How are Muslim women depicted in western cartoons?

Over on Patheos, an author that goes by Eren, has written a piece looking at how American cartoonists typically depict Muslim women in cartoons:

When it comes to Muslim women as represented in political cartoons catered to non-Muslim Western audiences, a few prevalent themes can be easily identified. I tend to collect political cartoons of Muslim women, posted on Facebook and elsewhere online. The themes I mention in this post are pretty representative of many other cartoons out there, and the images included here are just a sample. Muslim women seem to look the same, and usually wear hijabs, niqabs and/or abaayas (the blacker, the better!) When it comes to the niqab in political cartoons, it tends to serve the purpose of deleting the women?s presence, voice and agency. This resonates with the idea that niqabi women are already oppressed, so why depict them with an agency that they do not have?

2 thoughts on “How are Muslim women depicted in western cartoons?

Comments are closed.

Top