Media representations of the hijab - Julie Posetti, University of Canberra

• Introduction
• Theoretical context – literature review
• Depictions of Muslim women
• Australian perspectives
• References
• Content analysis
• Timeline
• Definitions of key terms
   
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Content analysis

As evidenced by the timeline featured at the end of this case study, the Australian media has extensively covered the hijab debate, with the issue being most prominently featured at three flashpoints in the past decade:

1. A call from NSW MP the Reverend Fred Nile during the 2002 state election for a ban on the burqa;
2. Calls from two federal Liberal MPs for a ban on the hijab in schools, a week after a national Muslim summit called by the Prime Minister to address disaffection and promote cultural harmony;
3. The controversy triggered by convicted drug-taker and swimwear model Michelle Leslie, who claimed to have converted to Islam and wore a hijab and burqa during her trial in Indonesia before reverting to revealing Western clothing on her return to Australia.

The coverage of these stories by the ABC Radio Current Affairs programs AM, PM and The World Today is the subject of this study. AM has been identified as one of the most influential and respected sources of news and information in Australia (Brand & Pearson, 2001), and the high status of these programs among journalists means they also have the capacity to influence other news media.

A search of the ABC’s online archive from 1997 returned 230 stories flagging the hijab, with 255 hits returned for “headscarf” – although not all of these referred to the Islamic form of scarf (search undertaken August 18, 2006 at http://www.abc.net.au). A narrower search of the publicly accessible archives of the Radio Current Affairs stable of programs returned only 31 stories referencing hijabs and Islamic headscarves during the period January 1999-August 2006. Of these stories, 13 (42 per cent) were foreign stories involving characters and places that were distant and representing the women featured as oppressed – by Islamic states enforcing veiling or by secular states prohibiting it – terrorists or struggling for independence. For example, Jim Gale reported on Iranian women in 1999:

In Iran women in public must remain modest; they must wear the hijab, covered from head to toe in a scarf and a long cloak. It makes sport difficult and unappealing … Unless they’re married, men and women aren’t seen together in the street. The buses are strictly divided – the front for men, women in the back. Women lead two lives – a public, restricted life dressed in the black hijab, and a life behind closed doors where they wear the Western clothes that can be found everywhere in smart boutiques. She-va is a young lawyer. She says the separation of the sexes is the hardest thing for women in Iran.

SHE-VA: The Iranian women – the women like their religion, but everything is not religion, everything is not hijab. We need some recreation, we need some freedom to make relations with men. She has to work beside the men. (AM, July 24, 1999)

In 2002, Raphael Epstein reported a similar story on Afghan women: “…while the US has recently pledged to increase aid, the plight of most Afghan women appears unchanged. Many outside Kabul still suffer from the same brutal discrimination suffered under the Taliban.” In 2004, reporter Emma Griffiths described one of the Beslan school siege terrorists as wearing “the black dress and headscarf and holding a pistol” on PM.

These programs reported on the issue of sanctions against veiled women and girls in France, the UK, Turkey and the Netherlands, but issues within Australia such as the expulsion of a Sydney schoolgirl for wearing traditional Islamic clothing and the disqualification of two young hijab-wearing soccer players went unreported. These programs did, however, devote considerable airtime to covering the experiences of Australian Muslim women in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, raising awareness about racially motivated assaults which included targeting veiled women. Six stories were identified in this category. For example, only two days after the September 11 attacks, The World Today (TWT) reported a racist backlash against Muslim Australians on city streets around the country:

Arab Australians are again being harassed and intimidated it seems. Overnight a mosque in Perth was defiled. In Brisbane bottles have been hurled at little children in an Islamic school bus. And in Sydney a Christian Lebanese church has been vandalised overnight. But it’s not only buildings and property, people are being targeted as well with abuse and one person even being spat on. (TWT, September 13, 2001)

As vox pops within the report demonstrated, hijab-wearing women were particularly vulnerable:

VOX POPS: Like an old man yesterday, he spat on a woman wearing a scarf. He spat on her. She just stared at him and, you know, she didn’t say anything to him.
VOX POPS: Yes, well, maybe because she’s wearing that scarf probably, I don’t know.
REPORTER: The Muslim head scarf?
VOX POPS: Yes. (ibid)

Just over a year later, TWT reported on 40 racially motivated assaults that occurred in NSW in the aftermath of the first Bali bombing, prompting a call for victims of such crimes to report them and a warning from the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney.

