Lifting the veil on Muslim life (From Asian Image)

Lifting the veil on Muslim life

4:42pm Saturday 2nd December 2006 in News features By Newsquest Reporter

Glancing through the tabloids often leaves Yasmin Hussain feeling angry.

On an almost daily basis, she finds herself confronted with a barrage of negative headlines about Islam - news stories portraying extreme religious beliefs as the norm, and comment articles misrepresenting Muslim cultural practices.

Like many British Muslims, the violent and repressive version of Islam she reads about in the newspapers could not be further removed from the faith she practices every day.

"So much rubbish is being printed about Muslims in the media," she says.

"They say Islam brainwashes people but it is the people who read these papers who are being brainwashed."

Miss Hussain, 29, and a group of her friends, decided to hold an event which would puncture the myths about Islam and women.

They spoke to a number of women in the area, representing all facets of Islamic life, and 30 women from the borough agreed to help run an event.

The result was a women-only open day on November 19 at Tooting Islamic Centre. It attracted 150 visitors, including Muslims, Christians and Hindus, as well as non-religious women curious to find out more about Islam.

The organisers had set up three interactive areas - the home, the school and the mosque - to demystify these aspects of Islamic life for non-Muslim women.

Miss Hussain, a youth worker at Muslim centres across south London, including the Tooting Islamic Centre, has been told by children about the growing prejudice they face at school.

It is generally banal, undramatic stuff, thoughtless assumptions by careers advisors that Muslim girls will not need the same level of guidance, or childish taunts in the playground of "ninja" and "nun" against girls wearing their headscarves.

But it is evidence of a more serious misunderstanding of Islam and when Jack Straw's article about the Niqab sparked a national debate about Islamic female practices, Miss Hussain felt compelled to act.

"Suddenly every Joe Bloggs felt the need to express their opinion about the veil," she says.

"Everyone thought Muslim women didn't have rights or minds of their own. We needed the truth to be given and we needed it to be given by Muslim women themselves."

For Hafsa Ismailjee, a financial analyst from the area who helped to coordinate the event, this was a crucial aspect of the event.

"It's important for people to know what a real Muslim woman is," she said.

"Within the community, there's a need for people to learn about this, so they can understand we are the same as them."

Confronting prejudice is a serious business, but the organisers wanted the event to be fun and inclusive.

"We wanted to invite people in," says Miss Hussain.

"We wanted people to see what it would be like to walk into a Muslim home.

"People think we are constantly in our scarves and that we don't chill out."

And to counter Jack Straw's glum predictions about the effect of the Niqab on cultural integration, the women had a boutique in which non-Muslim women were able to try on traditional Muslim clothing and see what the experience felt like.

Many of the visitors admitted to having had their opinions changed about Islam, something which confirmed for Miss Hussain how necessary the event was.

"A lot of people said they hadn't been sure what to expect, but that they had gone away with a changed opinion of Muslim women," says Miss Hussain.

"Ignorance about Islam has to be confronted, otherwise it will just get worse. If we are not confronting the problem we are contributing to it"

The success of the event motivated Ms Hussain and her co-organisers to start planning for future events.

She says: "This meeting is the first of its kind. We want to organise something like this every three months to cover other areas."

Tackling relentless media misrepresentation about Islam may prove a tough task, but Miss Hussain and her friends are determined to carry on working to change people's negative opinions about their religion.

And although the stigma surrounding Islam is complex and deeply entrenched, for Miss Hussain, the fundamental aim of the group is quite simple.

She adds: "We aspire to represent Islam for what it really is."