Villanova University

Muslim Women on the Internet: Social Media as Sites of Identity Formation

Author(s): Dorothy Lee Goehring
Source: Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies , Vol. 42, No. 3 (Spring 2019),
pp. 20-34
Published by: Villanova University

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.33428/jsoutasiamiddeas.42.3.0020

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 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 43, No.2, Spring 2019

Muslim Women on the

Internet: Social Media as Sites
of Identity Formation
Dorothy Lee Goehring*

Formation and Introduction

On January 10, 2014, Noorulann Shahid, under the Twitter handle of @
YxxngHippie, tweeted “White fems want to pull your hijab off and liberate
you and Muslims claim, you don’t need feminism. #lifeofaMuslimfeminist.”1
This tweet and its hashtag quickly became popular and started a viral
conversation among Internet denizens regarding the identity politics of
intersecting identities of Muslim and women. Between Muslim women
expressing their dismay at the larger community’s preoccupation with the
politics of hijab, advocating for more overarching consideration of women’s
rights, and engaging in Twitter conversations with others who may not
have been aware of such a debate, the Twitter-verse became abuzz with
conversation2. The total number of tweets generated with the hashtag
currently amounts to 3,316 tweets3.
Twitter itself is unique within the world of social media platforms. Limiting
its users to 140 characters per post, or “tweet”, it forces the user to be very
concise, sometimes to the point of being inflammatory. Without the space
to qualify one’s claims without making an entirely separate tweet, one is
required to declare one’s statement in a succinct manner, sacrificing nuance
for brevity, gaining clarity and possibly unintended consequences. Marking
one’s tweet with a hashtag, therefore, is very significant. Originating from
*Dorothy Lee Goehring received her M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School in Islamic
Studies in 2016. She holds a B.A. in Theology and Anthropology from Fordham University.
A former NAIN Young Adult Scholar and Science, Religion, and Culture Junior Fellow, her
scholarship focuses on the intersection of religion, identity, education, politics and public
policy, and pop culture.
1
Shahid, Noorulann. Twitter Post. 10 January 2014. 8:52AM.
2
#lifeofamuslimfeminist. Twitter search. 10 Feburary 2016. https://twitter.com/
search?src=typd&q=%23lifeofamuslimfeminist
3
Ibid.

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an instance of code, the hashtag acts as an indexing platform, linking every
user who utilizes it together in a user-friendly searchable format. Particularly
popular hashtags appear at the bottom of Twitter’s homepage, where they
are seen as “trending”. This allows other users to click on the hashtag, read
older tweets, and participate in the conversation if they so choose.
Before long, outside websites began to take notice of this trending hashtag.
News websites including Buzzfeed4 and the Huffington Post5 curated lists of
tweets that they deemed to be most powerful, analyses of the hashtag were
hashed out in think-pieces on third party blogs, and before long, the fuller
internet was ablaze with questions: What exactly is meant by this hashtag?
Who is it speaking for or speaking to? What are problems and critiques
with this hashtag? What is it defining, and what is it leaving out? And who
gets to decide?

Framework and Methodology

At its heart, this paper, however, is the assertion that both identities,
and the frameworks that are used to explore and shape them, matter.
Who one is, what one chooses to be, and what others see in them are all
incomparably important in forging social relationships. The spaces in which
those relationships are forged are, I argue, equally as important for one
to understand their identities themselves, especially in the context of these
relationships. In other words, through the action of creating a relationship
with another person, one learns something about one’s very self.
Hashtag activism offers a very particular way of engaging in self-
identification in a broadly public sphere. Social media platforms such
as Twitter and Facebook provide Muslim women in the West a uniquely
public avenue to engage critically with identity negotiation over and against
prevailing political stereotypes through the form of hashtag activism and
the conversations that arise from it. By engaging the political as personal
in a public forum, Muslim women are expanding the definitions of their
identities and challenging dominant political discourses.
Within this paper, I will show that social media postings, particularly around
hashtag activism, are contributing to larger overarching conversations about
religion, gender, and politics for Muslim women in the West. I will first
4
Nashrulla, Tasneem. “32 Powerful and Brutally Honest Tweets from
#LifeOfAMuslimFeminist.” Buzzfeed. 10 January 2014. http://www.buzzfeed.com/
tasneemnashrulla/32-powerful-and-brutally-honest-tweets-from-lifeofamuslimfem#.
qoj2aLL9x
5
Shahid, Noorulann. “Why I Created the #LifeOfAMuslimFeminist Hashtag.” The
Huffington Post. 6 February 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/noorulann-shahid/
muslim-feminism_b_4730882.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

