Summary: Media Representation Of Muslim Women

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Moore et al's (2008), article tells that Muslim men are spoken about more than Muslim women in the media. A limitation of their study is that they do not explain why this is the case. However Poole (2002), offers an explanation of why Muslim women are less accounted for. She suggests that a reason could be that journalists find it difficult to access information on Muslim women as they are less visible in Islam. Not only are women shown less in Islam, they are portrayed more negatively than Muslim men. Afshar and Maynard (2003) assert that the Qur'an has often been misinterpreted leading to discrimination against women. This could lead to the media creating negative stories about them as the Qur'an put forwards some inequalities between …show more content…

Many suggest that what Muslims really want is to impose Sharia law onto Britain. According to the UK Government and Parliament website (2014), during the 2010-2015 coalition government, a petition was put forward to ban Sharia law in the UK. This petition received 21,452 signatures, this demonstrates how there is a fear amongst British society of Islam laws taking over. This can lead to marginalisation as people fear Muslims are trying to impose their way of life on them. Fearful attitudes of a forceful imposition of Sharia law could derive from articles written Journalist such as Woodhouse (2016) of the Sun newspaper. He stated that ' Muslims in the UK are living as they are in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia'. Not only does this homogenous Muslims into one group, but as mentioned in the first section, it makes Muslims seem foreign and non-British which can lead to alienation. As this a recurring theme that presents itself in British newspapers, it can be questioned whether Muslims actually do want Sharia law in Britain. Yet according to the ICM Unlimited report (2015), 77 percent of Muslims do not want to live under Sharia law. As the majority of Muslims do not want to live under Sharia law in Britain, multiple negative stories about them can lead to a moral panic as Muslims as a whole are seen as a threat to 'British

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