Blackface and brownface in Indonesia and Singapore

This article was first published in ERIF Sinterklaas Brand & Product Study 2020: 5 Years of Monitoring Blackface in the Market, 2020. 

On a clear day a decade ago [2009] in East Java, where my grandparents were from, I found myself watching a carnivalesque procession of floats and performers of all ages, dressed up in marvellously colourful and shiny costumes. Behind a truck carrying a dozen heavily made up secondary school students were a group of men, painted shoe-polish black, with fabric leaves around their waists. I asked a relative beside me to explain this: “This group represents the transfer of mysteries from Irian Jaya,” he said, and I remained mystified.

A reog procession in Ponorogo, East Java in 2009.
Photo by author.

Only a year later, I would arrive to study and live in the Netherlands, discover the ‘tradition’ of Zwarte Piet. I did not make the connection until one day, at the annual concert of my academic institution, a group of students from Indonesia performed a variety of ethnic dances from their archipelago. Decked in costumes borrowed from the embassy, they demonstrated dances representing Sumatra, Java and Bali.

From video 'Yamko Rambe Yamko'

For their final piece, four male students appeared in pitch black full body leotards and paint marks on their faces, accessorised with raffia skirts. Halfway through, I realised that the grunting dance was meant to represent Papuans. An Indonesian friend who witnessed this performance too later told me that every 5th of December, people in her hometown in Ambon – who speak a creole inflected with Dutch words – dress up as Sinterklas, Suarte Pit (also known as Om Pit (Uncle Pete) or Pit Hitam (Black Pete), fairies and clowns (see Goppel, 2016 for a video).

From video 'Sie Gins Kom de Stoomboot - Sinterklaas Op De Molukken: Ambon'

In 2008, I was attending a conference on critical Islam when the conversation veered to the colonisation by Muslims of other peoples. I asked an Indonesian man in our group about colonisation of Papua and incidents of forced conversion happening there. His defence: “But they are a little primitive, backward, you know?”

Blackface and brownface in Asia

In American cultural history, blackface is used to portray racist stereotypes of African Americans through performances. As a representation of a ‘subservient black body’ lacking in intellect, coordination and other virtues, blackface is an ‘imposed conceptualising representation’ that has travelled across the globe (Reyes, 2014).

Ad for Dunkin Donuts in Thailand

In Asia, some recent incidents of blackface in print and television advertisements in Thailand (Dunkin Donuts in 2013), Japan (Astigu pantyhose in 2014) and Malaysia (Watsons in 2017) caused major backlash online. In Japan, African-American writer Baye McNeil led a campaign to remove blackface performances in 2015. In each incident, the initial defence was that the ‘local’ use of blackface does not having racist intentions, but a look into the country’s history reveals economic and political connections with colonial powers.

The Euro-American discourse on Black people has shaped the discourse in Asia more than actual encounters with Black people (Fukushima, 2011). This is seen in the influence of European and Hollywood films and minstrel shows in different countries. As cuisines from the colonies transferred to the metropole (Kuipers, 2017), cultural influences like Zwarte Piet and minstrel shows travelled to the colonies. In 1887, the year of the 50th anniversary of the accession of Queen Victoria, one of the celebrations in the British crown colony of Singapore was a costume race that included racial caricatures of ‘native’ communities of Chinese, Malay and Tamils as well as blackface.

A 1935 photo of Singaporeans in blackface republished in a 1980 Straits Times column.
National Library archives.

 Minstrel parties and groups were common in the 1930s. Each neighbourhood had their own minstrel group that performed at events, parties and weddings. Until the late 1980s, American and British minstrel performances were popular, available ‘live’ in theaters and on television, and described as “good family entertainment” (Kaur, 2019).

Closely related to the practice of blackface is brownface: the portrayal of racist stereotypes of Indians and other ethnic minorities by artificially darkening the skin, using visible ethnic or religious markers such as the turban, and adopting an “Indian accent” which involves head-shaking and rolled ‘R’s. The diversity of Indian ethnic groups like Punjabis, Bengalis, and Tamils are all collapsed into a homogenising, offensive stereotype.

Some Singaporeans had taken great offense at the use of brownface in the film Gunga Din (1939) and comedy Short Circuit (1986). However, in the last decade, there have been incidents of brownface that included corporate Bollywood parties, YouTube channels, and state media (Veerasamy, 2019). These have mostly gone unchallenged, and brownface was declared by government bodies to be “insensitive” but not illegal (Kaur, 2019). Tradition is not innocent either: in Malay folklore exists a blackface bogey man called Orang Minyak (‘oily man’), who commits voyeurism and abduction of young women under the cover of night.

Performing racial supremacy and inferiority

Showing minority populations with a history of racial oppression as varying combinations of primitive, backward, stupid, ignorant serves the discursive strategy of keeping them subordinated. The same processes occur globally, whether as a result of information flow and exchange with former or current colonising countries, or as a proven technique for keeping minority populations subordinated and establishing racial superiority both “on and off-stage” (Reyes, 2014).

The racial dynamics of non-White societies such as those in Latin America, the Caribbean (see Bonilla-Silva, 2004). and most of Asia, has gone largely unstudied and unanalysed. Within a discourse of white supremacy, the “reality and politics of a middle-racial category” can show us new ways of identifying and analysing racial interests.

