--- start by summarizing the article and go through al the point we will talking about in the

presentation

- Double burden of Muslim representation

- Trap
- Good Muslim
- Extremism
- Agent of their faith
- The project

Exposing Hidden life of Muslims,

Recent work has tried to uncover the secret life of Muslims such as the work of the new York
times about veiling in Iran,

“Your Veil Is a Battleground”

showcases of the work of Iranian-born photographer Kiana Hayer that illustrates dress and
public life among young women in Iran.

Through these series of photos, you can see the hidden life of Iranian women veiled and without
clothing, the article makes an argument that behind the veil lies a secret world of social
transgressions and a yearning for individual freedom.

Also in the TV show all American Muslim, where Muslim lives were represented. The show’s
main aim was to reveal an inside the rarely seen world of American Muslims to uncover a
unique community struggling to balance faith and nationality in a post 9/11 world.

Such representation might have different purposes, but they are all stuck under a continuous
representational trap that keeps Islam and Muslims under constant investigation, forcing them to
demonstrate their normality and reveal their secret lives.

Defensive mode

Muslims are also obsessed with defending their religion and representing it as the religion of
peace, the author used the incident of the ground zero mosque. Many campaigns took place to
stop this from happening. Republican governor candidates demanded an investigation into the
project's funding. Campaign against the mosque were all over the place, it includes the 9/11
incident and poster that invite people to burn the Quran
The imam has switched his social media content as defensive content for Islam, and his liberal
supporters must highlight the Sufi beliefs as different and more peaceful than the radical
ideologies of Sunni Islam.

Due to their responses, Muslims have been characterized as apologetic, outraged believers who
are upset about how they are represented on social media.

Labels ‘Muslim’

With time, social media has allowed Muslims to express themselves in creative ways that can
counterbalance the violence and extremism narratives, but such intervention was restricted by the
tag “Muslim” that was labeled on every Muslim doing anything creative even if it was not done
for religious purposes.

Suck label pressure Muslims to only do their work in accordance to their religious beliefs, he
author has argues that Muslim should rise above the realm of collective identity and religious

This tag has affected the all-American Muslims show, a

The all- American show was critiqued for: its focus on “moderate” Muslims and its failure to
draw a “real” portrait of Islam as a religion of extremism.

audiences denied these Muslims the ability to articulate the full life of their Americanness away
from the exclusive frame of the religious.

Maz Jobrani: His comedy routines are both tragic and funny because they engage in a creative
interplay between the negative social baggage of Islam and the reality of living as a Muslim in
America.

The project:

The author has contributed a project that aimed to challenge the widely accepted, politicized
narrative that the West and the Muslim world are at odds and have fundamentally different
cultures. The main aim of this project is to represent Islam and Muslim away from violence and
terrorism narratives.

Two main constraints of this project:

1- Our work was welcomed and lauded in local media as a fresh departure from the negativity
surrounding the story of Islam, but it was only discussed in relation with the story of terrorism
and security.

2- The role of the “Muslim representative” who speaks on behalf of Islam and can only speak
from his or her religious or ethnic background. even when we tried to steer away from these
frames, questions and feedback from the public frequently wondered how representative the
“alternative” voices we featured are of mainstream ideas of Islam.

The author argues that:

This creates a false expectation that Muslims always act as agents of their faith no matter what
they do. There is still and will always be a need to intervene in hegemonic narratives of Is- lam,
but Muslims, but Muslims should rise beyond such narratives that focus on their collective
identity and religious politics where they can only speak to reflect the “Muslim experience.”

The story of Muslims does not have to be always positive, culturally stable, collective, or always
“right on. “Muslims' cultural and media output can serve as a key platform for this complex
articulation. And Muslims themselves must work harder at opening the boundaries of the
category “Muslim” away from its image of highly segregated religion and its central theme that
if “good” Muslims can speak, things will be better.