Victimization of Veil in I Am Malala and Let Her Fly

Abstract

The collapse of Twin Towers in USA on September 2011 has dramatically changed the relations between East and West and reinforced the dichotomy of binary distinction between us and them. Since then, Islamophobic sentiments have prevailed in West regarding Islam as a religion of terrorism, oppression, extremism and violence. In the aftermath of the tragic incident of 9/11, Muslims faced prejudice and discrimination, and they are regarded as backward and terrorists. The dress code of Muslims is used as a tool to strengthen these negative stereotypes against them, and Muslim veiled women are seen as oppressed beings and also as symbols of threat. This study aims at examining the representation of veiled Muslim women in the autobiography of Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala (2013) and Ziauddin Yousafzai’s memoir, Let Her Fly (2018). The selected texts will be analyzed from Post-Colonial perspective by using Stuart Hall’s Theory of Representation (1997) and the model is based on the memoir interpreting strategies suggested by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson in their boo Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives (2001). The findings reveal that the major premise of presentation of veiled women is to problematize their experiences and to reduce their diverse attitudes and situations to veil. Muslim veiled women are presented as a monolith who deny variations in their life experiences. The stereotypical representation of Islam has made it subaltern and other, and presented Islam as a scapegoat for gender –based othering to correspond to the Western ideology.

Keywords: Islamophobia, terrorism, oppression, Muslims, Representation, Post-Colonialism, Other, 9/11, Subaltern, Stereotypes, Veil, Islam