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uncover gender as a performative entity based in struggles of power. I will
then show that this performance carries over into the digital realm into
Twitter posts with hashtags. From there, I will show how Muslim women
engage with identity politics both as an intra-group debate among Muslim
women, and as an inter-group struggle among anyone who does not identify
as a Muslim woman. This includes interactions with other Muslims, other
women, Muslim men, non-Muslim men, and many others. In this way,
hashtags can be seen as an intervention into identity—what one thinks of
it for oneself, what one thinks of it for others, and what one who has not
considered it may think of it.
In terms of methodology, I centered this analysis on four prominent
hashtags created by Muslim women in the West, all of which align themselves
with feminism in some way. Each hashtag trended on Twitter and provoked
discussion surrounding a particular articulation of an intersected identity of
Muslim and woman, with those who shared those identities agreeing and
disagreeing. In addition, discussion and debate was generated by those
who do not share in the intersected identity of being a Muslim woman, in
which they voiced their appeals to their particular understandings of those
identities in offering opinions or suggestions.
It is worth reflecting on the similarity in all of these aforementioned
hashtags. All of them have ties to events or were created in the UK
between 2014 and 2015. As such, this paper caters toward a very particular
subsection of Western Muslim women, and should not necessarily be used
as prescriptive for all Western Muslim women, even with the global reach
of Twitter. Questions of online access, language learning, and other factors
that may have restricted some Western Muslim women from participating
in these conversations must be taken into account, and while such instances
will not be explored within this particular investigation, suffice it to say that
this research is in no way intended to represent all Western Muslim women;
rather, it is meant to be a qualitative exploration of identity politics within
one social media space.

Women, Religion, and the Internet: A Full Picture?

Articulating the politics of identity is, at its core, a continuous, vibrant
process that demands a constant renegotiation of self-defined terms and
values in relation to the spaces that affect them. The spaces in which
these negotiations take place, then, are as important as the identities in
question. The Internet, and social media in particular, as a platform for
self-expression and reflection, offers a unique space in which these identity
negotiations may take place. Increasingly, the Internet has been utilized by

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women attempting to examine their religious and gender identities. Where
they convene, in both scholarly and lay contexts, according to Grace Ji Sun
Kim, matters for the future of religious discourse and identity formation:

As we reflect on the digital world, we recognize new realities that are emerging because
of the Internet. We are living in this in between space where reality in the physical form
as well as online coexist. Nobody could have predicted that so many people would now
“meet” online more frequently than in the flesh. People are dedicating time online to
search, build, and maintain relationships. This online existence is becoming a greater
part of our identity whether we like it or not. As a society, we try to understand this new
space of being and becoming.6

Ji Sun Kim posits quite a few points: first and foremost, that the Internet
is a place of existence that has a profound effect on its users; secondly, that
the Internet, as such, provides fertile ground to create relationships between
users. Certainly, this is not a new concept in terms of creating relationships:
the same can be done through meeting face-to-face or having telephone
conversations. The Internet, however, is distinct through seemingly
contradictory qualities; namely, its ability to hold private and public space
simultaneously.
Social media identities have the capacity to be very controlled entities
insofar as they are dependent upon what the user chooses to share about
themselves.7 However, in participating in these social networks, a user is
connected to a global community of other users through a platform that
encourages connection between its users. By creating open spaces in which
one has the capacity to engage in sharing information with other users,
social media offers a fruitful space for conversation regarding certain topics
such as identity. Through this building and maintaining of relationships
mediated through this sharing of information, Si Jun Kim asserts that the
Internet is a “new space of being and becoming” that offers a platform for
both identity formation and discussion among other users.8
Shahid herself offers some admittedly broad answers regarding her
hashtag, although she is quick to note that while she may have created the
hashtag, it quickly took on a larger following within Twitter and inspired
an incredible diversity of tweets. Part of the reasoning for this is the sheer
length of time that the hashtag lasted--Shahid reported that it was a trending
6
Kim, Grace Ji Sun. “The New Dot com Women: Women Engaging Religious and
Theological Discourse Online.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
7
The possibility (and indeed, the occurrence) of fake social media profiles merits discussion
in regard to this point, but will not be explored here, as it is beyond the scope of this paper.
8
Kim, Grace Ji Sun. “The New Dot com Women: Women Engaging Religious and
Theological Discourse Online.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.