By and large these attacks have consisted of racial vilification; they also consisted of pulling the headdress from young Muslim women, and in a number of instances spitting at or upon these women. Now, there is clearly a very strong law in terms of racial vilification. (TWT, October 28, 2002)

While characterising Muslim women as victims, this story served an important community service by encouraging them to report such crimes while demonstrating the social unacceptability of racist assaults.

But these issues were not taken up again until after the London bombings in mid 2005. While the explanation for this may well lie with such industry realities as competing news agendas, a lack of visible contacts and diminished resources, it also reflects the pattern of “hit and run” journalism – that is, issues are identified and reported when they are considered timely but are then forgotten. This highlights the need for important issues affecting the social fabric to be prioritised and followed up regularly. When PM did take up the problem of ostracism and racially motivated attacks affecting Muslim communities, it was in the aftermath of terrorism via a feature interview with visiting British sociologist Tariq Modood, who discussed the problem in the UK and then extrapolated to the Australian environment. He also made this observation about the media’s responsibility to distinguish between law-abiding Muslims and jihadist terrorists when reporting terrorism:

I think that divisive media images do have an effect, especially when people who know so little about Muslims and Islam are then influenced by those images to perhaps not even carry out violent acts, but even every time they meet a Muslim, they kind of are asking them: Well, what do you think about the terrorist action? What do you think about al-Qaeda, and so on, as if there’s nothing else we have in common apart from I want to interrogate your views about Islamic terrorism. (PM, July 11, 2005)

Following the terror raids in November the same year, PM reported concerns of the Muslim community that they were at risk from rednecks emboldened by perceptions of a general crackdown against Muslims. The head of the Federal Government’s own Islamic Advisory Council, Amer Ali (identified by the reporter as a “moderate”), demanded a meeting with the Attorney-General via the story:

So I am telling that there are rednecks in our society and they can take law into their own hands. I want the assurance from the Government that my community will be safeguarded. And they will be safe and they will not be subject to any unnecessary attack by the rednecks. (PM, November 9, 2005)

Earlier the same day, TWT had reported similar concerns highlighting fears that the integration of Muslim women into Australian society would be jeopardised:

AHMED KAMALEDINE: Last week I went down to the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) to get my car registered and I was serviced by a Muslim lady with a hijab on. Straight after that I took off and I went and got a takeaway drive through McDonald’s. I was also serviced by a Muslim girl with a hijab. So I think this is a perfect example of the Muslim integration. And especially, we’re not talking about male integration, we’re speaking about females who have been for a very, very long time hidden behind the veil and behind doors, and this is, for the past decade has been happening that once the female is out there, it shows and it proves to the community that we are out there, we’re integrating, we’re communicating. But to have this type of fear among the community is going to pull back everybody behind doors and especially the females.

Then, just 10 days before the Cronulla riots in December 2005, PM carried a report about a Muslim youth summit which highlighted the sense of alienation and discrimination experienced, particularly by veiled women:

I’m a six-generation Australian white woman. But just because I wear a headscarf and I’m identifiable as a Muslim woman, you know, I’ll get abuse on the streets. It’s harder to get employment, you know, people … you just don’t get as good service in shops, that sort of thing. You certainly get extra attention at airports and that sort of thing. (PM, December 2, 2005)

At a time when the news was dominated by reports of the terror attacks and the Islamic terrorists suspected of perpetrating or planning them, these programs were behaving in a socially responsible way by reflecting some of the base reactions being inflicted on the Muslim community and implying criticism of such racially motivated behaviour.

