CAIRO – Kicked off last year, a Philadelphia project created to raise awareness about Muslim women’s issues has been offering a space for Muslim women to address their issues while raising awareness about stereotypes toward them.
“People think we’re stifled on leadership, that we have no skills and we’re inferior to men,” Robina Begum, a sophomore finance major and treasurer of The Muslimah Project (TMP), told Temple News newspaper on Tuesday, March 29.
“But that’s not the case. I mean, look at us, we’re a female organization, a lot of us are choosing different majors, we have our own desires and we will become successful leaders.”
The Muslimah Project is an organization created last year that advocates for female empowerment for Muslim women, while raising awareness about stereotypes toward them.
Begum said that the group was urged to offer Muslim women a space to speak specifically about their issues, even within the Muslim Student Association already formed on Main Campus.
“MSA is more about Islam and Muslims in general,” Begum said.
“They do a great job, but they’re an umbrella organization.
“Girls in our religion don’t feel comfortable talking around men because of how society portrays them to be inferior,” she added.
The organization opens doors to non-Muslims wishing to join discussions at any time, in order to “better represent Islam and Muslim women to non-Muslims on campus,” said Madiha Faruqi, sophomore chemistry major and secretary of TMP.
Hijab
Working for a year in their community, managers of TMP said that misconceptions about Muslim women were a direct result of negative portrayal of Islam in media and popular culture.
“But that’s not Islam,” Begum said.
“The media never mentions what good Muslims are doing around the world.”
Hijab’s portrayal as a tool of Muslim women submission also had negative effects.
The hijab is obligatory, but “you wear it when you’re comfortably ready to wear it,” Faruqi said.
“I just want to be sure that I’m not going to ever take it off and make sure I’m a good practicing Muslim at the time I wear it,” Faruqi said. “I want to be able to present Muslims in a positive light.”
Begum sees wearing the hijab can represent having a relationship with god.
“People have come up to me and said, ‘Oh wow, you wear the hijab, you must be so devoted,’” she said.
“I’m like, ‘I am, but there are people who don’t wear the hijab who have a connection to god that you don’t see. Just because I’m visibly doing it, doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t internally doing it.”
The members hope that more people join TMP in the future so the group can change more people’s “perspectives of what they initially thought about women in Islam,” Faruqi said.
“Please don’t blindly follow what the media say—don’t listen to them,” Faruqi said. “If you want to learn, learn from other Muslims.”