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topic on Twitter for approximately 4 days, which is a longer time than most,
and that the hashtag itself inspired more conversation for about a week.
Another reason she gives is due to the plurality of people who engaged
with the hashtag--a diversity that was ignored by other third party outlets.
Indeed, Shahid remained critical of the Buzzfeed article that curated tweets
prematurely primarily for their lack of diversity. Shahid points out that, while
the article may have been timely, the tweets represented in that article are
predominantly authored by Arab or Desi Muslims, erasing black Muslims
entirely but for one tweet, from @caramelwithsalt: “Muslim feminism
defined by South Asian and Middle Eastern experiences. Black Muslim
women are invisible. #lifeofamuslimfeminist.”9 In addition, the tweets
created were much more focused on the appearance of Muslim women,
directly or indirectly, and the presence or absence of the hijab. Rather
than attempt to represent the plurality of conversation emanating from this
hashtag, Shahid contends that the Buzzfeed article reduces the hashtag and
subsequent conversation to a “caricature” of the Muslim feminist10.
Shahid’s criticism is not without warrant—the Buzzfeed article itself was
created less than 24 hours after the hashtag surfaced, and only certain
tweets were selected to speak for the hashtag. Out of the 3,316 tweets
collected with this hashtag, 1,316 tweets were written within the first 24
hours of the hashtag’s debut on Twitter. From this pool, Buzzfeed writer
Tasneem Nashrulla selected 32 tweets for her article. Of those 32 tweets,
as mentioned, all were written by people of Arab or Desi heritage, except
for the aforementioned one dealing with the lack of representation of Black
Muslims. By contrast, 9 of the 32 tweets dealt with frustration with Western
conceptions of feminism, 7 discussed frustration with misogyny in the
Muslim community, and 8 discussed the politics of appearance in relation
to piety. While these were all very popular topics in the entire schema of
the hashtag, there was a great deal more discussion about the role of politics
and nationalism (373 tweets) and more discussion of diversity issues within
Islam itself (465 tweets). These are not insignificant numbers, and such an
omission from the Buzzfeed article does seem to presume that some topics
are more privileged for consumption and critique than others in relation to
Muslim feminism. The result, of course, is that other topics are not brought
for consideration to a larger public, keeping the true depth of the discussions
limited to Twitter.
As for her motivations for the hashtag itself, Shahid seemed loath to

@caramelwithsalt. Twitter Post. 10 January 2014. 9:34 AM.

9

Shahid, Noorulann. “Hashtag Activism.” Wordpress.com. 31 March 2014. https://

10

noorulannshahid.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/hashtag-activism/

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discuss them at length, rather than focusing on larger implications from
the community. However, in a reflection piece for the Huffington Post,
she offers the following: “So overall, I had Muslims telling me I did not
need feminism and mainstream feminists wanting to ‘liberate me’, but
both groups thinking that the phrase ‘Muslim feminist’ was an oxymoron.
So in essence, the hashtag was born out of the frustration I had from not
being able to place myself comfortably within feminism.”11 In the post
on her own blog, she contends that the function of a hashtag, and hashtag
activism in general, is mostly to raise awareness and educate the general
public about a particular idea or concept that they may not have considered
before. Shahid also contends that, while education and awareness are vital
components in creating change, some form of direct action must take place
in order for such a change to be made. She does not elaborate on what kind
of a change would need to be made in relation to #lifeofamuslimfeminist in
specific terms, but does advocate that members of the Muslim community
continue lobbying for accurate representation within the media and resisting
the caricatured description. She also spoke with admiration for those who
turned a hashtag into a more concrete project, to detract from the clearly
short attention span of the Twitter-verse, and later turned her own hashtag
into a larger blog project via Wordpress, a blog-hosting website. In response
to the common criticism that hashtag activism is often seen as “slacktivism”,
Shahid responds with an ableist critique of that idea, maintaining that while
performing more traditional actions of activism is important, not everyone
has the opportunity or option to engage in those actions, and that hashtag
activism engages the education and awareness piece much more thoroughly
and effectively than holding a sign and staging a public protest.
The blog project that grew from this hashtag, lifeofamuslimfeminist.
wordpress.org, offered a more long-term engagement with issues inherent
to Muslim feminism. In that time, however, lifeofamuslimfeminist.
wordpress.org acted as a centralized hub for all things Muslim and feminist,
including guest posts sharing other thoughts on feminism and Islam, reposts
of interesting articles on similar themes of note to the hashtag and its larger
themes, and analyses from the moderators—Shahid and a friend—on larger
implications of the debate started by the hashtag. While the short lived
time span of this blog is something to consider and give pause to in light
of Shahid’s comments regarding direct action, certainly the existence of
this blog offers tangible proof that some direct action can be inspired by a
seemingly-innocuous hashtag, and that education, discourse, and awareness
Shahid, Noorulann. “Why I Created the #LifeOfAMuslimFeminist Hashtag.” The
11

Huffington Post. 6 February 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/noorulann-shahid/

muslim-feminism_b_4730882.html?utm_hp_ref=tw.

