This was written by Beverly M. Weber<\/a> for Muslimah Media Watch. \u201cShe became a victim of Islamophobia and xenophobia.\u00a0 She responded with dignity and exemplary civil courage.\u201d \u2013 Plaque in memorial to Marwa el-Sherbini, located in the foyer of the Saxony Provincial Court <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The murder of Marwa el-Sherbini in July 2009<\/a> sparked an intense, long-overdue discussion about Islamophobia and racism in Germany.\u00a0 These discussions have often included critical attention to the media\u2019s role in creating negative images of Islam in Germany and Europe.<\/p>\n However, at the first anniversary of el-Sherbini\u2019s death, these discussions continue to fall short of truly challenging the gendered constructions of Islam in Germany. The official memorial in honor of el-Sherbini acknowledges her civic courage, a concept that evokes a particular commitment to democratic participation and human rights in the German context.\u00a0 Yet the dominant discussions relegate el-Sherbini to a victim position, obscuring the important work done every day by Muslim activists to challenge the wide range of violence experienced by Muslim women in Germany today.<\/p>\n While El-Sherbini\u2019s murder quickly gained international attention as an example of growing European Islamophobia, the national German press did not react to the case for nearly a week. \u00a0The Central Council of Jews in Germany and the German Central Council of Muslims gave public statements condemning the crime, but Christian organizations and federal and local officials were slow to react publicly to the murder.\u00a0 By the time German officials and media did<\/em> respond, el-Sherbini had been dubbed a \u201chijab martyr\u201d in Egypt and Iran, and her death declared the first Islamophobic murder in Germany.<\/p>\n Media coverage a year after el-Sherbini\u2019s death continues to portray her almost exclusively as a victim.\u00a0 The focus has been on an emerging acknowledgment of Islamophobia, el-Sherbini\u2019s husband, the desire of el-Sherbini\u2019s family to see the presiding judge and the intervening policeman prosecuted, newly implemented security measures in response to el-Sherbini\u2019s murder, and the appropriation of el-Sherbini\u2019s death for \u201canti-West\u201d protests (often state sponsored) in Iran and Egypt (links in German):<\/p>\n When the focus does shift to el-Sherbini herself, it is often to highlight her role as wife and mother, rather than the contribution she made by taking advantage of the German legal system to challenge Islamophobic speech. Presumptions made about Muslim women as victims who need to be spoken for and protected have contributed to this problem.\u00a0 El-Sherbini becomes either a \u201cspecial case\u201d because she was well-educated, spoke German well, and was well-integrated; or her education and action against racism disappears entirely from the coverage.\u00a0 But El-Sherbini, like other Muslim women in Germany today, was more than a victim of violence.\u00a0 She was also a courageous woman who drew on her everyday experiences in active democratic participation and in order to combat hate speech.<\/p>\n Important exceptions to victim narratives exist.\u00a0 Blogger and journalist K\u00fcbra Y\u00fccel<\/a>, who recently co-founded Zahnr\u00e4der<\/a>, a network of young Muslim thinkers in Germany, has written columns in the daily taz<\/em><\/a> expressing the impact of el-Sherbini\u2019s actions on galvanizing networks of young Muslims to identify, articulate, and work against experiences of discrimination.\u00a0 Hilal Sezgin, also a taz<\/em> journalist, points out<\/a> that the media has partially failed in its role as mediator between state and public.\u00a0 She argues that part of this failure is caused by ignoring of certain questions (such as why Islamophobic and racist violence is on the rise) and prioritizing other issues (like headscarf debates and mastery of the German language).<\/p>\n Still, the victimhood discourse remains incredibly powerful.\u00a0 This partially explains the lack of feminist response to el-Sherbini\u2019s murder. Many German feminists, including some prominent figures of Turkish heritage who insist on a rejection of Islam (such as Necla Kelek), have been quick to see themselves as the protector of \u201coppressed\u201d Muslim women in the past.\u00a0 Why no response to a Muslim woman\u2019s murder in a German courtroom, or to the media coverage that constantly falsely reported that Wiens had labeled el-Sherbini a \u201cwhore\u201d? Why no response to the fact that el-Sherbini had been effectively denied access to employment because she wore hijab or to Wiens\u2019 appeal to \u201cwomen\u2019s rights\u201d in his threatening letter?<\/p>\n El-Sherbini was a self-assured woman claiming her rights under German law in the German court system.\u00a0 Her male family members were supportive, but marginal figures in her fight.\u00a0 This act of violence does not follow the typical pattern of media stories, films, and bestselling memoirs, in which a Muslim woman escapes the violence of her Muslim oppressor by rejecting Islam and wholeheartedly embracing liberal German democracy. Instead, she used German democratic structures to exercise her freedom of religion.<\/p>\n El-Sherbini also explicitly denied that she had been called a slut<\/a> (an epithet news outlets stress she was called). She pressed charges to reject her positioning within German society as a terrorist and Islamist;\u00a0 while she sought to depoliticize the headscarf and de-gender her claims to human rights, the media continues to report that Wiens called her a slut.\u00a0 It\u2019s an odd persistence, one that only makes sense if one acknowledges how intensely representations of Islam and Muslims in Germany are sexualized, if in contradictory ways. A counterpart exists in right-wing blogs<\/a> that insist the media are ignoring how German women are called \u201csluts\u201d by Muslims.<\/p>\n Certainly, the acknowledgment of racist and Islamophobic violence is crucial.\u00a0 In the course of a year, there have been fewer denials of that violence, and more honest attempts to acknowledge and question the relationship between German stereotypes of Islam and the violence enabled by them. But continuing to limit the public presence of Muslim women to roles only <\/em>as victims of violence \u2013 even if this is a shift from domestic violence to racist violence \u2013 will continue to hinder access to democratic political participation, work, and education.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This was written by Beverly M. Weber for Muslimah Media Watch. \u201cShe became a victim of Islamophobia and xenophobia.\u00a0 She responded with dignity and exemplary civil courage.\u201d \u2013 Plaque in memorial to Marwa el-Sherbini, located in the foyer of the Saxony Provincial Court The murder of Marwa el-Sherbini in July 2009 sparked an intense, long-overdue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[514,815],"class_list":["post-6612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-german-muslims","tag-marwa-el-sherbini"],"yoast_head":"\n
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