#islamophobia being a real problem it's not about people disliking the religion it's about them talking about it 24/7 just because they hate | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

writer-ace · 7 years

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I just read a NYT article about what Republicans should learn from the women’s march, and though it was an interesting article, what I want to talk about is this one part from it:

Though the tone of the march was decidedly left wing, it was made up of women of every background — black, white and brown; moderate and radical; urban and rural; rich and poor; Christian, Muslim and Jew — united in their belief in women’s rights. (Emphasis mine)

There are probably multiple points in this that could be addressed, but there’s only one that I want to talk about (which I so helpfully bolded for you). And it in some ways reflects an issue that I find with most feminist discussions that bring up religion.

Feminist circles (and most of the rest of the US) tend to talk about religion the same way that this NYT article did, as though “every background” consists of Christian, Muslim, and Jew. I rarely see discussions of Hinduism, of Sikhism, of Buddhism, of indigenous religions, of paganism, of atheism. I rarely see acknowledgments of them, beyond the odd cultural appropriation discussion that mentions indigenous religions, or the people going after atheism for having most of its vocal members being white men (as though that somehow makes the entire thing bad).

I get it from the NYT. They only have limited space, and they’re not going to list every religion. But for a group of people who are supposed to want acknowledgment and protection and equality for all women, I still see a disproportionately heavy focus on Abrahamic religions, generally at the exclusion of all else.

And hey, I get it. Antisemitism and Islamophobia are huge issues in the United States. We should work as hard as we can to fight those. But that doesn’t mean that we should throw out the rest of the women, or ignore them, just like how fighting the overt oppression of people who are homosexual and bisexual doesn’t mean we should ignore those who are asexual or aromantic (or experience any other type of sexual and/or romantic attraction).

And there are real issues being faced by those who are not Jewish or Muslim. Polls often show atheists being distrusted/disliked on par with Muslims, and Jeff Sessions recently said at his confirmation hearing that he didn’t think non-religious people could understand the truth as well as religious people. There is discrimination against Hindus. Also against Sikhs. Also against pagans and Wiccans. I could keep going.

So when you categorize people as just “Christian, Muslim, and Jew”, or when you dismiss atheism as being just the thing for asshole white men in their parents’ basements, or when you use “we’re all under one god” rhetoric, or when you mock the idea of witchcraft, you’re part of the problem.

#feminism #religion #atheism

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nazviscom-blog · 6 years

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Personal Evaluation

We were asked to create awareness for a social issue of our own choice. However the aim of the module was to emphasise the importance of experimentation by trying various different ways of expressing our ideas and concerns. We were encouraged to take on new challenges and thinking of what other softwares, media, material and production we can produce and skill in. My target audience was quite broad when i was designing and creating my work i wanted to keep the language simple in order to be able to communicate my message effectively throughout different genders and demographic of people. However i wanted my work to specially make a difference in the west where the seems to be a negative representation of Islam which has led to unfortunate consequences in the way Muslims are being treated. In order to be relevant and not biased towards my chosen topic, I researched a lot into islamophobia and where/how it all started. The term Islamophobia refers to the dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force, which isn’t something new it has been occurring since the very early days when Prophet Muhammed was still alive, however the term first started being used around 100 years ago in 1918. Islamophobia specially grew after the horrific incident of 9/11 in 2001 done by unrepresentative extremist group called Al-Qaeda that was when innocent American Muslims civilians were publicly being harassed on the street physically and verbally due to their faith. However, well established newspapers such as Independent Newspaper have reported that Islamophobia is even worse under Trump than after 9/11 attacks. There’s a viral tweet that has been going around saying “We didn’t blame German’s for Hitler, we don’t blame Christians for KKK so do not blame Muslims for ISIS”. This gave me all the background detail i needed in order to begin exploring different ways of pursuing to communicate this message to the world, that at the end of the day we’re all the same, that we’re all human and shouldn’t judge each other based on based on their skin tone, religion or ethnic background. I really wanted the message i send across to make an impact which is why i tried to incorporate elements to my compositions that were identifiable by my audience. As people are more able to feel a connection or sympathy with things that’s identifiable to them. For example the “We can do it!” poster is known worldwide and women feel a special connection with that poster as it empowers us, therefore my poster of Halima would catch women’s attention and hopefully start viewing Muslim women the same way rather than passive beings controlled by Muslim men. Like wise in my video i decided to include Trump in my video has he’s been very controversial in the media since his presidency began, whether you like him or not people like to talk about him.