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are incredibly useful and important tools in learning and sharing on the
Internet—both in very small, hashtag-sized doses and larger blog sized ones.12
However, as fascinating as the genesis of the hashtag and the subsequent
analyses and critiques of it are, the tweets inspired by the hashtag itself
remain the data set that inspired such larger reflections on identity in the
online community. As shown in the Buzzfeed article, many tweets are very
concerned with women’s appearances, particularly regarding the wearing
of hijab or not. Muslim women who tweeted about hijab with this hashtag
offered competing points of view: if the women chose not to don hijab,
many felt criticized for their perceived lack of piety and religious values
from their larger Muslim community, while those who did choose to don
the hijab expressed frustration and anger regarding the assumption that
they were oppressed and needed to be freed from the confining patriarchal
religious traditions. Indeed, many hijabis were in agreement that they do
not feel that wearing the hijab to be an oppressive action on their part, and
asserted that, in fact, they felt a sense of empowerment in compatibility with
their commitment to feminism through the act of wearing the hijab.
Other tweets lamented the sexualization and fetishization of hijab
and hijabis by both others in the Muslim community and those outside
of that community. Articulating that the appearance of a hijab does not
necessarily mean that certain values associated with the assumed piety
of the wearer are espoused by the wearer, the Tweeters vented their
frustration with the assumptions made about them, lamenting that, through
wearing hijab, other qualities that they possessed were either not visible or
willfully ignored. User @UmAIMa7rama writes “Having to reshape your
norms and perceptions because misogyny is too often disguised as piety
#lifeofamuslimfeminist.”13, while @PearlBLawrence writes “No, my hijab
is not a free pass to start screaming at me about the Prophet’s (pbuh) sex
life. #lifeofamuslimfeminist.”14
The hijab here, as in other settings, proves yet again to be a site of
contention15. As a predominantly visual marker of a woman’s devotion to
God through Islam, there have been numerous debates about whether it is
an obligatory practice or a preferred action for Muslim women to express
their piety, and what that visual cue means in the context of feminism. Men

12
“Life of a Muslim Feminist: A Platform for Muslim Feminists.” Wordpress. 17 February
2016. https://lifeofamuslimfeminist.wordpress.com/
13
@UmAIMa7rama. Twitter Post. 10 January 2014. 12:32PM.
14
@PearlBLawrence. Twitter Post. 10 January 2014. 4:37PM.
15
For more information, discussion, and theorizing about the hijabs in understandings
of Muslim feminism, please see The Politics of Piety by Saba Mahmood and Women and
Gender in Islam by Leila Ahmed.

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are not necessarily subject to the same sort of direct visual marker tying
themselves intrinsically to Islam; women who choose to wear the hijab,
however, directly mark themselves as Muslim. The idea of being obligated
to cover one’s hair can be seen as an oppressive instance, especially non-
Muslim Westerners in the Twitterverse’s collective experience: indeed, 572
tweets in the #lifeofamuslimfeminist hashtag expressed such frustration with
“white feminists” insisting that wearing hijab is incompatible with feminism.
On the contrary, 345 tweets in the #lifeofamuslimfeminist hashtag expressed
linking wearing the hijab to either offering some form of freedom from the
male gaze or taking pride in being so obviously devoted to Allah. Wearing
hijab, they argue, is not about restrictions so much as it is about expressing
piety and self-respect.
As this hashtag was born out of a frustration with the aforementioned “white
fems”, a brief discussion on intersectionality is necessary. Intersectionality16
is defined as the study of overlapping and intersecting identities and related
systems of oppression and discrimination. The theory holds that many
biological and social categories, such as race, class, gender, sexuality, and
age, intersect with one another, and as such, a person is inextricably linked
with all of these factors in order to more completely understand one’s
identity. White feminism, under this framework, is the understanding of
feminism in the context of being white, or racially privileged. As such,
certain understandings of so-called “feminist” concepts have the potential to
be very different depending on one’s racial identity. The tweets bringing up
white feminism express a frustration for neglecting to take race, ethnicity,
and culture into account, especially when claiming that such ideas are
ultimately normative to feminism. Certainly none of the twitter users claim
that all feminists that identify as white practice this “white feminism” or that
the white feminists in question have bad intentions. In Shahid’s initial tweet,
for example, it is prudent to suspect that she did not necessarily mean to
imply that all white feminists fail to take intersecting identities into account.
However, as this tweet ostensibly stems from Shahid’s lived reality17, Shahid
likely does have some sort of experience in feeling marginalized in her
interpretation of feminism by a racially privileged population. In addition,
no consensus is given on what “Muslim feminism” truly is or entails, and no
user seems intent on defining it. Rather, the tweets about white feminism
focus more on the desire to have their own non-white feminism seen as
16
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black
Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics.”
The University of Chicago Legal Forum. Issue 140. 1 January 1989. Pages 139-167.
17
As Shahid was the creator of this hashtag, it stands to reason that she would have a
truthful reason for making such a statement.