Two other stories which intersect with these issues and target Muslim women for positive and empowering coverage were carried on these programs during the period assessed. The first, broadcast on AM on the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, was a story about a group of young Muslim women who had launched their own magazine to help demystify Islam. One of the women described her experiences of the day after the attacks:

I was in Year 12 at that time and I went back to school and that day people were like “why did they do that?” and I was like “why are you asking me? How am I supposed to know, I’m in just as much shock as you are about this whole thing?” (AM, September 11, 2003)

Another of the women had similar experiences of being quizzed about her connections to terrorists with questions like this: “You know, is really Osama bin Laden your cousin, do you know Osama bin Laden? It’s like, you know, even those questions, as silly as they may be, but they are coming up.” (ibid)

Predictably, but reasonably, the story also addressed the hijab issue:

When I’d go down to the city, I could see people looking at you differently, very suspiciously. If you’re wearing a big hijab, a big scarf, they’d be wondering what’s underneath that.

PAULA KRUGER: Was it a difficult decision to wear the hijab after, you know, given that things have really changed over the last two years, that people do look at you differently?
FEDA ABDO: The funny thing is the whole point of the hijab is that when you see people and communicate with people, they don’t judge you by your outer appearance, you know, so they don’t judge you by the way you look. But the funny thing that happens after September 11 is that people are judging you by what you’re wearing on your head. (ibid)

The other story that fits into this category was a report about the graduation of Australia’s first hijab-clad police officer in Victoria. Maha Sukkar, an immigrant from Beirut, had her uniform adjusted to accommodate the hijab. And although this utilised the news value of “novelty”, potentially aiding the interpretation of this story as another example of Orientalism in the media, it served an important purpose in aiding the identification of a Muslim woman as someone other than a terrorist, an exotic seductress or a victim of oppression. This woman was able to declare she was more than just her head-cover, and the story helped to normalise the character of Muslim women in Australian culture.

This is really something that’s fairly new in Australia but it’s been practised in the UK. I mean, there are women police officers in the hijab in the UK and from all experience and information that I have, I mean, they are just like anyone else in the police service delivering an excellent service. (PM, November 26, 2004)

Her point was magnified by another interviewee – the director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation, Hass Dellal:

I think it’s a very positive change. I mean, this is, it just gives us more and more recognition of diversity and that’s what it says, that we’re a culturally diverse country and therefore all of our services should reflect the type of community that we service and also, it also recognises people’s religious and cultural backgrounds and it actually makes no difference to the quality of service people are going to receive and I think it’s a very good thing. (ibid)

The programs also extensively covered the Australian hijab debates sparked by conservative politicians in 2002 and 2005, with four stories devoted to NSW Christian Democrats MP Fred Nile’s call for a ban on the burqa and three reports on the call for a hijab ban in schools by federal Liberal backbenchers Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos.

Nile’s call for a ban on the burqa in the aftermath of the Bali bombings coincided with the NSW state election. Nile, who drew attention to the role of burqa-clad female suicide bombers in the Moscow theatre siege, claimed the garment (and the similar chador) was a perfect disguise for terrorists because it could hide weapons and explosives, and he called on the NSW Government to intervene: “Will the Government, in view of the terrorist threat, as part of our new Australian security precautions, consider a prohibition on the wearing of the chador in public places, especially railway stations, city streets and shopping centres etcetera?” (AM, November 21, 2002).

AM reported on the call, made from the floor of the NSW Upper House, with a critical tone using language which highlighted the offence caused and the potential risk created to the Muslim community:

Well-known Christian fundamentalist and New South Wales State MP, Fred Nile, has created a storm by linking the wearing of traditional robes and headscarves by Muslim women with terrorism. In the State’s Upper House he called for a ban on the traditional dress because it could be used by terrorists to conceal weapons and explosives. He’s deeply offended Muslim women, who’re already facing harassment after the attacks in Bali and in the United States. And he’s being accused of fuelling ethnic hatred and fear. (AM, November 21, 2002)

In response, the story carried the voice of an authoritative Muslim woman – Maha Krayem Abdo, president of the United Muslim Women’s Association of Australia – in the interests of balanced, fair and informed reporting:

Is he going to tell other people to stop wearing overcoats and jackets and stop wearing hats? It’s a bit frightening really to think that comments like that would be made from a man of that calibre … I feel fearful, I feel that Muslim women’s lives in Australia are in danger and I can only just sort of begin to imagine what it is like going through shopping centres, going through the checkouts, people are going to be … can you imagine? People are just going to be checking, you know … it is the fear that he is breeding and promoting hatred and division in the Australian community. (AM, November 21, 2002)