Because the discourse of a ‘Black-White’ racial order is so pervasive, one of the common defences of societies without any majority White populations is that racism simply does not exist. However, the examples above have shown that while White racial supremacy exists globally, a similar, parallel process manifests in different forms as linked to local racial interests. Hence, the dominant group in a society will often enjoy economic, political, social and cultural privileges – all while also being linked to how near to Whiteness they can attain i.e. honorary White (Bonilla-Silva, 2004).

Just as the historical legacies of Black peoples are marked by “slavery, gender-specific servitude, conquest, legal segregation, colonisation, and socioeconomic peonage” (Reyes, 2014), so are the bodies of Brown and other racialised groups today in different ways and to different extents according to their contexts.

The colonised colonises: case of Indonesia

The Indonesian case illustrates all the above processes. Under Dutch colonisation, the practice of blackface was documented in the 1890s when a Malay-language commercial theatre group Komedie Stamboel performed stories from A Thousand and One Nights, which included a ‘black-amoor’ character meant to represent an African slave. As this actor announced the next night’s play (as per theatrical tradition), he used “broken Dutch mimicking an African” mixed with malapropisms, Malay and low Javanese words (Tjerimai, 15 November 1893; in Cohen, 2004).

In 1945, the new Indonesian republic declared independence from the Netherlands and claimed the entire territory of the former Dutch East Indies. What was Western New Guinea remained under the Dutch until the mid-1960s, when a controversial referendum resulted in the Indonesian annexation of the region. Thus in 1962 with the New York Agreement it became the province of Irian Jaya and was later renamed to Papua and West Papua in 1999 (the eastern half of the island being independent Papua New Guinea). Organisasi Papua Merdeka (Free Papua Movement, or OPM) was established by West Papuan nationalists, who rejected the compromised referendum.

Blackface and racist stereotypes of Papuans justify economic exploitation through extraction of natural resources. Papua houses Grasberg, the world's largest gold mine and third largest copper mine. It is operated by Freeport Indonesia since 1973, a subsidiary of US-owned Freeport McMoran Copper and Gold. The mine dumps waste in the deltas and rivers, destroying food sources and degrading the environment. Military and police oppression, kidnapping, torture, and surveillance of religious and local leaders are all attempts to contain any protests or demands for self-rule. The profits of mining are not channelled back into the province, where Papuans live in poverty in addition to dealing with Indonesian settlers from other islands.

In the national discourse, the province is seen as valuable to the country because of natural resources and biodiversity. However, Papuans who study and work in cities on the major island of Java face racial discrimination from both the general public and the police. In August this year, Papuan students in several cities protesting the 1962 agreement were accused of vandalising the Indonesian flag and were arrested, sparking protests in West Papua demanding justice for the students with banners saying ‘kami bukan monyet’ (we are not monkeys) and social media hashtags #papuabukanmonyet.

Demasking blackface

[…] all people are defined according to a set of terms that are constructed as mattering by those in positions of power or by those with investments in maintaining social hierarchies. To “see” “racial difference” is thus not to actually see differing bodies, but to see bodies as fundamentally marked by a particular way of viewing, with a particular emphasis on certain aspects of embodiment. (Riggs, 2008)

What does it take to demask the harms of blackface and brownface, when they are often hidden under the guise of humour? The first step is to make the connections between what seems like ageless cultural traditions and transnational flows of conceptualised representations. What seems to have always been there needs to be situated in a historical context. Excavating the past may also reveal more a history of progressive action and refusal of blackface and brownface.

Next is to understand that the performative use of blackface and brownface creates and reinforces racial hierarchies in a society. While in some contexts, brownface is used with reference to local dynamics while blackface to global dynamics, both build on each other and have a shared goal of dehumanisation, subordination and oppression in the service of larger economic ends. Finally, as culture is dynamic, it is always possible to create or bring back alternative performances that humanise historically marginalised peoples.

References

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2004. “From Bi-Racial to Tri-Racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 27 (6): 931–50.

Cohen, Matthew Isaac. 2004. “Thousand and One Nights at the Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theatre and Travelling Stories in Colonial Southeast Asia .” Middle Eastern Literatures 7 (2): 235–46.

Fukushima, Yoshiko. 2011. “Ambivalent Mimicry in Enomoto Kenichi’s Wartime Comedy: His Revue and Blackface.” Comedy Studies 2 (1): 21–37.

Goppel, Daan. 2016. “Sie Gins Kom de Stoomboot - Sinterklaas Op De Molukken: Ambon.” YouTube. 2016.

Ho, Michelle H.S. 2017. “Consuming Women in Blackface: Racialized Affect and Transnational Femininity in Japanese Advertising.” Japanese Studies 37 (1): 49–69.

Kaur, Sharan. 2019. “Everything Old Is New Again: Singapore’s Long History with Blackface.” Coconuts Singapore. 2019. https://coconuts.co/singapore/features/everything-old-is-new-again-singapores-long-history-with-blackface/.

Kuipers, Matthijs. 2017. “‘Makanlah Nasi! (Eat Rice!)’: Colonial Cuisine and Popular Imperialism in The Netherlands During the Twentieth Century.” Global Food History 3 (1): 4–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2017.1279515.

Reyes, Angelita D. 2019. “Performativity and Representation in Transnational Blackface: Mammy (USA), Zwarte Piet (Netherlands), and Haji Firuz (Iran).” Atlantic Studies : Global Currents 16 (4): 521–50.

