Muslim women around the world are navigating the dual-edged sword of external scrutiny and restrictive norms within our own communities. In the United States, Muslim women who wear a veil, often called hijab, are 40% less likely to get job interviews or risk losing life-changing opportunities, such as competing in athletics championships, than their non-hijab-wearing counterparts, despite equal qualifications. Meanwhile, in a Muslim-majority country like Malaysia, Muslim women who choose not to veil often face harsh judgments and discrimination, branded as disobedient daughters and lesser Muslims, with their identity shaped by the stigma of failing to meet religious expectations and the potential shame brought to their families, particularly in rural communities.
Yet, what is too often overlooked is the full humanity of each Muslim woman with diverse stories. This essay calls for recognizing Muslim women’s humanity and shifting the focus from scrutinizing our choices to challenging the systems and institutions that often perpetuate these struggles. As a Muslim hijabi woman who has lived nearly equal parts of my life in both Muslim majority and minority contexts, I call for a more inclusive understanding of what it means to be a Muslim woman beyond the confines of stereotypes and societal expectations that too often reduce us to mere symbols rather than embracing our full, complex identities.
A world (not) built for Muslim women
Addressing the challenges requires a closer examination of their root causes. Muslim women, along with other women of color are perceived as the “Others”. Western feminist ideas cannot fully address the issues Muslim women face because they fail to value the importance of faith in us and instead portray the Muslim world as uniformly patriarchal, ignoring that patriarchy exists in the Western world as well.
The experiences of Muslim women are far more nuanced and sometimes cannot be limited to the lens of social, cultural, and religion. Following 9/11, visibly Muslim women, such as those who wear hijab have often felt the burden of having to explain themselves, justify their choices, and appear in public as a visible representation of Islam, in many ways, becoming synonymous with representing the entire religion. For Muslim women wearing hijab, this burden is understood as a form compounded by gendered Islamophobia, often stemming from a lack of understanding of the meaning of the hijab veiling, especially in contexts where Muslims are marginalized, such as in the United States. Meanwhile, in Muslim-majority countries like Turkey, Muslim women who veil find themselves caught between secular and religious expectations that limit their activism and social participation, forcing them to choose sides despite embracing feminist values grounded in Islamic principles.
While change and action are required, speaking up comes at a cost in both the Muslim and Western world. Criticizing issues within our own Muslim communities may be weaponized by the Western world to justify further intervention or further perpetuate the harmful impact of “missions” to save Muslim women. On the other hand, speaking out against Islamophobia can invite a risk of backlash from the Western community. As a result, Muslim women are frequently silenced, trapped between these opposing forces, which only serves to marginalize our voices further and diminish our agency.
A liberated world for Muslim women
Muslim women deserve a liberated world to live without their identity and faith being questioned, whether in the West or within the Muslim world. Practicing religion is a fundamental source of well-being for believers, and for most Muslim women, it is an integral part of their personal and collective identity. Building an inclusive world for Muslim women requires dismantling Islamophobia and exclusion, not burdening us to thrive in hostile environments. Muslim women globally are already challenging societal expectations, such as in Egypt, where they enter traditionally male-dominated spaces like mosques, or in Indonesia, where women religious scholars advocate to strengthen the social justice principles within Islamic interpretations. In Denmark, they establish gender-segregated swimming sessions, while in Canada, they create spaces to address the discrimination Muslim women face.
While numerous studies have examined the mental health impact of discrimination against Muslim women, it is crucial to move beyond understanding these effects. What is more urgent is normalizing Muslim women’s self-determination and educating those who misunderstand or weaponize religion to perpetuate discrimination. A liberated world is to shift from scrutinizing Muslim women’s choices or forcing Muslim women into predefined categories, whether secular or religious, Western or traditional, and recognizing our full humanity and right to self-determination. Conversely, please instead challenge and question the structures and systems, whether colonial legacies, Islamophobic policies, or other power relations that seek to limit our choices. By doing so, we can begin to create a world where Muslim women are not merely symbols in someone else’s narrative but fully recognized as the complex, resilient individuals we are.
Bio
Fairuziana Humam is a fourth-year PhD student in Community Well-being at the University of Miami, Florida, USA, and an international student from Aceh, Indonesia. She holds a master's in Community Psychology and Social Change from Penn State University and a bachelor’s in psychology from Universitas Syiah Kuala. She has actively worked with women and youth in Indonesia and Southeast Asian countries, particularly in health and well-being education and advocacy. She has also researched and published articles on the well-being of Acehnese refugees and Muslims' mental health in the U.S. Her research currently focuses on lived experiences of daily Muslim women’s lives and how they shape gender experiences and well-being by considering the influences of historical, cultural, social, and political contexts.
