Representation of Muslim Women in Majority-Muslim Malaysia: An Echo of Orientalist Narratives from the West
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This article investigates the persistent influence of Eurocentric perspectives and Orientalist frameworks on the intellectual traditions of indigenous peoples during the post-colonial era.These frameworks have fostered various challenges, notably Islamophobia, which identifies the perceived discrimination of Muslim women as a primary marker of difference between Islamic societies and the West.This study explores the under-researched phenomenon of Islamophobia within majority-Muslim Malaysia by examining the representation of Muslim women in selected English-language news articles through critical discourse analysis. Findings suggest that local media frequently echo negative Western narratives. The media’s reinforcement of harmful stereotypes and Islamophobic tropes is particularly evident in two areas, including the supposed loss of female agency and the attribution of misogyny and oppression to Muslim society.This article advocates for a robust approach to media representation that respects the authenticity of Muslim women and reflects their diverse experiences.Ultimately, this research promotes a decolonial methodology to dismantle oppressive narratives and foster genuine understanding and solidarity across communities.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
References
Ahmad Mustapha Hassan. “When State and Religion Were Separate.” The Star, 26 February 2016. ttps://www.thestar.com.my/news/
nation/2016/02/26/when-state-and-religion-were-separate-duringthe-early-days-of-independence-faith-was-a-private-matt.
Alatas, Syed Hussein.“Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits and Problems.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 28, no. 1 (2000): 23–45.
_______. The Myth of the Lazy Native: A Study of the Image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th Century and Its Function in the Ideology of Colonial Capitalism. New York: Routledge, 2013.
_______. Thomas Stamford Raffles: Schemer or Reformer? Singapore: NUS Press, 2020. Al-Attas, Syed Muhammad Naquib. Historical Fact and Fiction. Kuala Lumpur: UTM Press, 2011.
_______. Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islām: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islām. Kuala Lumpur: UTM Press, 2014.
Aktürk, Şener, and Yury Katliarou. “Institutionalization of Ethnocultural Diversity and the Representation of European Muslims.” Perspectives on Politics 19, no. 2 (2020): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1537592720001334.
Alfani, Guido. “Economic Inequality in Preindustrial Times: Europe and Beyond.” Journal of Economic Literature 59, no. 1 (2021): 3–44. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.20191449.
Bayraklı, Enes, and Farid Hafez. Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies. New York: Routledge, 2019.
Boyd-Barrett, Oliver. “Theory in Media Research.” In The Media Book. Ed. by Newbold, Chris, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, and Hilde Van den Bulck. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. https://monoskop.org/images/3/38/The_Media_Book_2002.pdf
“British Journalist Slammed for ‘Racist’ Interview with Palestinian Politician.” Arab News. 7 January 2024. https://www.arabnews.com/node/2437396/media.
Bulstrode, Jenny. “Black Metallurgists and the Making of the Industrial Revolution.” History and Technology 39, no. 1 (2023): 1 to 41.
Burtt, Edwin Arthur. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1959.
Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957.
Carland, Susan. “‘We’re Islam in Their Eyes’: Using an Interpellation Framework to Understand Why Being a Woman Matters When Countering Islamophobia.” Religions 14, no. 5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050654.
Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1951.
Connor, Phillip, and Matthias Koenig. “Explaining the Muslim Employment Gap in Western Europe: Individual-Level Effects and Ethno-Religious Penalties.” Social Science Research 49, (2014): 191–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2014.08.001.
De Sousa, Elisabete M. “Wollstonecraft, An Enlightened Reader.” In Questioning the Oneness of Philosophy. Ed. Jose Miranda Justo, Paulo Alexandre Lima, and Fernando M. F. Silva, 157–170. Lisbon: Center for Philosophy at the University of Lisbon, 2018.
Díaz del Castillo, Bernal. The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. London: George Routledge and Sons Ltd, 1908.
Duncan, Pamela. “Europeans Greatly Overestimate Muslim Population, Poll Shows.” The Guardian, 13 December 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/society/datablog/2016/dec/13/europeans-massively-overestimate-muslim-population-poll-shows.
Dussel, Enrique. Ethics of Liberation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.
Engermann, Stanley L. “Slavery, Serfdom and Other Forms of Coerced Labour: Similarities and Differences.” In Serfdom and Slavery: Studies in Legal Bondage. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Erlingsson, Christen, and Petra Brysiewicz. “A Hands-on Guide to Doing Content Analysis.” African Journal of Emergency Medicine 7, no. 3 (2018): 93–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.afjem.2017.08.001.
Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge, 2003.
Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press, 1986.
_______. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963.
Fanon, Frantz, Hall, Budd L., and Rajesh Tandon. “Decolonisation of Knowledge, Epistemicide, Participatory Research and Higher Education.” Research for All 1, no. 1 (2017): 6–19.
Farhana Rahman. “The Merits and Limits of a Gendered Epistemology: Muslim Women and the Politics of Knowledge Production.” Journal of International Women’s Studies 19, no. 1 (2018): 20–33.
Farish A. Noor. “Innocents Abroad? The Erasure of the Question of Race and Power in Contemporary Feminist and Nostalgic Travelogues.” Southeast Asia Research 5, no. 1 (1997): 57–88.