Riggs, Damien. 2008. “How Do Bodies Matter? Understanding Embodied Racialised Subjectivities.” Darkmatter. 2008. http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2008/02/23/how-do-bodies-matter-understanding-embodied-racialised-subjectivities/.

Veerasamy, Visakan. 2019. “It’s Time for a History of Singaporean Chinese People in Brownface.” Twitter. 2019. https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1156127173721251841.

Racism: a collection of 'negative' views.

The topic of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam came up at lunch at work, so I raved about Miguel Peres Dos Santos's film 'Voices' and how some of the things you see in the film in the 70s/80s are still uncannily being seen and heard in the media of contemporary Dutch society.

For example, the film has excerpts from news interviews of a White Dutch man in the streets, saying that he doesn't think it's fair that "Mr Foreigner [from Curacao]" should get a house before him.

A White Spanish colleague (married to White Dutch) at the lunch table starts getting agitated.

WSC: You cannot say 'Wow, things like that are being said in the 70s', this is how we are brought up in society and this is what we learn from our parents".

[Right about here I'm hoping she meant that therefore it's an subconscious narrative that should be changed]
Me [confused]: "No, my point is that these things are still being said today. They still talk about immigrants like this."
WSC [getting agitated and getting up to put her things away, ready to leave the room]: You keep saying "they", "they", who do you mean??
Me: The White Dutch! And the media.
WSC: Well you seem to have a very negative view of White Dutch people.
[Nope, I was wrong! Racism is something natural, socialised, and merely a faulty perception of a POC.]

WSC refuses to believe that I have heard White people say these things to my face. Woman, you are White. It's impossible for you to see this 'negative' side and hear such 'negative' comments directed to you or people that share your religion, skin colour, hair colour or dress code.

Just a couple of days ago, I was also describing an incident that happened when I was at the film screening in Amsterdam. I had no choice but to bring Nootje along (and just hoping for the best). He ended up sitting through the 20-minute film just about okay, but he was getting restless and needed to sit on the floor with his toys during the Q&A. I wasn't too optimistic about being able to stay the whole way, so I was ready to leave -- having already picked a seat close to the exit and given weary smiles to the kind-faced host who wished me luck when I walked in with Nootje -- if he needed to.

Nootje started to talk ("Airplane is taking off!") during the Q&A, prompting a series of Very Dirty Looks from 3-4 White women just in front of him. One old woman made a big fuss, after turning around pointedly to stare at Nootje, of moving to a different seat. It wasn't loud (a 2-year-old talking, seriously) but I left the theatre after that.

When I described the incident on Facebook, an acquaintance commented that the same would have happened even if I were white, since the problem, according to her, is that Dutch people don't like playful kids.

That's the two main issues right there: she spoke of "Dutch people" when she really meant White Dutch, because Dutch POC are usually friendly to kids. And then there's the obvious thing, I'm NOT White, am I?

While I don't expect her to be able to empathise that I faced such a hostile situation, she expected that I would know what it feels like to be White/the norm. And with one sentence she had managed to turn the whole situation upside down: now I was supposed to feel sorry for her and her unappreciated playful child too.

Leaping over language barriers

This article was first published on Aquila Style.

Adventures in picking up a new language doesn’t have much to do with meeting new people.

Image: Pixabay

At this moment, I live unwillingly in the Netherlands. I didn’t move here because I loved the language or the culture. After three and a half years, I can understand most of what people are saying, but since I haven’t had (read: couldn’t afford) any formal lessons and I’m not particularly fond of the language, the Dutch language requires the activation of a whole other part of my brain.

I’ve nothing against learning new languages. Or European languages for that matter. I stuck through French lessons in middle school before I finally realised how I actually loved speaking it when I participated in an immersion programme in a sleepy French town (and later, studied there for a year). I still speak decent French and try to not lose my skills by watching French films. And because I already speak English by virtue of being born and bred in a former British colony, I think two imperialist languages are enough for me, thank you.

The thing about speaking Dutch in the Netherlands is that… you don’t have to. Most people in the big cities speak decent English, which is enough to get by if all you want is to buy groceries at the supermarket, or find your way with public transport.

But there’s a double standard when it comes to speaking the local lingo. If you’re a Caucasian or European, you’re not expected to speak Dutch. Laws that allow free movement in the European Union also mean that for Europeans, learning Dutch is merely voluntary. However, for me as a non-European permanent resident, I have to take a language exam in the next two years or risk a severe fine.

Here, there are two types of people who are usually assumed to be unequivocally Dutch: White or Brown (thanks to colonial history). Because my appearance is typically Javanese or Indonesian, I’m often mistaken as being Dutch. Many Dutch people also have grandmothers or great-grandmothers who came over from the former colonies. These women often attempted to integrate totally by adopting the local language and ways of life.

At one point in time, I figured I’d similarly integrate by forcing myself to speak and listen to Dutch. I decided to start in a prenatal yoga group that I had just joined. I figured that I would do okay since I could understand most words relating to movement and parts of the body. Plus, it was a good opportunity to learn the relevant vocabulary for labour and delivery.

It turned out to be a very lonely 10 weeks. Even though I tried my best to speak a little bit of Dutch each lesson to the yoga instructor and to the other participants, I never got around to actually striking up a semblance of a friendship with the other mothers. Perhaps it was our age difference: Almost all the other women were well into their 30s, and some in their 40s. Perhaps we lived in different places: They live in the suburbs and I live in the city. Or perhaps I was just the only non-White person in the whole group.