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legitimate and valid.
Non-hijabis offered similar frustrations as the hijabis regarding assumptions
about their identities, though for opposite reasons: many lamented that
their choice to not cover their hair, wear makeup, or put on jewelry (habits
not exclusive to non-hijabis) correlated to an assumption of ambivalence
toward religion. A hijab, they asserted, should not be the litmus test for
one’s commitment to God or Islam. In addition, non-hijabis lamented
the assumptions that the feminism that they chose to espouse would be
automatically disregarded as a product of Western influence, rather than a
product of their own choice and careful deliberation, if not even possibly
compatible with their faith. Appearance, they echo with hijabis, is not
conducive to ascertaining one’s faith commitments and values, and is
ultimately not the business of the larger public, anyway. If such assumptions
are not made of men, they inquire, why are they held to this standard?
On November 25, 2015, user @London Raani posted multiple pictures
of herself in full makeup and piercings along with her hijab, with the
caption “Seeing as how everyone wants to police my face…check my
lipsticks and piercings #NotYourRespectableHijabi.”18 This hashtag, much
like #lifeofamuslimfeminist, quickly grew into a trending topic on Twitter
and inspired conversations related to womanhood, gender, feminism,
appearance, and religious identity. While the subject matter and discussions
following the tweets seems to overlap with #lifeofamuslimfeminist, the
discussions take the hijab as its direct focal point, allowing for more direct
and situational reflections within the tweets.19
The hijab, in this context was both praised and derided by members of the
Muslim community as a symbol of piety and fashion, respectively. Wearing
the hijab, a visible marker of piety and obedience to Allah, was looked upon
as praiseworthy. However, wearing the hijab along with such decoration as
makeup and piercings was considered to be reductive, if not outright sinful, to
the purpose of a hijab as a religious garment. Wearing the hijab itself was not
the point of contention; wearing it as part of a fashion statement was. Many
men and women users on Twitter offered critiques of the original tweet: user
@ArielQuartsz exclaimed, “Sinning is one thing but flaunting your sins and
being proud of them? SubhanAllah #NotYourRespectableHijabi”20, while
@hotlinestiller proclaimed “#NotYourRespectableHijabi this hashtag is a
mess and so haram; stop trying to justify it. So disgusting&revolting.”21
18
@London_Raani. Twitter Post. 29 November 2015. 6:58PM.
19
notyourrespectablehijabi. Twitter search. 10 February 2016. https://twitter.com/
search?q=%23NotYourRespectableHijabi&src=tyah
20
@ArielQuartsz. Twitter post. 30 November 2015. 8:43PM.
21
@hotlinestiller. Twitter post. 30 November 2015. 4:52PM.

