tions. During the Taliban regime Afghan women
were stereotyped as alienated and subjugated with
no rights. Although primarily true, what the West
chose to ignore was the atrocities committed on
women by the previous regime and also the lack of
security in the post-Taliban Karzai regime. The
perception of Afghan women in the Karzai period
is significantly that of a liberated and publicly
active group. Such conclusions stem from lack of
knowledge about Afghan social norms and prob-
lems of transitional countries.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Amnesty International, Women in Afghanistan. A human
rights catastrophe, 1995, http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/
intcam/afgan/afgtoc.htm.
United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Report of
the Secretary-General on the situation of women and
girls in Afghanistan, 21 July 2000, E/CN.4/Sub.2/
2000/18, < http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.
nsf/ 0/4f3b6f16c0088a70c125694d0053823a?Open
document>.
Secondary Sources
M. Elphinstone, An account of the kingdom of Caubul
and its dependencies in Persia, Tartary and India,
London 1815, Karachi 1972^3.
J. L. Esposito, Introduction. Women in Islam and Muslim
societies, in Y. Y. Haddad and J. L. Esposito (eds.),
Islam, gender and social change, Oxford 1998, ix–xxviii.
C. J. Riphenburg, Gender relations and development in a
weak state, in Central Asian Survey 22:2/3 (June–
September 2003), 187–207.
Arpita BasuroyCanadaEthnically and socially diverse, Canadian Muslims
enjoy legal equality regarding citizenship, religious
practice, and institution building, yet experience
prejudice and religious intolerance that is rooted in
twentieth-century racially structured immigration
policy, reinforced by Canadian and American media
portrayals, and centered on images of male vio-
lence (particularly to Muslim women) that legit-
imize Western political motives.
The extent to which Muslim Canadians differ in
their informal identification and formal affiliation
with coreligionists makes it problematic to speak of
a single Canadian Muslim community. Canada’s
2001 national census revealed that roughly 580,000
Canadians, nearly 2 percent of the population, are
Muslim. It is essential to acknowledge the diversity
of this population so as to recognize the multiple
forms of bias and prejudice against Muslims: reli-
gious intolerance, racism, and xenophobia. In fact,
canada 75386 percent of Canadian Muslims identify as mem-
bers of visible minority groups, and 72 percent
indicate that they were born outside Canada. Of
the total Canadian Muslim population, 46 percent
immigrated to Canada between 1991 and 2001,
including 30 percent who immigrated between 1996
and 2001. The largest ethnic groups are South
Asian (37 percent) and Arab (21 percent).
Quotas imposed on non-European immigrants
between 1891 and 1962 demonstrate structural
racial prejudice that affected Muslim populations;
immigrant-sending countries were arranged hie-
rarchically according to desirability, with Syria
(Canada’s primary sender of Muslim immigrants)
ranked next to last (Kelly 1998, 86). Yet, notwith-
standing varying degrees of religious intolerance
and racial prejudice (particularly associated with
skin color), many Muslim women who immigrated
to Canada during this period integrated into main-
stream society to a greater extent than recent im-
migrants, and experienced economic and social
mobility (Husaini 1999, 17). Class and education
have been significant but not sufficient factors in
overcoming societal barriers to mobility; as a
group, Muslims are characterized by higher educa-
tional levels and lower incomes than the Canadian
average.
Despite having its own domestic news and enter-
tainment industry, Canadian society is pervaded by
media images, including images of Muslims, pro-
duced in the neighboring United States. Portrayals
of fictional terrorists as Muslim, as in the feature
film Executive Decisionwhich depicts a terrorist
praying to Allah, and in another scene, a man hold-
ing a Qur±àn while committing a terrorist act, have
been condemned by Canadian Muslims. News
reporting is another medium in which Islam is rep-
resented as a religion that promotes violence. While
archival video footage of Muslims prostrate in
prayer and sound files of the call to prayer have
been used in Canadian television and radio to
accompany reporting on violence committed by
Muslims, by contrast, communal rituals and reli-
gious symbols of Christians and Jews are not fea-
tured during news accounts of political violence by
members of these faiths.
Increases in bias and prejudice against Muslims
in the news media have corresponded to interna-
tional political events. Since 1979, when Iranian
students stormed the American Embassy in Tehran
and held 66 Americans hostage for up to 444 days,
images of Muslims (especially Iranians and Arabs)
in popular culture have emphasized tropes of vio-
lence, irrationality, and female oppression more
than exoticism (Khan 2002, 4–5). Like the American