Fisher, Robert, and Phillip Dybicz. “The Place of Historical Research in Social Work.” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 26, no. 7 (1999): 105–124.
Grosfoguel, Ramón. “The Structure of Knowledge in Westernised Universities: Epistemic Racism/Sexism and the Four Genocides/Epistemicides.” Human Architecture: Journal of Sociology of Self-Knowledge 1, no. 1 (2013): 73–90.
Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Edited by Stuart Hall. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1997.
Huckin, Thomas, Jennifer Andrus, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon. “Critical Discourse Analysis and Rhetoric and Composition.” College Composition and Communication 64, no. 1 (2012): 107–29. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23264919.
Iqbal, Zafar. “Prejudice: An Antecedent or Manifestation of Islamophobia?” In Islamophobia: History, Context and Deconstruction. 129–157. New Delhi: Thousand Oaks; California: Sage Publications, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4135/9789353287863
Jacob, Margaret C. The Secular Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
Jewell, Helen. Women in Dark Age and Early Medieval Europe c. 500–1200. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006.
Jung, Dietrich. “Islam as a Problem: Dutch Religious Politics in the East Indies.” Review of Religious Research 51, no. 3 (2010): 288–301.
Mariam Mokhtar. “A Symbol of Liberation or Subjugation?” Malaysiakini. 19 December 2016. https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/366532.
Moore, Kerry, Paul Mason, and Justin Matthew Wren Lewis. Images of Islam in the UK: The Representation of British Muslims in the National Print News Media 2000 to 2008. Cardiff: Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, 2008.
Murni Wan Mohd Nor, and Peter Gale. “Growing Fear of Islamisation: Representation of Online Media in Malaysia.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 41, no. 1 (2021): 17–33.
Murni Wan Mohd Nor, Zatul Himmah Adnan, Arfah AB Majid, and Mohd Sabri Md. Nor. “Perceptions of Reporting on Islamisation by Malaysia’s Popular Alternative Media: An Accurate Representation?” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 42, no. 2 (2022): 1–16.
Nadiah Ridzuan. “Women, Islam and feminism in postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore.” Masterʼs thesis, National University of Singapore, 2011.
“Muslim Educational Attainment.” Pew Research Center, 13 December 2016. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/12/13/
muslim-educational-attainment.
Pleijt, Alexandra, and Jan Luiten Zanden. “Two Worlds of Female Labour: Gender Wage Inequality in Western Europe, 1300–1800.” The Economic History Review 74, no. 3 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13045.
Poskett, James. Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science. New York: Mariner Books, 2022.
Reisigel, Martin, and Ruth Wodak. Discourse and Discrimination: Rhetorics of Racism and Antisemitism. New York: Routledge, 2001.
Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. New York: Vantage House, 1997.
Sakai, Minako, and Samina Yasmeen. “Narratives of Muslim womanhood and women’s agency.” In Narratives of Muslim Womanhood and Women’s Agency, 1–7. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Siti Kasim. “The Real Malay Dilemma.” The Star, 26 August 2018. https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/columnists/siti-kasim-thots/2018/08/26/the-real-malay-dilemma-the-issue-is-whether-any-of-the-malay-leadershipwould-be-willing-to-change-i/.
Slaton, Amy E., and Tiago Saraiva. “Editorial.” History and Technology 39, no.2 (2023): 127–136.
Smith, Ruth Ann, and David S. Lux. “Historical Method in Consumer Research: Developing Causal Explanations of Change.” Journal of Consumer Research 19, no. 4 (1993): 595–610.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg. London: Macmillan, 1988.
Sweida-Metwally, Samir. “Does the Muslim Penalty in the British Labour Market Dissipate after Accounting for So-Called ‘Sociocultural Attitudes’?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 45, no. 16 (2022): 359–388. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2022.2097887.
Tan, Nathaniel. “Being Consistent on Religious Issues That Matter.” Malaysiakini, 14 November 2017. https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/401932.
The Rational Orangutan. “The Need to Talk about Islamism in Malaysia.” Malaysiakini, 4 November 2017. https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/400742.
Thomas, Jason. “Peer Pressure Makes Tudungs the Norm in Schools.” Free Malaysia Today, 9 February 2021. https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2021/02/09/peer-pressure-makes-tudungs-the-norm-in-schools/.
Toer, Pramoedya Ananta. This Earth of Mankind. Trans. Max Lane. London: Penguin Books, 1996.
“Top 30 News Websites in Malaysia.” Media Pod. Accessed 2nd September 2025. https://www.mediapod.co/blog/top-news-websites-malaysia. Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud. Islamization of Contemporary Knowledge and The Role of University in the Context of Dewesternisation and Decolonisation. Kuala Lumpur: UTM Press, 2013.
“Who Is at Fault for the ‘Malay Schools’ Problem?” Malaysiakini. 18 March 2016. https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/334283.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Vindication of the Rights of Woman. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
Zine, Jasmin. “Anti-Islamophobia Education as Transformative Pedagogy: Reflections from the Educational Front Lines.” American Journal of Islam and Society 21, no. 3 (2004): 110–119.
Zonana, Joyce. “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of ‘Jane Eyre’.” Signs 18, no. 3 (1993): 592–617.