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 As stated previously, the hashtag marks a tweet as a part of a larger
conversation within and among other Twitter users. It is an easy and
convenient way for people of similar opinions to express solidarity
with one another, but they are only able to express such solidarity as
part of a larger conversation, which includes dissenting voices. For
#notyourrespectablehijabi, there were 437 tweets generated in all, with 157
of them being expressions of dissenting opinion from the original poster.
Some included appeals to Islam itself as a means of justifying the dissenting
point of view like @ArielQuartsz’s contribution, while others were much
more vitriolic, as evidenced by @hotlinestiller’s tweet. Regardless, by
engaging the tweet with the hashtag, the dissenters clearly play a part in
the overarching conversation—if not, why not send a generic reply tweet,
instead of bothering with the hashtag at all?
In an interview with Al Bawaba English, @London_Raani, revealed to be
20 year old Humaira Myet, a student and writer based in London, England,
offered the following explanation for the creation of the hashtag: “The
hashtag [is] [a] tongue-in-cheek response to a tweet by a Muslim man saying
that hijabis should not wear makeup. Muslims are expected to conform to
an ever-growing list of expectations before being deemed worthy of respect;
this is the concept of respectability politics. The aim of the hashtag [is] to
celebrate those hijabis who exist beyond the expectations of respectability.
Those who wear makeup, take selfies, are vocal about their politics.”22 Myet
expressed surprise at how quickly the hashtag seemed to take off within
the Twitterverse; although she was not planning on starting a conversation
about the visual performance of piety, she expressed admiration for those
hijabis who found empowerment within it. As for those who found the
hashtag to be a negative reflection of identity, Myet categorizes them into
two groups: Muslims “with no understanding of respectability politics”, and
“misogynists who trolled the hashtag.”23
From here, the similarities grow: a contingent of tweets discussing at length
the gendered dynamics that permeate the lives of Muslim feminists exist as
well between #lifeofamuslimfeminist and #notyourrespectablehijabi.24 25
Just as the discourse surrounding their appearance became clear delineators
22
“#NotYourRespectableHijabi Sees Muslim Girls Fight Back About Being Told Not
To Wear Makeup.” Al Bawaba English. 1 December 2015. http://www.albawaba.com/
loop/notyourrespectablehijabi-sees-muslim-girls-fight-back-against-being-told-not-wear-
makeup-775782.
23
Ibid.
24
#lifeofamuslimfeminist. Twitter search. 10 Feburary 2016. https://twitter.com/
search?src=typd&q=%23lifeofamuslimfeminist
25
#notyourrespectablehijabi. Twitter search. 10 February 2016. https://twitter.com/
search?q=%23NotYourRespectableHijabi&src=tyah

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for ascertaining piety and values, the clearly gendered practices of everyday
social life and behavior inspire just as much frustration on the part of the
tweeters. Shahid herself expressed frustrations with gendered normativity
within the Muslim community and tweeted “@YxxngHippie: trying to
point out cultural patriarchy to Muslims and meeting a brick wall most of
the time #lifeofamuslimfeminist.”26 Twitter user @AniqahC broadened
the critique to larger understandings and perceptions of feminism from the
non-Muslim community, tweeting “@AniqahC No solidarity in fighting the
cultural patriarchy in Islam because white fems just ignore our history of
feminism. #lifeofamuslimfeminist.”27
Many tweets expressed similar frustrations with both the performance
of gender and the performance of Islam in intra- and inter-communal
settings. The tweets overwhelmingly conveyed resentment toward parties
that seemed to shoehorn what the tweeters saw as individual conceptions
of particular identifiers into a narrow framework, asserting that only the
individual who claims a given identity has the authority to say whether their
expression of it is valid. In other words, they assert that only the tweeters
could offer a judgment on whether they themselves were being Muslim or
feminine enough to warrant their claiming the identity, and only they could
determine for themselves if their performance of such identity was valid to
themselves.2829 The implication, of course, is that the tweeter’s only tools
in resisting Islamophobia and patriarchy is through expressing such self-
determined assertions of identity, and within the realm of Twitter, that may
well be true: the surest30 tool one has within it to make one’s point known is

26
Shahid, Noorulann. Twitter Post. 10 January 2014. 10:34AM.
27
@AniqahC. Twitter Post. 10 January 2014. 10:37AM.
28
#lifeofamuslimfeminist. Twitter search. 10 Feburary 2016. https://twitter.com/
search?src=typd&q=%23lifeofamuslimfeminist
29
#notyourrespectablehijabi. Twitter search. 10 February 2016. https://twitter.com/
search?q=%23NotYourRespectableHijabi&src=tyah
30
This is certainly not the only tool one has on Twitter to resist patriarchy and
Islamophobia—for example, one may remain silent and not engage with a conversation about
identity and oppressive systems at all. However, insofar as social media is a participatory
space in which one is encouraged, if not obligated, to state claims publicly, one’s particular
opinions regarding the matter are only known through direct expression. This leaves out the
possibility of one misunderstanding or misreading the assertive tweet, of course, but as this is
beyond the scope of this paper, this point will not be elaborated on further. For information
regarding such instances, please see Bennet, W. Lance. “The Personalization of Politics:
Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation.” The ANNALS of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science. November 2012. Vol. 644, Issue 1.
Pages 20-39. and Bachmann, Anja and Stine Lomborg. “Mapping Actor Roles in Social
Media: Different Perspectives on Value Creation in Theories of User Participation.” New
Media and Society. 26 November 2013. Vol. 15, Issue 5. Pages 765-781.

