media, Canadian news sources immediately spec-
ulated that the 1995 bombing of a United States
government building in Oklahoma City was com-
mitted by Middle Eastern terrorists; juries later
convicted two Americans, both fundamentalist
Christians, of the act. Widespread condemnation
of the media for its coverage of this event, in par-
ticular, was instrumental in decreasing (though not
eradicating) bias against Muslims in Canadian
news reporting. In a headline that appeared in
2000, a major metropolitan newspaper character-
ized as an “Islamic bomb” a nuclear weapon possi-
bly under development by Osama bin Laden.
Following public criticism, the newspaper later
issued a retraction, and stated that the association
of the suspected plot with Islam was gratuitous and
unjustified.
The theme of violence and discrimination against
women in Muslim societies was a prominent aspect
of the Canadian media’s coverage of the 11 Sep-
tember 2001 attacks by al-Qà≠ida (al-Qaeda) on
American targets. In this message, also promoted
by the French in the early twentieth century to jus-
tify their colonization of North Africa, the West
depicts itself as the welcomed liberator of Muslim
women. Nonetheless, the Canadian media have
provided for divergent voices of Muslims, male and
female, which are accorded legitimate space for
engagement of these issues in national newspapers,
radio, and television.
Canadian Muslims have addressed stereotypes
and biases in several ways. Some families, a minor-
ity, have organized and supported full-time Muslim
schools where children are isolated from a vilifica-
tion of Islam and Muslims that parents view on
television and suspect is present at school as well
(Kelly 1999, 211–12). According to these parents,
Muslim schools offer children, as Muslims and as
immigrants, the opportunity to be part of a major-
ity group and develop psychological strength that
they would not otherwise acquire.
Several voluntary associations have been formed.
The goals and activities of the Canadian Council of
Muslim Women, founded in 1982, include helping
Muslim women integrate into broader society,
educating Canadians about Islam and Muslim
cultures, and monitoring the portrayal of Islam in
public schools (McDonough and Alvi 2002, 79,
85). Through letters and articles published in
Canada’s national papers, CAIR-CAN, the Council
on American-Islamic Relations Canada, has fre-
quently drawn the attention of Muslims and the
wider public to negative and inaccurate media rep-
resentations of Islam and Muslims. Electronic mail,
the Internet, and fax machines have been used754 stereotypes
effectively by CAIR-CAN as tools for acquiring and
disseminating information about instances of mis-
representation and biased reporting, and for organ-
izing response.
Prejudice and bias against Canadian Muslims
affect women, in particular, when they wear dis-
tinctive dress such as the ™ijàband jellaba (a minor-
ity practice among Canadian Muslim women). In
many contexts, these garments are associated with
a political and social stance that is thought to be
incompatible with mainstream secular democratic
Canadian values, particularly among the French-
speaking majority in the province of Quebec. In
several instances since 1994, girls have been ex-
pelled from Quebec schools for wearing the ™ijàb;
in each case, school administrators have said the
™ijàbcontravenes their secular ethos. Public debate
on this question has been marked by statements
from Quebec nationalists and feminists that pro-
hibiting it in the classroom will free young Muslim
girls from patriarchal oppression.
Experience of bias and prejudice is entwined with
Canadian women’s decisions to wear ™ijàb. Feel-
ings of exclusion from mainstream society have
influenced the choice of some young Canadian-
born Muslim women to identify more closely with
their heritage, construed in both religious and eth-
nic terms. Wearing ™ijàb, a choice that is valued in
some religious communities, is considered by some
to be a proactive strategy through which women
assert and define their identity to mainstream soci-
ety and within the diasporic Muslim community.
Expressing their decision both in terms of religious
freedom valued by mainstream society and as a per-
sonal choice that reflects commitment to commu-
nal religious ideals, young women who wear ™ijàb
often experience greater authority and freedom
(particularly relating to mobility) within the family.
Discussion among feminist Canadian Muslim
scholars of ™ijàband women’s legal and social sta-
tus in Muslim societies has often been moderated
by the desire not to reinforce the dominant stereo-
type of Muslim men’s cruelty toward women. The
vigor with which Canadian media, feminist groups,
and society at large have discussed and defended
the legal and social position of Muslim women and
girls in Canada, and more generally “women in
Islam,” has been attributed by these scholars to a
subtle racism that elides ethnicity, class, and place
of origin in a general condemnation of Muslim
men/civilization (Hoodfar 1993, Jamal 1994, Khan
2002). Future research by and about Muslim
women in Canada must address both how negative
stereotypes influence individuals’ social strategies,
and how variables such as class, ethnicity, marital