The image of the oppressed, veiled Muslim woman has long been used to justify ongoing Western colonialism.1 In December 2021, the Letters pages of CMAJ gave voice to a familiar trope: that of the Muslim woman wearing a hijab, or Islamic headscarf, as an “oppressed” figure. Such representations align with prejudiced Orientalist discourses that classify Islam as a “barbaric” religious tradition in need of civilizing.2 This racist sentiment has been used repeatedly to justify a supposed need for Muslim women to be rescued from their cultural and religious practices by Western-European powers, with debates often centred around the hijab.3 Such discourses lie at the root of gendered Islamophobia, defined as “forms of ethno-religious and racialized discrimination levelled at Muslim women that proceed from historically and textualized negative stereotypes that inform individual and systemic forms of oppression.”1 Muslim women in health care professions in Canada face multiple forms of Islamophobia, including systemic barriers, overt discrimination and daily interpersonal macro- and microaggressions. Herein, we discuss gendered Islamophobia in medicine and solutions to address it.
Sarah Khan、Maysoon Eldoma、Arfeen Malick、Umberin Najeeb、Zainab Furqan
NSTL
Cma-Canadian Medical Assoc
