While we’re dishing out
MuslimGirl’s neatly streamlined numbers in pretty Powerpoint slides at shiny conference tables, quantifying in dollar signs why Muslim women’s voices are valuable, all I can really think about is how our site had to resort to
publishing a crisis safety manual for Muslim women last week. All that hateful rhetoric in the media — Paris, Bernardino, now Trump — isn’t made in a void.
The thing is, you can’t be cool with society demanding us to apologize for ISIS while also trying to compliment us on our headscarves.
The social complacency that MuslimGirl intends to combat has real life or death consequences for Muslim women in Western societies. Our society is currently thriving off of scapegoating Islam: Muslim women quickly become the most vulnerable targets, and, yet, the fashion industry and corporations are simultaneously eager to profit off of them.
My entire life the past few months has revolved around this concept of the MuslimGirl business plan. We’ve already become the #1 Muslim women’s blog in the country, creating a platform for our voices and breaking glass ceilings in our media representation everywhere from
Teen Vogue to
Fortune. We want to be the first English-speaking media network by and for Muslim women in the Western hemisphere, where the culmination of the world’s power lies. We demand ownership over our own voices, and establishing our own media is how we do that. We want in.
So what’s the plan, exactly? Simple: sponsored articles and social media posts, advertising opportunities, paid subscriptions. It’s a no-brainer. As I told
CNN Money, the (mostly male) investors eyeing MuslimGirl look at us and see dollar signs. As an entrepreneur, it’s my job to make sure we’re hitting numbers. But let me be clear: my only interest in doing so is to make you listen to us. If that’s the case, you can bet your last dollar that I’ll hit those numbers better than the best of them, if for no other reason than to create some level of security for my girls out here.
Earlier this year, global media outlets heralded
H&M for
including a headscarf-clad model in their marketing campaign. It was a smart move on their part, given “hijabis’” complete immersion and heightened popularity in the beauty and fashion worlds of Instagram. Now that the dust has settled, it’s become clear that the unmatched (and free!) PR they received as a result of that decision accomplished exactly what they were going for. But, there’s a difference between representation and exploitation.
Muslim women are hot right now. We’re being used to grab attention for you, get more traffic for you, sell things for you, upgrade your reputation to being a little more “down” in the age of social progressiveness. And, at the same time, we endure a sociopolitical climate that makes it acceptable to hate us for the religion that prompts us to wear those pretty little moneymakers on our heads. That’s why MuslimGirl’s funding is so important: you can keep your eyes on the profit; I’m thinking about how sustainability is the empowerment we never had. Go ahead and commodify us, but I’ll be making sure that money is landing in the hands of Muslim women.
For many Muslim women, the headscarf is a symbol of resistance: against Islamophobia, against the imposition of societal expectations, against the violent erasure of our bodies. Countless women’s websites and news blogs this year have cashed in on almost patronizing modest fashion headlines, reducing Muslim women to their apparently shocking ability to dress well, rock a scarf, and look acceptable to the Western gaze. Meanwhile,
a 6th grade Muslim girl was beaten up by a group of boys and called “ISIS!” in her middle school. How many women’s blogs flaunting modest fashion headlines have covered her story? Much to your delight, we can flawlessly rock a scarf with American fashion trends — but we’re still going to risk getting killed when we step out of the house.
No one asked exactly why Yusor Abu-Salha was
shot execution-style in her Chapel Hill apartment this year as much as they would have been interested in how she styled her scarf.
As the founder of MuslimGirl, I get media requests around the clock during these media frenzies to explain “the current climate for Muslim women.” This time, I’m running out of different palatable variations of saying, “Our lives are under threat right now.” Ironically, not from the fundamentalism or the brown men that our society is raising pitch forks against, but from our own society itself.
This isn’t out of want, but out of need. MuslimGirl needs to exist. MuslimGirl is no longer our vehicle to access the media: MuslimGirl is the end goal itself. And not just because of the distinguished media company it’s evolving into in its own right, but because of everything it’s going to represent. There will come a day when we can look back at these struggling moments and see MuslimGirl as the sail we painstakingly hoisted in the midst of turbulent, stormy, unpredictable winds.
I’m not an entrepreneur because I want to be. I’m an entrepreneur because I have to be. For us, it’s life or death. It’s survival. And that’s why we’re going to succeed: because, as costly as a startup is, we can’t afford any other option.
source:
Forbes