I had a very different experience in a postnatal Pilates class I’m currently attending. It’s a small and cosy studio not too far from where I live, run by an English woman and attended by many English-speaking people (even though most of the instructors are Dutch). I take two different classes, and both instructors willingly carry out their lessons in a mix of Dutch and English to make sure I can understand.

I’ve also met some kindred souls in this class – a total change from awkward attempts at conversation in my previous yoga class. Whether it’s because women are more sympathetic when they can bond over how bad their hospital experience was, or whether it’s just a friendlier group of women, I haven’t needed to speak Dutch at all. (Besides, my go-to excuse is that my brain is too sleep-deprived caring for a baby to string together a sentence.)

I realised then that it’s not about the language we speak, but about our willingness to know the other. Now when someone speaks to me in Dutch, I don’t feel obligated to reply in the same language to prove I’m a “good” migrant. I’m perfectly happy to speak what is most comfortable to me because what is more important is our effort to communicate, not the language we communicate in.

Leadership and Diversity: An interview with Dr. Ingrid Mattson

This article was first published in Dutch in "Vrouwelijke Leiders" (Female Leaders) Al-Nisa, Islamitisch maandblad voor vrouwen (Islamic monthly for women), 32nd year, No. 3, Mar 2013.

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Professor Dr. Ingrid Mattson presently serves as Chair of the Islamic Studies Program at the Huron University College of The University of Western Ontario. She was previously the Director of the Macdonald Centre for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, where she was the founder of the Islamic Chaplaincy Program – the only accredited program to train Muslim chaplains in the United States. From 2006 to 2010 she served as the President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), after serving two terms as Vice President – being the first woman elected to either position. Dr. Mattson was born in Canada and earned her PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Chicago in 1999.

Dr. Mattson spoke to Al Nisa during our Symposium “Kent U Mij?” in Theater de Meervaart in Amsterdam on 22 September 2012, in between her keynote speech on conformity and diversity among Muslim women, and a open question-and-answer session with the audience.

Source: Author's own.

What makes a good Muslim leader?

There’s leadership in so many different sectors. The first thing is that leaders have this inability to just let problems remain; they see a need and they need to respond to it, and so they do something. A good leader has the ability to analyse a situation, understand it, assess what resources are available, and then come up with a practical solution.

A good leader is also looking to make themselves replaceable, firstly by working on strengthening the institution in which he or she works (to extent that it’s appropriate and possible) and second, mentoring other people into leadership. Making sure that you have a strong organization that could continue on without you, or that at least has the mechanisms for replacing you, and then personally mentoring or nurturing leaders.
Do you think there’s a gender difference when it comes to leadership?

There are generalisations, and they are not true in all situations. But I do think that women tend to be more consultative. They tend to try to convince people before going ahead, rather than simply making a decision and expecting everyone to go along. And that’s usually good. Although sometimes you do have to be decisive and you need to go ahead even if there isn’t buy-in.

Part of leadership is knowing when to go ahead with a decision that’s within your authority because you’re really convinced it’s the right thing, even if other people don’t understand it at that point. Between that and taking the time to really get buy-in from others, there’s a balance and. I think men tend to be more of one style and women the other, and you don’t want an imbalance between those two.

While you were in ISNA, in which situations did you find yourself having more legitimacy or authority to speak on certain issues?

I think a lot of people felt that the fact that I was in a position to speak for at least my organization ISNA, if not little more broadly for the American Muslim community. I think a lot of people found that beneficial after September 11th, because there was a great need to be able to explain Islam to Americans in terms that they understood. The fact that that’s my environment – I am Western and I’m Muslim – helped me to understand the concerns that were being raised. This helped with communication, which is natural, but it’s simply accidental that I was born in that environment.

However, there is one disturbing aspect to it, because sometimes there is an implied racism. A friend of mine who’s a rabbi and a really a good friend of the Muslim community once said, “Ingrid, it was very good that you were the leader of ISNA when you were, because you’re this small white woman so you’re not frightening in a way that maybe your predecessors were.” My predecessor and my successor were both dark-skinned Sudanese men.

Is a man scarier than a woman? Is a dark-skinned person scarier than a white-skinned person? If you ask any of my students, they will tell you I’m much scarier than either of those two people. I thought that was really terrible; just seeing my face made people comfortable. I think Muslim men of colour are the most despised people now, as their faces are associated with intimidation or violence. That is really, really sad.

How can female scholars achieve the legitimacy that male scholars do, even though they may have studied in the same places?

That’s unfortunate. I think that kind of ignorance about women scholars in our still needs to be corrected. People tend to want to make sure that what they’re getting is authentic. I think the more we learn about our tradition, the more this kind of reaction will be avoided. There’s a lot of information certainly available now about women in the isnad, like Dr. Akram Nadwi’s book Muhaddithat: The Women Scholars in Islam.
But there’s knowledge, and then there’s authority or influence. We have many women who have knowledge but if they’re not recognized by the community or given a position, then people may think that maybe they’re not really that qualified.

I once spoke with Shaykh Faraz Rabbani of Seeker’s Guidance from Canada. In his organization there are many women who have studied in Jordan and have ijazah in different fields of Islamic studies. He was frustrated because not much was being done with the knowledge that these women have. I told him the reality is that until the masjid establishes official positions (whether paid or not) recognizing her as a shaykha or as a religious teacher in the community, people won’t be going to her. Why would they recognize them as authoritative if the leadership of the community doesn’t?

