Veils, burkas... moors: stereotypes and exclusion of the muslim community from a gender perspective

Abstract

During the first decade of the 21st century, we have witnessed an escalation in the importance that has been given in the public sphere to the phenomenon called “immigration”. Over the past ten years, the cultural diversity that has been projected on the groups identified as “immigrants” has been increasingly represented in terms of conflict and threat to social cohesion. This representation has had the greatest impact on the Muslim community and in Spain most particularly on the people of North African origin, the “Moors”. On the other hand the terrorist attacks on the United States, Britain, and Spain, have led to demonstrations of rejection towards Muslims. The aim of this paper is to show the role of the stereotypical image of Muslim women in conveying the rejection of Islam in present contemporary Western societies and in Catalonia, as well as underscoring the importance of media in spreading and even the construction of this image. We try as well to show how the reception of stereotypes by the Muslim women can be subverted and changed, and how they can not offer new ways to represent themselves beyond old dichotomy “east west”.