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Jack G. ShaheenWestern EuropeThe hallmark of stereotypes is the lack of indi-
vidual distinguishing marks giving birth to stan-
dardized and oversimplied mental pictures. What
are the specific expectations and stereotypes as far
as Muslim women in Europe are concerned?
The way Western Europeans consider and per-
ceive Muslim women is hard to measure because it
varies over time. It is more a complex mixture of
misperceptions, quick judgments, and even racism
than a precise feeling limited to certain attitudes.
Moreover, inadequate or selected knowledge makes
it very difficult for people to view individuals as
unique and complex persons and encourages them
to rely on stereotypes articulating a selection of
social or physical traits such as race, sex, or reli-
gion. Certainly the media, in particular television
but also newspapers and magazines, have very
much helped this process of stereotyping Muslim
women by systematizing the association of specific
images – the most internationally admitted one
being that of a woman wearing a black headscarf –
with the journalistic coverage of issues such as
political Islam in Europe, terrorism and religion,
the failure of integration, and so forth. This is the
case with all weekly magazines published in West-
ern Europe, some being more or less the champions
of that type of photo-discourse association (Der
Spiegel, Focus, Le nouvel observateur).
Muslim women living in Europe are at the cross-
roads of many kinds of stereotypes, some related to
gender, others to religion. Some gender stereotypes
implicitly recall more classical ones (not specifically
related to Islam): women are unstable, irrational,
and vulnerable when they are not protected by
men. We would call these stereotypes “generic” as
they refer to a general picture of women at large as
alienated and submitted to male authority, not
capable of any autonomous decision. The catego-
rization of persons on the basis of gender implies
the existence of gender related characteristics con-
western europe 759sistent with this classification. Other stereotypes
are directly related to what is seen in Europe as
the intangible main characteristics of Islam (for
instance polygamy, the behavior of the wives of
the Prophet Mu™ammad, Islamic law, inequality
between men and women, the subordinate role
attributed to women within marriage, and mother-
hood being the only opportunities for them). We
would call these “sectorial stereotypes” as they
explicitly rely on an essentialist and cultural view of
Islam (Muslim women have more children than
others, they are ignorant, they do not have access to
external society because of their specific “culture”).
Islam appears as the key to explain and justify dif-
ferences between us and them. To some extent,
these two main lines of stereotypes interact more or
less strongly according to the national context in
which they emerge. Independently from Islam, gen-
der stereotypes vary from one European country to
another. The national shape taken by the public
debates around gender equality clearly demonstrated
this variance some years ago when it came to be
introduced as a central principle at the European
level. Explicitly looking at Muslim women in
Western Europe, there is, however, one main issue
that seems to represent a common focus for the spe-
cific stereotypes of which these women may be the
objects: the headscarf. The public representations
that come out in such debates vary over time and
place and help us to question the changing param-
eters of the stereotyping processes at stake.
The veil is widely considered to be what makes a
Muslim woman visible as a believer and embeds
hers in specific inter-gender relationships (men
dominating women). By extension, it gives rise to
specific views on sexuality of Muslim women.
However, when it comes to headscarf controver-
sies – obviously with varying resonance in the
Western European countries, from indifference in
the United Kingdom to the polemic national crisis
that started in the late 1980s in France – the time
dimension appears central. Indeed, the Muslim
women who were at the core of the first discussions
at the end of the 1980s do not have the same social
and economic profile as the contemporary girls and
women who claim the right to wear the veil while
studying or working. This difference of profile is
reflected by the types of argument used by politi-
cians and opinion makers to explain why it should
be strictly forbidden to wear a headscarf in public
places. Twenty years ago, the dominant argument
dealt with male domination over women in Muslim
societies at large and by proxy in the Western
European countries. Nowadays, new elements are
incorporated such as the individual right to choose