I think these two things are important: knowing our history to break up our inherited assumptions about religious authority, and establishing positions for these women.

So it’s important for knowledgeable women to be affiliated to an organization. But if the current leadership is dominantly male, how does a woman negotiate that?

You have to find advocates. Allah s.w.t. says in the Qur’an that the believing men and women are awliya’ or partners of one another (9:71). Nothing can really happen in the community without partnership. Women need to call on their teachers, or those in positions of leadership who can advocate with them. It can’t always seem like only women are asking about this; this is about building the community together.

There’s always going to be some people who resist it though. Either because they sincerely believe that men should be in authority, or, like all human beings, they don't like to concede or share power with others. Or they’re just ignorant. But I’m sure there are some men who think this is wrong. You need to work in partnership with some men to change this.

Some people can be worked on and others will remain intransigent. Sometimes you can work within the system and sometimes you need to build your own thing while your community lends legitimacy and support.

Speaking of your own thing, I read that you have a dog. There are diverse opinions about it, so how do you deal with holding a minority opinion on an issue?

Well, my opinion comes from one of the fiqh (legal jurisprudence) positions. The majority of fiqh positions consider the saliva of all dogs to be impure, but the Maliki school considers only the saliva of wild dogs to be impure. The Maliki position does not consider domestic dogs to be najis (impurity). There’s strong justification for it in the Maliki school from the argument that the Qur'an allows us to use hunting dogs, and even eating animals caught in their mouths, for example.

So if you’re a Shafi’i or a Hanafi then you’re not going to be able to have a dog, and I’m not going to force anyone else to have one. But certainly, I very deliberately wrote about the Maliki position to raise the issue of the problem of making a religious issue of purity into a taboo, and then even a phobia.

We have a big problem in North America, where we have many Muslim taxi drivers and are also blind and disabled people who use service dogs. These dogs help disabled people to move around in public spaces, but we Muslim cab drivers say things like “Dogs are haraam” and they will refuse to accept them disabled people with service dogs in their cab.

This is just pure ignorance, because it’s not that dogs are haraam, there’s nothing about putting a dog in a car. You’re not required to hate dogs. Your children leave najasa all over, you’re not supposed to hate them right? I think it’s particular to Muslims in the West, although the widespread abuse of animals in Muslim countries is also haraam. We really have to break this overreaction and confusion among Muslims.

Like the issue of dogs, do you think there are other issues that Muslims tend to fixate upon and leaving more urgent issues undebated?

Yes, very clearly. A former student of mine once told me how frustrating it was for her when she was homeless with three children. She was going to the mosque and even though people knew she was homeless, they were not coming to her – she had to come and ask for support. People would say “well we don't have money for that”, yet money was being spent on all sorts of other things – fundraising for Muslims in other countries, or for certain improvements to the new building – when you have a homeless woman in the mosque.

I’m sure there will be people who will come after us and say that we were blind to certain needs. It’s not that any of us are beyond that. We’re all human and we all have limited perspectives, but this is why you need to have wide consultation and a mechanism to include as many voices as possible. The more people you include in the decision-making process, the better chance you have of avoiding at least a gross error in neglecting a true need in the community.

Are you working on any projects right now?

I’m working on a book that’s going to be called, tentatively, The Ethical Muslim. It gives tools for ethical thinking in Islam and provides case studies. I also have a new position in Canada as the new London and Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies at Huron University College at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. Like how I built that chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary, I’m going to be looking to see what kind of religious leadership program would be suitable for Canadian Muslims in that environment, inshallah.

That sounds exciting. Finally, any advice for Muslim women who work in the public sphere but who are not visibly Muslim?

Wearing the hijab is just one part of being Muslim. More important is, are you bringing the character, behaviour, values and ethics of a Muslim to your workplace? Every Muslim should know the ethics of their field. If you are doing things correctly according to Islam and the civil law to the best that you can, you could even have an impact on your field, depending on how much authority you have. If you go to work and you’re doing things that contradict Islamic ethics or you don’t even know what the ethics of your field are – that’s problematic.

It can be a touchy subject – you don’t want to make it seem like you’re bringing religion into the workplace, but you should have an attitude of responsiveness. That if people sincerely want information, that you are available to them. It may seem burdensome – why do you have to explain your religion when others don’t – but that’s the world we live in.

Other minority groups have similar problems, so look at it as an opportunity. How many Muslims in the world have no chance to say anything? We are the elite in the Muslim world when it comes to educational opportunity and political freedom, so what kind of responsibilities do we have towards others? I don’t think you can just say you want to be a normal person. There are a lot of normal people (laughs).

That’s all, thank you for your time Dr. Mattson.

Thank you for having me, it was a pleasure.

On feminist alliance and participatory media-making.

This post was first published on Muslimah Media Watch.

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Writing (for Muslimah Media Watch and other platforms elsewhere) has opened up many opportunities to collaborate with other activists from around the world. In particular, some articles I wrote on female circumcision (and also male circumcision) a few years ago attracted a lot of attention from activists and filmmakers, and a fresh round of conversations about these articles prompted me to gather and reflect on these transnational interactions.

A few years ago, while I was still living in the Netherlands, a Dutch non-government organization contacted me. They were looking for a gateway into the homogenized ethnic group of “Islamic Indonesian or Malaysian background”. Even though I specifically identified myself as being a Malay (ethnic group) Singaporean (nationality), they mistook me for an Indonesian. Indonesia and Malaysia are two different countries, and Indonesia alone has over 15 ethnic groups – facts that I would have hoped an NGO would be aware of if they were targeting this demographic.