Coverage of the story continued that night on PM with acknowledgement of the juxtaposition of an earlier report on the struggles of Afghani women to “throw off the veil” and criticism of Prime Minister John Howard’s slow and guarded response to the call for the burqa ban. “I don’t have a clear response to what Fred’s put, I mean I like Fred, and I don’t always agree with him, but you know, Fred speaks for the views of a lot of people … On the other hand, I feel it’s very important at the moment that the Islamic people don’t feel they’re being singled out.” (PM, November 21, 2002). This statement was labeled equivocal by reporter Annie White, who concluded her story with a sharp and witty aside that ridiculed Nile’s call: “It’s conceivable an overcoat could perform the same function as a robe and veil; but unlikely, insists Reverend Nile, because in the summer months a coat would be suspicious, which makes you wonder how Santa will go in his big red suit and beard, posing for photographs with his fans this Christmas.” (ibid)

The following morning, AM took the story up again, this time more closely scrutinising Howard’s equivocation. While Howard’s office eventually ruled out such a ban, his apparent entertainment of the idea attracted criticism from Muslim leaders and opposition politicians. Conversely, the NSW Government had instantly ruled out a ban. For an expert analysis of the situation, AM consulted respected managing director of the Washington-based Arab-American Institute, Jean Abinader, who called on political leaders such as the Prime Minister to decisively distance themselves from comments like those expressed by Nile:

Well, I think they have to be dismissive of it completely and immediately … Does this mean that there is never going to be a problem and there might never be a terrorist who uses Islamic clothing to hide their whatever? No. But on the other hand, one has to look sometimes at the role of the greater good and the greater good here is that we don’t encourage discrimination and race or religion baiting against any one group and there is no reason for these kinds of comments to be made in the first place. (AM, November 22, 2002)

But later that day Nile went further, accusing all women who wear traditional Islamic dress such as the chador and hijab of being “extremists” and recruitment targets for Osama bin Laden, and The World Today tackled the story again. There may be an argument to suggest reporting Nile’s comments was an inflammatory move and responsible journalism would have resulted in him being rendered voiceless, but this doesn’t sit comfortably with the notion of presenting the facts to an audience to allow them to make an informed judgment.

This was the approach adopted by TWT, which reported Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s lack of support for Nile’s comments and interviewed NSW Premier Bob Carr, inviting him to label Nile an “extremist”. Carr declined, but issued a clear warning about the responsibilities of politicians in regards to race relations:

I know Fred Nile, I respect him as a serious legislator and I just respectfully urge him to veer away from this stereotyping. I think we’ve got to avoid ever, ever encouraging, ever allowing, ever contemplating a stereotype about Muslims or about Jews or about Lebanese or about Greeks or Italians or whatever. Stereotypes are the first step in actual full-blooded racism. (TWT, November 22, 2002)

The issue was thrust back on the national political stage in mid-2005 by prominent federal Liberal backbenchers Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos, who called for a ban on the hijab in public schools, prompting another story about traditional Islamic women’s dress on TWT on the day the PM was visiting an Islamic school in Sydney. In Louise Yaxley’s story, the singing of the “Vegemite Song” by Muslim school children at Al Faisal College, where tolerance and compassion are featured curriculum values, was juxtaposed against Bishop’s call for a ban on the hijab in schools. Bishop’s comments, reported on TWT, that the claim expressed by some Muslim women that the hijab afforded them a certain freedom were extremely inflammatory: “I would simply say that in Nazi Germany, Nazis felt free and comfortable. That is not the sort of definition of freedom that I want for my country.” (TWT, August 29, 2005)

Bishop went on to imply that women who wear the hijab are unpatriotic non-conformists: “… it is being used by the sort of people who want to overturn our values as an iconic emblem of defiance and a point of difference” (ibid). But these racially motivated comments were dispelled by the voices of Bishop’s political allies as well as her opponents. The Parliamentary Secretary for Children and Youth Affairs, Sussan Ley, reacted immediately, saying while that she wasn’t comfortable with schoolgirls wearing the face cover (niqab) she had no problem with the hijab and wouldn’t agree to ban it:

