeted on account of the clothes they wear. As the Pew Research Center highlights, ‘[r]eligious restrictions around the world often target women, who in many countries face censure because their clothing is considered too religious – or not religious enough’. ¹ Women’s religious head coverings are regulated in sixty-one countries. ² This regulation, depending on the country, controls women on what they can wear or what they cannot wear. In France, it is illegal to wear face coverings anywhere, burkinis in public pools and hijabs in educational institutions; ³ in one state in India, it is illegal to wear hijabs in schools; ⁴ while in Iran, all women are required by law to wear a head covering; ⁵ and in Afghanistan, all women are required by law to wear a burqa. ⁶

These laws that dictate what women can and cannot wear often ignore the voices of Muslim women. Their voices are also regularly left out of debates on the topic. 

Explain to students that they will now read texts outlining some Muslim women’s different perspectives on religious clothing. Divide students into groups and distribute the excerpt collections between groups from the handout Muslim Women’s Views on Religious Clothing. Ask students to read the excerpts and then answer the following questions: 

1. In the article excerpts, what reasons do women give for wearing religious clothing? 
   • For not wearing religious clothing? 
2. What does the diversity of views highlight about Muslim women and their relationship to Islam?
3. How are the writers’ choices connected to gender? 
4. How, if at all, has hearing directly from Muslim women shaped/changed your view on religious clothing? 
5. Why is it important that women have the right to choose what they wear? 
   • Why does limiting women’s choices erode their rights?

After students have finished discussing the questions, invite students from different groups to share their responses with the class.

Activity 4 Complete an Exit Card

Finally, you might wish to give your students an opportunity to privately share their thoughts on the content covered in the lesson in an Exit Card. 

1. I came in thinking/feeling …
2. I am leaving thinking/feeling ...

Collect in the Exit Cards to check how the lesson content has impacted students’ thoughts and feelings. 

• 1Virginia Villa, Women in many countries face harassment for clothing deemed too religious – or too secular, Pew Research Center, 16 December 2020, accessed 6 March 2023.
• 2Ibid.
• 3EXPLAINED: Does France really have a hijab ban?’, The Local Fr, 30 September 2022, accessed 6 March 2023.
• 4‘Hijab verdict: India Supreme Court split on headscarf ban in classrooms’, BBC News, 13 October 2022, accessed 6 March 2023.
• 5Akhtar Makoii, Arash Azizi and Alex Stambaugh, ‘Iran says hijab law is under review, as state media dismisses claims morality police has been abolished’, CNN, 4 December 2022, accessed 6 March 2023.
• 6'Taliban to force Afghan women to wear face veil’, BBC News, 7 May 2022, accessed 6 March 2023.