Dispersing the misconceptions about ethnicity, nationality, and diasporic communities was work enough. Then they asked me to help them find other recent immigrants who “may not be informed about the consequences if they have their daughter circumcised.” Their assumptions about immigrant Muslim women and their culture(s) were ominously foreshadowing the recent Dutch policy to teach “gay rights” in refugee centres. Both parties paint immigrants and refugees as being inherently misogynist and homophobic.

(Can we get #NotallMuslimwomencircumcisetheirdaughters trending?)

Soon after, I received a request from an filmmaker working on the issue of routine male infant circumcision (MC). She was looking for doctors or parents in either Malaysia, Indonesia, or Singapore (though anyone from “Africa or Asia” would do) who supported the less invasive forms of female circumcision (pricking, slitting) – and she wasn’t planning on portraying them in a negative light. The purpose of juxtaposing FC (which is normally considered abhorrent) in other countries to male circumcision in the US was to help point out to Americans of their “cultural blind-spots” and “double standard”.

However, it would make more sense to change just one variable instead of two. For example, how about comparing “American” forms of genital cutting such as labioplasty/vaginoplasty to male circumcision? Instead of you know, using the rest of the world as a setting to help Americans learn more about themselves.

Most recently I was asked, by an photographer-filmmaker, to find some women or girls who had been through FC. More specifically, she wanted to film the procedure and some interviews – keeping all parties anonymous. Then: “They can wear their burqas if they want to.” #NotallMuslimwomenwearburqas

In all of the above interactions, I felt conflicting emotions. On one hand, I wanted to raise awareness about FC and MC. However, on the other hand, I felt like the person’s interpretations of the topic were being forced on me. In the case of being asked to provide contacts, I felt like they were forcing their way into an extremely intimate subject – information which had required time and emotional effort on my part to obtain – making me feel like an unwilling ‘native informant’.

As a result of feeling coerced, I curiously started to become defensive. In my mind, I even wanted to defend these practices – FC in particular because of the ‘milder’ nature more prevalent in Southeast Asia – against the onslaught of eager activists. It was a wholly reactionary defense mechanism.

Multiracial alliances can fail or be productive. As in all relations of power, there are lines of privilege to consider. I feel that immortalising representations of Muslim women through the making of media (books, films, policy papers) is something to be especially careful about. What would make me want to collaborate? What would make it worthwhile?

There was one more request by an European activist, who requested me to answer a series of questions on FC. Initially suspicious (seriously you can’t blame me though), I asked her many questions about her background, work, motivations and objectives, to get a better idea about how she was planning to represent the situation in Southeast Asia. In the end, our interactions were open, pleasant and productive, so I ended up contributing my experiences.

In her book Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances (2008), Aimee Carillo Rowe writes:

“There’s the colour of the body, and then there’s the colour of the commitment that burns like hot blue flame in our hearts… Our work is to turn ourselves inside out. To locate ourselves through our loyalty and our bravery and our willingness to fight for radical visions.”

The only project I ended up contributing to was one that I felt I had the most control over. Not only did the collaborating activist ask mostly open-ended questions, the published text is also made up mostly of quotes. This shows a willingness to let people speak for themselves (as far as it is possible in a textual form). I suppose then, what makes a collaboration worthwhile is if we can control our own representations and get our message across at the same time.

PS: I almost forgot about the random White male law student who had written a paper about FC and was looking for my feedback. When I asked him why he wanted to send it to me, he said he thought it would be ‘as much for my benefit’ as others had been ‘extremely appreciative’. I think I forgot to give him any feedback.

With whiteness comes erasure.

I wish I could remember who wrote this. I would thank her or him profusely because when I read this, it resonated deeply with me. It was an articulation of feelings I had not been able to grasp; uncomfortable sentiments felt too often and so left no space for me to rationalise them away.

It's about being Brown and with someone White that renders you the Other. It's about White people universalising and imposing their life experiences in the 'noble' pursuit of assimilation and/or integration, so you never get to own and own and have pride in your childhood, your celebrations, your proverbs and your norms or traditions.

It's about having White people reiterating and reminding you of the 'freedom' they experience and that you are supposedly able to enjoy in their country. (They forget about anti-Brown or Black microaggressions, racism and violence, because they can't universalise something they don't experience).

It's about having a hybrid child who is part White and part Brown (never mind that he is descended more of Brown than White). A child who is seen to be a rich White charge when with his Brown mother and a poor saved Brown adoptee when with his White father.

It's about White people worrying that your child will not learn his White language if he goes to your country. Never mind that they never worried he wouldn't learn his Brown language in their country.

It's about having White people worry that your child will not be 'raised properly' amongst your Brown people. Perhaps too conservative or traditional or religious or backward or primitive or savage -- their worry has been the same for hundreds of years.

7 ways to ace the Dutch integration exam

Last month I spent eight hours in a centre proving how worthy I am of staying in this country. In other words, the Dutch integration exam or inburgeringexamen.

As I walk into the ordinary looking building that houses several other offices, about 30 faces greet me: mostly brown, some are white. Some are married to people holding Dutch passports and must do the exam or risk a fine, some are refugees who have lived here for almost a decade and need a Dutch passport, some are from rich countries looking to gain another citizenship in order to become "a world citizen", some have come in the 70s as guest workers and have to show that they haven't been creating their own ethnic ghettoes, others are economic refugees or students looking to escape their countries.