I think we need as a community to embrace the Muslims within our number, and that involves a lot of different things, including a dialogue, including understanding, including talking to people, and in this way we won’t encourage young Muslim people to a more rigid interpretation of their faith which could then lead to extremism. I think that’s the key point here. (TWT, August 29, 2005)

This approach received bipartisan support and was backed by the Shadow Attorney General, Nicola Roxon, who told TWT:

Look, I think these comments just come from total ignorance about the sort of multicultural and tolerant community that we live in and want to live in. I think that their statements are entirely irrelevant ... This is actually demonising people for what they wear, there’s no grounds for it, and I think it’s a debate that it’s silly for us to have in Australia, and it causes some harm to the women who do wear this headgear and peacefully go about their ordinary lives and don’t need Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Panopoulos to tell them what to wear. (ibid)

Yaxley’s coverage of the issue was balanced and responsible, allowing the expression of inflammatory views but countering them with sensible comments from credible opponents of the philosophies of Bishop and Panopoulos. The exclusion of a Muslim woman from the story may seem regrettable, but needs to be understood in the context of the extreme deadline pressure faced by reporters working on this program and the editorial constraints imposed on story length, along with the need to appreciate the program as a whole. The very next story in the line-up dealt exclusively with the reaction of young Muslim women to the ban. In this report, one Sydney University student who wears the hijab was perplexed about calls for it to be banned in schools: “We’re not trying to make a statement about Islam or anything; it’s compulsory for us to wear the headscarf, so we wear it. It’s about the rules of your religion.” (TWT, August 29, 2005). The same woman said any such ban would be oppressive:

… Australia, until now, was very respectful to human rights, women’s rights and freedom of speech, freedom of choice, and establishing a law like this just goes against all those. It would make Muslim women oppressed and discriminated against, probably I would feel that way. (ibid)

Importantly, imbuing both Muslim women and the story with credibility and authority, TWT sought the opinion of respected Muslim women in leadership roles, including the deputy chair of the New South Wales Youth Advisory Council, Iktimal Hage-Ali, who – having just returned from the Prime Minister’s summit, described the call for a ban on the hijab as offensive and racist: “This call by Bronwyn Bishop is only taking us 10 steps back and causing even more angst and even more, you know, anger, within the community.” (ibid)

While the Prime Minister was criticised for being slow to intervene in the Fred Nile controversy, he was quick to respond to the call from his own party room for headscarfs to be banned in schools, and this was the subject of the PM story that evening. But while he ruled it out, he did so on the grounds that to do otherwise would be “impractical”. “I don’t think it’s practical to bring in such a prohibition. If you ban a headscarf you might for consistency’s sake have to ban a yarmulke or a turban; it does become rather difficult and rather impractical.” (PM, August 29, 2005) The report also carried comments from a recalcitrant Bishop and opposing views from several Liberal politicians, but the only Muslim voice belonged to a man – the president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Malcolm Thomas, who said the concern in the Muslim community was spreading rapidly: “They’re very worried about what they do with their children at school now. Their daughters are coming home saying, ‘Well, do I go to school tomorrow, Mum, do I have to … wear my headscarf? What am I to do?’” (ibid) While this stand-alone worked relatively well as a piece of political analysis, it didn’t give Muslim women the voice they deserved in the debate.

Just one day after the hijab media storm created and sustained by Bishop and Panopoulos, Islamic dress was again a source of news for ABC Radio Current Affairs. This time it was because it was adopted by an Australian model, Michelle Leslie, who was facing drug charges in Bali. Alison Caldwell filed a story for AM which revolved around Leslie’s adoption of traditional Muslim dress. The swimwear model first wore the hijab and then progressed to the burqa – a fact which featured in the introduction to the story: “As she was led from her cell in Bali’s police headquarters yesterday, Ms Leslie wore a burqa, a traditional Muslim dress covering her face and body, prompting questions to her lawyers about her religious beliefs.” (AM, August 30, 2005) In the package that followed, Caldwell quizzed Leslie’s lawyer, Ross Hill, about her faith and her decision to don traditional Muslim dress:

