From belly dancers to Burqas: Media representation of Muslim women

     I really enjoyed this event, I learned a lot from it. I really didn't know what to expect from it. I honestly thought that their were going to be actual belly dancers during the lecture but their was none. I thought I was just going to be sitting down for 2 hours bored out of my mind, but it was actually the opposite of that. I think that all of those who went to this lecture would agree that it was very interesting.
     The first thing that Afshan Jafar was write down in a piece of paper the words "Muslim women are ___ " and we had to finish the sentence. In my paper I wrote down "Muslim women all look the same". I knew it was wrong for me to think that but that was the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about Muslim women. Jafar then collected the papers and began reading them outloud, I knew I was going to feel guilty when she read my paper out loud. I was surprised to find out that a lot of people wrote the same thing I did. I think that this has to do with the fact that most of us , as soon as we hear "Muslim women" we think about them being all covered up and that is why they all look the same.
     As the slides how began the first picture we looked at was a picture of jasmine from the movie Alladin. I thought to myself this is going to be interesting because I grew up watching this movie. As Jafar continued talking she brought up Disney and how racist they are. I never really thought of Disney being racist because after all it is a program meant for children. However  Disney is indeed racist, Jafar explained to us that the original  lyrics in the beginning of the movie are racist. The original lyrics say " oh I come from a land from a far away place, where the caravan camel roam. Where they cut off your ear if they don't  like your face.nots barbaric but hey it's home". This was very disturbing and I got upset because I thought to myself , how can Disney do this? Disney is meant to be for kids so why would they out such lyrics in a movie? Do they want kids to become racist? Most people have not heard this version of this song because Disney was forced to change the lyrics. That doesn't change the fact that th original lyrics are racist.
I think that this connects to the silence dialogue reading because what Disney was trying to do here was to silence their voices. They said so many bad things about them I'm the song so that they can be silenced and so that other people could think bad about this culture. I want to also relate this to the will it help the sheep reading? I really don't think that racist lyrics and racist movie clips will not help the sheep. What this is doing is making children see the Muslim culture in a negative way.

As Jafar continued talking about Alladin , she talked about jasmines appearance. Jasmine clearly doesn't look like a Muslim women. Jasmine looks more like an Americanized belly dancer. On the other hand the villain of the movie Jafar has the Muslim features. It is like they are saying that Muslim women should show their skin and that those who have the Muslim features are evil. 

Another picture that we looked at that I thought was very interesting was a picture of an American women in a bikini , who is looking at a Muslim women and is thinking to herself " everything covered but her eyes what a cruel male dominated culture. The Muslim women right next to her is looking at her thinking "nothing covered but her eyes, what a cruel male dominated culture". I really liked this picture because I think that it shows how us as Americans portray Muslim women without even knowing anything about their culture. We automatically assume that Muslim women cover themselves up simply because the men tell them to, when unreality it is not like that. Muslim cover themselves up because that's their culture, that's how they feel comfortable. In this picture both women believe that both cultures are a male dominated culture, I think that this shows how people no matter where their from, are easy to judge people based on how they look. 

I think that this can connect to the reading white privilege. I think that because of the white privilege people see as Muslim women as a male dominated culture. I think that it is the privilege that doesn't allow us to see that they dress that way because it represents their culture.

My opinion  on Muslim women has completely changed after this lecture. If I had a chance to write down in a piece of paper again "Muslim women are __" I would say Muslim women are, misunderstood, strong , beautiful, brave, open minded and much more. Muslim women are just like us , they may not dress like us but we are all same in the inside.