I started by looking at how other designers used posters to tackle social issues whether it was global warming, mental health or racism. I analysed the way they used text and image to communicate with the reader. I then specifically looked into art work done on islamophobia, where i found a lot of different illustrations and drawing done on the topic. In my research i had also found out that most crime hate against muslims were targeted at muslim women which is why i started sketching a few ideas in my sketchbook that mostly focused on Muslim women. I also sketched something that related to the well known NOH8 campaign however once my sketch was drawn i realised that the poster would be too simplistic and not innovative enough. I drew my Halima ‘Muslim women can do it too!’ poster and saw that it had a lot of potential which is why i decided to develop my idea further on photoshop. Where was with my other poster i got inspired when i was going through all the photographs i had taken in Dubai, and was particularly drawn by the photos i had taken of the two young Arab ladies and how elegant they looked.

I looked into 5 practitioners who had worked closely with social issues as i wanted to get an insight into how professional are hoping to solve these problems. Lucienne Roberts has done a lot raise awareness to mental wellbeing and general health concerns i looked into her exhibition at Wellcome Collection’s called “Can graphic design save your life?”. The key features i found in the posters at her exhibition was that they all had a pale look to them, there were no popping bright colours the colours were all somewhat low saturation. I also looked at Banksy’s work as he’s a graffiti artist and political activist. A lot of the work Banksy has done on social issues such as war, he uses a of imagery of children in them. I also looked into Yi-Fei Chen’s work, her work is definitely different to anyone else work I’ve seen, she doesn’t use a conventional method of conveying her message through deign instead she designs bizarre yet fantastic objects such as the tear gun. I noticed that Fred Martins work is very true to him as he sticks to his own specific style which is like his trade marks of using dripping stretched lines in his illustrations, his posters are clean and straightforward. Lastly i looked at Mauro Gatti, his designs were very childish and happy, he used a lot of bright colours and his work looks very cartoon like. I believe Mauro Gatti’s work had the most impact on my own personal reasoning for my posters. My editing processes switched between Photoshop and Adobe After Effect. I used photoshop to edit my images and used After Effects to edit my video. On photoshop the key editing features i used consisted of magic wand tool for subtracting figures from their background, filter gallery, brushes and different blending mode of layers. I also used Photoshop to draw my illustrations for my video. On After Effects the main editing i used was key framing different features such as scale, position, rotation and opacity. The most time consuming and challenging part about editing my video was making everything flow and making sure all the sound effect i added would be in sync with what was happening on the screen.

I found out in my research that the media is one of the main reason why islamophobia is spreading and becoming more common as they only show negative imagery of Muslims which is why people have developed a bad perception of the religion. So in my first poster i wanted to communicate to the audience that not everything you see in the media is real. Again as i mentioned earlier, i wanted to stand up for Muslim women who seem to be easy target for hate crimes which is why i created the Halima poster and the reason i chose Halima as the face of my poster its due to the fact that she’s a successful modest hijab model working along side famous designers, photographers and she’s working in an industry where nudity sells therefore in order to be doing so greatly with out showing much skin is quite revolutionary which i believe complements the text “Muslim women can do it too!”. Posters was one of my production methods just because they simple yet they allow you to connote a message which makes them affective (if constructed properly) as well as the fact posters are suitable for a wide age group and demographic as they’re clear to understand and straightforward for the reader. i also chose to create a video as videos can be virtually shared on various different social media platforms which allows the awareness o spread, videos often can have more of an impact as you can add non diegetic sounds as mood music to fully convey an emotion. You can also fit a lot more content into a video.

I think i was successful at meeting the aim of the module by creating a video which is something i hadn’t done so i did leave my comfort zone and try something new. My music choice for my video was also very effective and really managed to make the child scene more emotional and dramatic than if i hadn’t added the music like was with the sound effect of the pops and spray in the beginning of the video, with out those sound effects my video would’ve been quite dull and boring. On the down side my video was slightly short, it was just under 40 seconds, I struggled slightly trying to work with After Effects as it doesn’t give u the flexibility to edit images as freely as photoshop does. I think that i may have focused a bit too much on the whole muslim women aspect of the concept as both of my posters were based on that. However i can argue that the main reason i got sidetracked by that idea is because women in general are underrepresented anyway. I would definitely manage my time more effectively in the future, one way i wasted so much time was that i had an idea about what i wanted to do with my project however i spent way too long trying to make that idea work rather than just moving and and coming up with another idea that would actually work. Next time i would also step away from creating a poster as i don’t believe posters really challenge me as a designer anymore its become a bit repetitive and i would rather grow my skills else where.

1,600 words

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