ROSS HILL: I’m not really going to comment on the reasons why a Muslim person seeks to wear the hijab. You know, that’s a matter personal to Michelle and that’s really the end of the matter.
ALISON CALDWELL: Earlier you said that you thought … it was just something that you all thought about just to keep her covered, just trying to keep things down, I think were your words – what did you mean by that?
ROSS HILL: Well, look, my own personal view is, you know, no one has any right to be taking dozens and dozens of photographs of her. If she chooses to wear the hijab for her reasons, well, I’m quite happy that she wears it because it keeps her face away from all the people in the media, and there’s no reason why she should be disclosing herself to them.
ALISON CALDWELL: Do you think it would help though, given that Indonesia is the most populated Muslim nation on earth, does it help her now being publicly identified as a Muslim?
ROSS HILL: Look, I’ve got absolutely no comment to make on that. Religion’s not a part of this case. (ibid)

By this stage, the Australian media had become obsessed with Leslie’s choice of attire, and the discussion about her beliefs had taken on a sniping, cynical tone which fanned another series of stories on Muslim dress. AM wasn’t alone in pillorying Leslie – who seemed to be portrayed as a traitor by the mainstream media and was eventually dismissed as a “fake Muslim” by the Islamic community. But this sort of coverage confused the hijab issue and further alienated Muslim women who choose to wear the garment. For the Muslim community it underlined concerns about media coverage of Islam.

None of the programs commented on Michelle Leslie’s choice of clothing again until she returned to Sydney after a short stint in jail towards the end of November that year. In a live cross to Sydney airport, reporter David Mark told AM, “there was no sign of the Muslim veil that she had worn for her court appearances in Indonesia. She was dressed quite simply in jeans and a black shirt”, and he played a snippet of a media scrum he described as one of the most intense and aggressive he’d ever witnessed in Australia, in which a reporter is heard asking Leslie to comment on descriptions of her as a false Muslim. While some focus on these aspects of her story are understandable in the context of the news values of controversy, timeliness and novelty, the fact they dominated this story demonstrates the disproportionate emphasis on her “conversion” to Islam in the context of a tale about another Australian convicted of drugs charges in Bali.

Leslie’s story, her choice of clothing and the authenticity of her Muslim conversion was again headline news when she told her story to the Packer program 60 Minutes and tabloid women’s magazine stablemate New Idea. In these stories she confessed she wasn’t a Muslim and claimed she wore traditional Islamic dress during her trial to protect her from the media’s gaze and from predatory prison guards. In this context, TWT reported the commencement of a police investigation into allegations Leslie profited from her crime through selling her story. This offered another opportunity to discuss her religious and sartorial convictions as highlighted by reporter Sabra Lane: “During her time behind bars, Leslie claimed she’d converted to Islam, and wore a burqa to prove it. But her decision to wear the head-to-toe dress, and the decision to abandon it on her release, caused a storm of controversy.” (TWT, June 5, 2006) The report also included an excerpt from the 60 Minutes interview with Leslie in which she was quizzed again about her Muslim faith or lack thereof.

While the coverage of Muslim women (and the hijab issue in particular) by AM, PM and TWT was generally fair, balanced and responsible, there are some areas of concern reflecting the broader problem of media representations of Australian Muslims. There was a tendency in some reports to disempower Muslim women by allowing men to speak on their behalf or to regurgitate stereotypes about their oppression. An editorial decision was also taken to cover international examples of the Islamic dress debate – such as the banning of the hijab and the burqa in the UK, Turkey and the Netherlands – while overlooking similar stories in Australia. It is true that day-to-day news agendas and normal editorial pressures may explain the exclusion of such stories, but in ignoring them these programs missed an opportunity to engage with the Muslim community and to undertake reflective, community-oriented journalism which could have contributed to society’s understanding of Islam and the role of Muslim women. It also contributed to the representation of Muslim women as “foreign” and “other”, with international coverage of issues affecting and involving them taking precedence over the Australian experience.

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