I fall under the first category. But I'm about to find out that this exam is not created to take all these candidates into consideration; it's just one long day of alternate feelings of embarrassment, amusement, outrage and pity.

It doesn't take long to be micro-aggressed. First I have to register, standing face to face with an overly chirpy Dutch woman who makes it a point to note on my paper that although my name is too long to fit on my residence permit, it is indeed my name and I am not posing as someone else. Smiling too much and enunciating each word slowly, she even tells me that since my hairstyle is different from my photo, I need to tuck my hair behind my ears because it's hard to tell brown people apart or something. 

I chose to do all 5 exams in one day: Dutch language listening, speaking, writing and reading skills, and knowledge of Dutch society (kennis nederlandse samenleving). Each test presents a few "cases" or situations, with 2 or 3 related questions. They're all done on a computer except for the writing test. One participant who is on her third attempt tells me that the speaking test used to be done with an examiner, which predictably makes things more stressful. With the new format, you watch a video of someone making small talk and asking a question. You record your reply in the software and you can repeat until your time is up.

I laugh out loud at certain questions, because they were so ridiculous. But I know I just have to put aside any critical thinking skills (saving it for this blog post) and just give the right answer. So here you go, here are 7 ways to ace integration, the Dutch way.

1. Work a labour-intensive job and don't study too much

One of the writing tasks is to compose an email to a colleague (you work together in a cleaning company) asking her to please vacuum the next day because you forgot to do so, and explain what you'll do for her in return. My vocabulary on household chores is pretty poor (because hey, I don't go around talking about it), so I come up with the only thing I knew the words for: that I'll clean the windows.

In one of the questions for the speaking test (which consists of only a handful of actual speaking into the microphone and then a series of multiple-choice questions on what your best response would be), you have to pretend to be a (Black) baker, busy packing something when your (White) boss asks you to get him coffee. The computer suggests that you can give a plain "no", you can tell your boss to get his own coffee or that you can tell him that you're busy. It's clear you need to say no without pissing off your boss. (No points for guessing the right answer.)

Other situations involve characters that work in a nursing home and supermarket. While their ethnicity or cultural background is not overtly stated, there are obvious clues that they are Moroccan, Turkish, or Black Antillean. There are some situations with characters pursuing some sort of education, but these are limited to vocational courses like cooking.

2. Submit to authority 

Meet Zam (not his real name). He has a headache and he goes to the doctor, who prescribes him a medication. He doesn't feel too good after taking the meds for a while, so he stops taking it. He shouldn't have done this even though he may know the best for his body (this is actually one of the answer options, but it's accompanied with a very Photoshopped photo of Zam looking like an arrogant know-it-all so WINK WINK). Instead, he should apologise to the doctor for not having consulted him first. (Though from my experience with medical professionals here and how some pretend they cannot speak English unless you're White, they should be the ones apologising to you.)

3. Learn the value of (White) opinions

In life, you will hear about the trials and tribulations of others. If you hear about a jewellery store robbery, you need to learn to accept that robbers are perhaps poor people who needed to eat (I'm pretty surprised at the compassion taught in this example but anyway). It's unacceptable to say that this is a ridiculous idea or that one is forbidden to have such ideas.

If you tell someone else that you plan to divorce your wife and said friend is not married, you must not assume that said friend doesn't know anything. White people can have an opinion on any and every topic (including how C-sections are not all that bad hey, true story) and you must listen to this opinion because, free speech. To be properly integrated, you should ask him why he holds such an opinion even though you're starting to feel mighty irritated.

4. Love gay people

This is very important. Probably the most important thing that determines your worth as an immigrant. It's not important to think of people as being on a continuum of sexual orientation, but rather that "homosexuals" are a simple alternative to "heterosexuals". Trans? Queer? What's all that complexity?

Just remember that gay people are allowed to hold hands anywhere in this country. Especially if they're white. Never you mind about the hostility faced by queers of colour (or God forbid, couples of colour!). Just love them for being lucky enough to be living in this country of freedom.

5. Love the police

Never mind that if you look Moroccan or Turkish, or if you have dark skin, you're more like to be stopped by the police on the street. Never mind also that you can be shot for merely putting your hands in your pockets because it looked like you were reaching for a gun.

Repeat after me: the police is your friend. If you are just taking an innocent walk around the block with your wife and you see a young man in a hoodie throwing a brick through a shop window, what should you do? (hint: call the police.) If you encounter a group of protesters who are suddenly attacked by a mysterious group of young men (with the same hoodies), what should you do? Just. call. the. police.

6. Accept whitewashing of history

Meet Dinh, a new immigrant from Vietnam. He wants to learn more about Dutch history so he goes to the museum. There he sees an exhibit about the VOC (Dutch East India Company). Now as a migrant from a former colony of France, Dinh probably knows a thing or two about colonial powers, so he knows that the VOC didn't just go what is Indonesia today to simply trade in spices so they could establish Conimex.

But just pretend that that is all they went there for. Colonisation, oppression, violence -- that's all much too messy for the integrated mind.

7. Know that this is not real life

It is striking how the test tries to consciously work against stereotypes. Although many practice questions for the test focus on how this country is the land of gender equality (where men and women split housework 50-50, where contraception is seen as female emancipation, and where men are not allowed to hit women), during the test you'll meet a white man who hits his wife and kids, while his Moroccan neighbours are left with the awkward dilemma of trying to get him to stop drinking, get a job and stop abusing his family (no idea why you can't call the police in this case, because it seems like a pretty good option).

