Muslimah Media Watch thanks Modern Muslimah for the tip!
According to Reuters, scores of Muslim women in London are signing up for self-defense classes because of a rise in Islamophobic-based attacks. I support this idea and personally think that all women should be required to take classes such as these in middle or high schools.
What I don’t much care for is the whimsical spin the organizers are putting on this. Muslim women are learning to protect themselves? Let’s make a joke out of it! The author, Amil Khan, reports that the self-defense classes are named after a combination of “Ninja” and “hejab”—i.e., “Ninjabi.”
I have a question: would the idea of ninjas come up if these women did not wear niqabs and were not Muslim? They’re not taking karate, just basic self-defense. So what does that have to do with ninjas? Nothing, other than the fact that some of the women wear clothing which only shows their eyes.
I don’t know about other geographical regions, but in the U.S., niqabis are sometimes derisively nicknamed “ninjas” because only their eyes show similar to Hollywood ninja costumes (on urbandictionary.com, definition #25). This is not cool, nor is the morphed nickname of the classes.
The picture that accompanied the article (also pictured here) is an illustration of the offensive undertones: they chose a niqabi, rather than a hejabi, with the picture, most likely to emphasize the “ninja” or “Ninjabi” aspect. I think that pictures of hejabis would have been just as effective; or, even better, pictures of these women actually in the self-defense class! I know the article said that no men were allowed, but perhaps they could have set up a special photo op or something.
I was incredibly surprised that the Muslim women themselves did not find this offensive. According to the female non-Muslim self-defense instructor Dee Terry, “The ladies love the Ninjabi thing. It gives them a good giggle.” (shrug) I guess.
Salaam Alaikum,I’ve heard of these clases before and indeed the women have no problem with the ninjabi tag, I guess because 1, Ninjas are cool and 2, more importantly it’s a kind of reclaimation of the term.
This is totally unsurprising. As I learned when I took a self-defense class, many people are uncomfortable with the idea of any woman being able to defend herself. Unfortunately, that these women are Muslim only adds to their discomfort. I completely agree that this needs to be part of the school curriculum.
I absolutely agree about self-defense. This quarter I took a women’s self-defense class and it was amazingly empowering, not just in learning how to defend myself but also in challenging my ideas about how I (and women) should act in general (what is “rude,” etc.). I would recommend all women take a self-defense class. Empowering women to be confident and assertive is incredibly important.As for the ninjabi issue… I agree that the writer introduces the topic with a definite overtone of belittlement (“Haha, Muslim women are becoming ninjas!”). Just in the lead it’s clear Khan doesn’t take the issue seriously, and the fact that the niqab contributes to this attitude is certainly offensive. However, I think niqabi women might embrace the “ninjabi” concept because of other reasons. Right now the ninja is “cool”; the niqab is decidedly not. For a woman who wears the niqab to laugh about it as being ninja attire might make her seem more human, less alien, to a ninja-embracing society, even despite the other connotations of ninja.