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through expressing it.
Within this realm of social media, it is clear that Muslim women have
decidedly made their presence known in many circles. One of the notable
venues in which Muslim women have asserted their online identities is
through online activism, as noted by Jennifer Zohair:
“Social media is another grand equalizer, and Muslim feminists have made good use of
it. When a Chicago imam was accused of sexual assault, the ensuing conversation on
Facebook and Twitter gave voice to Muslim women in the face of community pressure
to stay silent. Muslim feminists routinely engage in “hashtag activism” on Twitter to
counter both stereotypes of and sexism against Muslim women. When popular Islamic
teacher Abu Esa made offensive jokes about feminism and rape, Rabia Chaudry started
the #FireAbuEsa hashtag and Hind Makki responded with #MuslimMaleAllies, crediting
men who stand up for women and feminist principles.”31

Certainly, this is a very narrow analysis of a very specific kind of Muslim

woman—not all Muslim women would necessarily identify as feminists,
as Zohair focuses this particular analysis on, nor would all discourse of
identity politics be construed through the lens of online activism. However,
Zohair does articulate a very important point about the issues of privilege
regarding Internet access, insofar as any conjectures made about the process
of identity building through the Internet must take access privilege into
account. This is not to generalize about any particular political or social
situation; rather, it is an acknowledgement that, whatever is shown on the
Internet, it is dependent on who is able to use it, for whatever reason. By
its nature, any understanding of the plurality of identity building will be
ultimately incomplete, as engaging in Internet discourse—through activism
or participation in online groups—is ultimately privileged.32
However, the circumstances under which such a hashtag as the
#fireabueesa and #muslimmaleallies ones took form, and the discussions
emanating from them, offer a particular picture of negotiating respectability
politics in the face of political scandal as well as a possible religious and
moral transgression. Abu Eesa Niamatullah, a renowned scholar employed
at Al Maghrib in the UK, offered a series of disturbing tweets and Facebook
comments on the topic of International Women’s Day, beginning with this:
“Yes, Int’l Women’s Day has officially started. Or as it’s more widely known,
“Men not giving a monkeys that it’s Int’l Women’s Day. #IWD.”33 Abu
Eesa continued to make disparaging remarks toward women, especially
31
Zobair, Jennifer. “The Depth and Weight of Feminist Studies in Islam: A Response to
‘The Evolution of Feminist Studies in Religion’”. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion.
32
More discussion on this point is merited and encouraged, but it falls beyond the
overarching scope of this paper.
33
@Niamatullah. Twitter Post. 8 March 2014. 4:04AM.

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those who questioned this initial tweet, by claiming to desire to physically
beat and rape women, perform FGM, and perform other abusive actions
upon them, even going so far as to say “Lads, feel free to do all of the above.
I give you the fatwa to do it, dammit!”34 and posting memes about how men
should not bother to attempt to understand women.35
Rabia Chaudry started the #fireabuesa hashtag as a means to bring
attention to his rhetoric to Al Maghrib and the larger Western Muslim
community, finding his remarks painful and frightening. As the mother of
two daughters and a survivor of an abusive marriage, Chaudry maintains
that one does not necessarily need to appreciate or celebrate International
Women’s Day to find his remarks repulsive and setting a troubling precedent:
if a scholar of Islam can spew such vitriol toward women, what is to stop his
male followers? And indeed, Chaudry cites examples of some male Twitter
users hurling violent threats across cyberspace.
While Chaudry chose to utilize a hashtag to promote institutional
change and public shaming of Abu Esa’s comments, Hind Makki offered
#muslimmaleallies as another option of expressing opposition to this
instance. The initial hashtag had been used by Makki in her past advocacy
work on women’s spaces in mosques, but in the wake of Abu Esa’s words,
Makki asked for stories of male Muslims who “support the women and girls
in their lives.”36 @shabashir shared “Thanks to my dad #MuslimMaleAllies
for supporting me in traveling to US on my own for higher education
@HindMakki”.37 @Ayesha_Mattu offered “Gratitude to @ostadjaan, @
ImamSuhaibWebb, @FarazRabbani & @aantepli for standing against
misogyny #MuslimMaleAllies @Niamatullah @almaghrib.”38 Stories
“poured in”, starting conversations about the place of men in the discourse
surrounding feminism and Islam: “We are learning of fathers who supported
their daughters in leaving abusive marriages. We are hearing from scholars
who admonish men who don’t take care of widows. We are honoring
men who support the education of their wives, daughters, sisters, nieces,
and granddaughters. We are sharing stories of male-led initiatives against
domestic violence. We are hearing about husbands who participate fully in
child-rearing and housekeeping. In this Women’s History Month, we are
34
Chaudry, Rabia. “Wa’Mutasima”. Patheos. 10 March 2014. http://www.patheos.com/
blogs/splitthemoon/2014/03/wamutasima/
35
It is worth noting that Abu Eesa maintains that he was joking and that his social media
comments were not intended to be taken seriously. Chaudry also refers to a past tweet of his
that expresses his disgust toward feminism, a concept he views as fundamentally un-Islamic.
36
Makki, Hind. “The Adab of Muslim Male Allies.” Patheos. 11 March 2014. http://
www.patheos.com/blogs/hindtrospectives/2014/03/the-adab-of-muslimmaleallies/
37
@shabashir. Twitter post. 12 March 2014. 9:10 PM.
38
@Ayesha_Mattu. Twitter post. 12 March 2014. 1:21PM.

