Islamic Women

In my research for an alternative media source I came across many articles for Islamic women, and I chose to speak about the articles pertaining to the Islamic women living in America. One article that stuck out to me was on this link http://www.islamfortoday.com/americanmuslimwomen.htm where they discuss the challenges and difficulties Islamic women face from Muslims and non-Muslims. Often you do not hear about the challenges they face from someone of their culture, but it is always someone of a different culture speaking for them. They are not represented on almost any type of media, and if they are it is usually the negative images that gets circulated worldwide. The more the public feeds into those images, the more they are not going to want to know the truth about Islamic women.

In this article there are different stories of specific Islamic women and their hardships of what they face in their lives. Surprisingly heart felt stories is what makes the news and appeals to the public, but I guess because these women come from a culture that is feared, hated, and misunderstood it is no wonder why there stories are not heard. For instance one of the challenges that Islamic people face are wanting to live under the Islamic law (while living as a U.S. citizen), but certain practices do not have them protected under the U.S. law. One practice is polygamy and the story of Fatima and Khadijah in this article is a perfect example. An Islamic man named Omar married his first wife Khadijah under the U.S. law, but Omar wanted to have a second wife named Fatima. Fatima and Omar could not marry under the U.S. law, but they did under the Islamic law. Both marriages failed and both wives had children that Omar refused to take care of. Luckily for Khadijah she was married under the U.S law and was able to take Omar to court to make him take care of his responsibilities toward supporting his children. Unfortunately for Fatima she could not take Omar to court and had no one to help her with her children, or help her with any other financial problems she faced from then on. Situations like this are very common and no one knows about it unless you lived it.

From reading the freepress.net article I see that it is not a coincidence of the absence of these women, and they claim they are trying to rewrite the rules for free press so that more diversity can be shown in the media. But why do not understand is how the rules can exclude minority women to begin with. In the beginning of this article it states, “Runaway consolidation of our country’s media outlets has eliminated media ownership opportunities for women and minorities and led to the decline of quality journalism and the loss of local and independent voices.” This quote stuck out to me because it shows that not many people cared that this happened and what makes peoples opinions different now than what they used to be? In this article it mentions that the FCC is working to create a more diverse media representation for minorities.

However, when reading the Media Ownership article it says other wise. It states, “To-date, the FCC has not done the requisite examination of the status of women in media ownership. According to recent review from Free Press, the FCC failed to identify 75 percent of stations owned by women, calling in to question their commitment to women’s role in the media.” This does not shock me. It is nothing new of someone in charge who is a man would say they would work to change things, but make as little effort as possible to make those changes. So the term “Invisible Majority” that represents all women and minorities that are not represented in the media is a perfect term, especially since those in charge ignore the fact that we are here and we need to be heard.