Page - 108 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

108 | Elham Manea www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 91–110 can foreign policy and the invasion of Iraq. It would be hard to sustain a claim that they are working on behalf of an imperial hegemonic Western agenda. And in Britain, a women’s rights activist with South Asian roots confided to me during my field re- search in 2013 that in order for her to be able to work in certain closed communities in East London where forms of extremism are widespread and to have access to women living there, she has to wear the headscarf. Nothing in these examples seems at all funny. In my opinion, these essentialists are the modern embodiment of those nine- teenth-century orientalists who believed in a civilising mission that would emancipate the Muslim woman. Both groups see in this woman only her religious identity. Both consider her a religious entity that is part of another religious whole – the Muslims. Both deem her to be oppressed, by xenophobic society/the imperial West or by male Muslims respectively. Both think she needs protection and must be freed – the es- sentialists insist on her wearing the veil, and the orientalists want to take off her veil. Finally, both assume that they know best what this woman needs and who should speak on her behalf – no one but they themselves! Context matters because it shows that the essentialist discourse on the Muslim woman and her veil is a construct crafted in isolation from historical, political, social, and religious contexts. That construct mirrors the essentialists’ self-obsessed and self-centred image, assumptions, expectations, and ideological battles. Given the rise of a counter-narrative and contextual knowledge produced by female scholars of Is- lamic heritage, it is clear that the time is ripe for a paradigm shift. BIBLIOGRAPHY Al Arabiya TV, 2010, Niqab Is a Custom not a Religious Requirement, 2 April, Program Journalism Gate (Waje- hat Al Sahafa), in: Arabic, Al Arabyia TV, 2 April 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9uhzGyk9Eg [accessed 5 May 2013]. Anderson, Benedict, 1991, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York: Verso. Arena, 2013, Burkaverbot: Nötig oder diskriminierend?, 28 September, SRF, http://www.srf.ch/sendungen/ arena/burkaverbot-noetig-oder-diskriminierend [accessed 5 May 2014]. Bakht, Natasha, 2012, Veiled Objections: Facing Public Opposition to the Niqab, in: Beaman, Lori G. (ed.), Reasonable Accommodation: Managing Religious Diversity, Vancouver: UBC Press, 70–108. Bennoune, Karima, 2013, Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here. Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, New York: W.W. Norton. Bennoune, Karima, 2007, Secularism and Human Rights: A Contextual Analysis of Headscarves, Religious Expression, and Women’s Equality Under International Law, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, 45, 2, http://ssrn.com/abstract=989066. Bowen, Innes, 2014, Medina in Birmingham, Najaf in Brent: Inside British Islam, London: Hurst.