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  • Writer's pictureLina Idrees

Belgium’s headscarf ban, Netflix’s ‘Elite’, and the endless attack on Muslim women’s agency

Updated: Apr 8, 2021



The Netflix TV show Elite follows 3 scholarship students navigating their way through a fancy private school with growing tensions between them and a group of wealthy students. One of the scholarship students who stars in the show is Nadia Shano, played by Mina El Hammani (Metro UK). Nadia is a hardworking student who comes from a strict family and (spoiler alert) has a complicated relationship with her love-interest Guzman. One of the first things I noticed about Nadia was that she wore a hijab. I was pleasantly surprised by her presence in a Spanish drama series and was even more surprised by the shows illustration of the Islamophobia she faced at school.


In one of the first interactions she had with her principal, she was threatened with expulsion if she didn’t remove her hijab on school grounds. Given her status as a scholar, she knew her scholarship was at stake and began to only wear her hijab to and from school, but not at school itself. This short scene made me think more about the ‘issue’ of headscarves in Europe and how this particular religious covering has somehow made its way into the legislation of countries such as France, Germany, Denmark, and more recently in Belgium.


Last month, thousands of protestors took to the streets of Brussels following a constitutional decision to allow the banning of headscarves in Belgian universities (Global Citizen). This form of overt discrimination isn’t just a violation of secularism, it also undermines individual freedoms. More specifically, it strips Muslim women of their agency and conscious capacity to make their own choices. It forces them to choose between their religion and the country they are living in and limits them to a single identity: wearing a hijab.


The politicisation of religion in this way makes people’s religion and national identity incompatible. In Nadia’s case, it made her religion and status as a scholar at a prestigious institution incompatible.


Muslim women’s identities are constantly being shaped and judged through various discourses. On one hand there is the patriarchal narrative that paints Islam as sexist and gendered, and on the other hand there are ‘Western feminist discourses’ (The Guardian) that are quite neocolonial and seeks to portray Muslim women as constantly oppressed and in need of some sort of Western liberation. There is also the perception that Muslims in general are a danger in the public sphere- one which has dominated the mainstream media since 9/11. All these narratives deepen the antagonistic relationship between Islam and ‘the West’.


TV shows like Elite have unfortunately fallen into these harmful narratives that have formed a rift between the ‘progressive’ white Europeans (most of Nadia’s schoolmates) and the ‘backwards’ Middle Eastern Muslims (Nadia and her family). Apart from the principals obvious prejudices against her headscarf, there were times where her classmates made terrorist jokes (some of which actually made me uncomfortable). At first I thought these instances of discrimination were going to portray the Islamophobic environment that was making her life difficult- however as the episodes progressed I realised this wasn’t the case at all.


Throughout the show, Nadia’s religious father appears to have created an oppressive household in which neither Nadia nor her brother Omar can lead ‘normal teenage’ lives. Her fathers parenting creates a dysfunctional family dynamic that reinforces the Islamophobic trope of a household full of patriarchal anger and an unhealthy amount of control. Almost all the characters on the show come from fairly dysfunctional families, but Nadia’s family seems to stand out the most in terms of its fear and pain.


Muslim parents (like other religious or non-religious parents) can be judgemental, close-minded, and difficult to deal with. But if the single narrative that is shown on our TV screens ties such values to religion alone without any cultural context, the representation I’m given as a Muslim does more harm than good.


As Nadia’s relationship with her love-interest progresses, she begins to do things that seemingly go against her strict family values. She takes off her hijab, goes clubbing, drinks, does drugs, and has sex. While I don’t believe removing her hijab or taking part in these acts was a symbol of her ‘leaving her faith behind’, it definitely reinforced a number of flawed stereotypes about Muslim women. The writers of the show (none of which are Muslim) have focused solely on her identity as a Muslim woman living in the West and the weight her hijab carries. The internal battle with her faith regarding sex before marriage, alcohol, and drugs, is a lazy storyline that leaves no room for her character’s complexity to deepen.


Not every character on a TV show or a movie is perfect, and writers often have to rely on stereotypes to present different types of people on screen. But when it comes to depicting Muslim women (and Muslims in general) there isn’t much nuance in our cultural space. Muslims are often carelessly depicted, and shows like Elite maintain these detrimental stereotypes. TV and films are powerful mediums that often inform us about ideas and cultures that we aren’t necessarily familiar with. Representation is important within those mediums, and different industries have attempted to give Muslim women a platform whether it be fashion or sports. The media however, when representing Muslim women only choose to represent those who wear hijabs because they are ‘visibly’ Muslim. This, coupled with the typecast Muslim character that perpetuates all the stereotypes constantly forces the same narratives rather than challenges them.

I hope that this generation of women who are contributing to the history of women’s resistance in Brussels will continue to cement solidarity and spirituality at the heart of their struggles, and use an intersectional approach to not only challenge but deconstruct the harmful narratives that pervade the media and cultural spaces.


 

you can also find my article on the Fourth Floor's website:

Fourth Floor is a West London based collective dissecting the world and promoting young creatives across the globe.  


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