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highlighting supportive Muslim men, form our beloved Prophet Muhammad
PBUH, to our brothers in faith today. They are inspired to support the
women and girls in their lives because of their faith, not despite it.”39
In this way, the role of men within the larger framework of Muslim feminism
was given space to be discussed in relation to Abu Eesa, characterized as
anti-feminist nearly exclusively within the hashtag conversation. Of the 567
tweets garnered from this hashtag as a result of the Abu Eesa incident, 482
of them either offered positive male role models in contrast to Abu Eesa,
while the remainder either discussed disdain for the situation, or offered
their own critiques about the #muslimmaleallies hashtag, particularly
centering around worries of privileging men as allies to Muslim feminists
when they privately espouse misogynistic views. This hashtag is notable,
however, for being an example of active resistance of an incident that hurt
so many: rather than meekly accepting Abu Eesa’s statements as normative
or analyzing the event ad nauseum, this hashtag inspired Twitter users to
name and honor Muslim males who did not find aspects of feminism to be
incompatible with being Muslim or threatening to their own masculinity—
rather, the men celebrated on Twitter were celebrated because of the support
and respect for women’s agency that they showed. This hashtag is also
a particularly interesting intervention into the situation itself, as it diverts
attention away from Abu Eesa and his statements and toward these other
examples, minimizing the destructive nature of Abu Eesa’s statements and
providing a space for women to utilize their agency in order to reject them
without conflating them to be representative of all Muslim men. In this way,
they avoid throwing the baby out with the proverbial bathwater, while still
condemning actions that they perceive to be wrong and harmful.

Conclusion
Granted, it must be said that these tweets and hashtags are geared toward
particular understandings and performances of gender and feminism, for
both the pro-feminist and the anti-feminist crowds. In and of themselves,
the hashtags are not neutral—each hashtag and tweet corresponding to the
hashtag is making a particular ethical claim about a certain conception of
feminism, equality, gender roles, and power. While no simple solutions
appeared as a result of any of these hashtags, the conversation itself proved
fruitful in inspiring more thoughtful reflection and discussion surrounding
the issues, as evidenced through Chaudry and Makki’s respective blog
posts about their intentions surrounding the hashtag. Much like Noorulann

39
Makki, Hind. “The Adab of Muslim Male Allies.” Patheos. 11 March 2014. http://
www.patheos.com/blogs/hindtrospectives/2014/03/the-adab-of-muslimmaleallies/

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Shahid offered with her blog post, the hashtags ultimately served as a tool for
discussion, debate, and education surrounding topics of feminism in Islam.
Hashtags, then, are not merely tools for slacking activists, or interchangeable
with any particular forms of information exchange. Their distinctive
characteristic of imprinting a tweet as a part of a larger conversation is further
proof of their inherently social nature. Combined with their use on the
Twitter platform, in which one is encouraged to make and foster connections
with other Twitter users globally, and hashtags emerge as powerful tools
utilized to educate, critique, and express solidarity. With regard to Muslim
women, they have been used to question, critique, react against, and affirm
the multiplicity of identities expressed through any number of identifiers:
Muslim, feminist, woman, etc., and those conversations are forever archived
on the internet as a resource for further investigation. Whatever the opinion
of the tweeter, the hashtags examined within this paper offered a great deal
to illustrate the gendered power relations within Western Islam, and while
the debates posed through these hashtags have no definite conclusions
about the nature of gender and Islam, they are conduits for expression and
dialogue on both sides.

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