This Moroccan couple has the darndest life. Not only does their daughter's bicycle get stolen, but one day they encounter a group of white protesters on strike, demanding higher wages. For some reason, they are attacked by a few young brown boys in hoodies (I get it, hoodies are scary).

The most important thing to know about the exam is that these situations do not reflect real life in the Netherlands. The test is a representation of what a few people in power thought Dutch life should be. If you can put this aside and put on your integrated-immigrant hat, you'll pass with flying colours.

At least I did. :)

First time foragers

Summer has officially ended, and gone are many of the delicious things to be found in the wild. I spent the last two weekends foraging with the Dutchman (Nootje always comes along of course, in a handy backpack) in the sand dunes of The Hague.

First we went to Westduinpark, easily accessible by tram 12 or bus 22 directiom Duindorp. Armed with a children's nature guide, we spot some duindoorn berries, which cluster thickly around spiny branches. They are high in vitamin C, but ridiculously difficult to pick. Maybe we were too late getting to them as well, as the berries were quite soft and tasted overripe. They are extremely sour but with a yummy aftertaste (can imagine it as a marmalade!). I ended up snapping off two small branches to experiment with.

We looked mostly for nettles. The first time I got stung quite a fair bit, so I came armed with leather gloves the second time around! Dutchman remarks that I've become quite the nettle connoisseur, as I only snip the first four or six leaves off a small plant, and they must be of a certain shade of bright young green as well. I read somewhere to pick only the best when you forage to eat, and I am taking this advice rather seriously.

Infusion

I wash the whole bagful of nettles thoroughly, toss to dry and I dehydrate them in the oven at 50 degrees. It takes three batches to dry everything. We've eaten them stirfried and mashed in stamppot but my favourite way is to make an infusion (pour hot water and leave for 6-12 hours, or overnight to simplify things) together with elderberry flowers and rosehips.

Dewberries

The first time, we also discovered dauwbraam or dewberries. They look like blackberries, but are smaller and less sweet. The dewberry plant also tends to creep horizontally rather than arch upwards into a bush shape, like the blackberry plant. Perhaps symbiotically, dewberries grow in between nettles, so there were many untouched berries right under our noses, in the leaves. These I washed, picked out any stems and leaves, and froze in plastic boxes.

Rozebottel or rosehips grow in abundance in the sand dunes. The Dutch variety is more round rather than elongated. The red flesh is mostly bland and very slightly savoury when eaten raw, and most of the fruit is made up of seeds and hairs. I dry these on 50 degrees in the oven until semi dry, before cleaning out the hairs and seeds. Dry them further until they crumble.

Not bad for a first time forage, and i learned the second time around to lay out the goods after foraging to let all the wood lice and other bugs and worms escape before I inadvertently cook or freeze them. Though we couldn't find our coveted elderberries, next summer I'll be prepared early in the season for all kinds of berries, and try my hand at making my own red raspberry leaf tea as well!

Free superfoods for the picking

When you're being chased out of Eid ul-Adha prayer because of a baby

Hope everyone is having/had a blessed Eid ul-Adha 1435.

This was the first year that I was not alone in the women's section of the mosque, since being married. I'm largely unmosqued, mostly because I hate going to a mosque and then having to be separated from the Dutchman - with the exception of the Tokyo Camii (Mosque), where we prayed side-by-side in one of the first rows. (Being a musafir or traveller can buy you a lot of leeway, just plead ignorance.)

I know I'm not alone in having this sort of separation anxiety. Many other couples made up of one partner who is not raised Muslim, may similarly feel anxious being handed over to the 'sisters' or 'brothers' (ie total strangers) in a completely different part of the mosque. (I mean, somehow total strangers can be more helpful just because they are of the same sex?) That being said, I'm very proud of the Dutchman for being able to hold his own among these 'brothers' (after I prep him on what to expect).

This month marks the fourth year I've been in the Netherlands, and also four years of this blog! (So much for the initial title, A year in NL). It's also the fourth year that I've been going to the Indonesian mosque in my town. It's three storeys high, and the main prayer space is on the second floor (there's a complimentary balcony for women). The first floor houses some classrooms and a kitchen.

Spot the complimentary balcony

As with many other mosques that make space for women, during big congregations like the two Eids, this mosque repurposes the first floor classrooms into special rooms for women and children. All men go into the main area space, while the female congregation is split into four different spaces: the (complimentary) balcony, two or three saff or rows in the main hall, and two rooms on the first floor: one for women with children, and one for women without children.

I've always been a big supporter for equal and equally decent prayer spaces, and ever since I saw the room labelled 'women with children' four years ago I've told myself, hell no. By putting all the children into one room, it becomes extremely chaotic because the children don't see the imam and learn how to carry themselves during a congregation. Nothing against the need for children to play and run around - in which case why confine them to a room with women trying to get the best of both worlds? Just set aside a room dedicated to fun and games, get a few adults to watch them and ta-da, everyone's a winner. (By the way, this arrangement is exactly what several mosques in Singapore organised during tarawih sessions in Ramadan earlier this year.)

I rave about this mosque because of the low wooden barrier (lower than waist-height) that seems to nominally demarcate the male and female praying spaces in the main hall. But this year, with little Nootje I had to face the attitudinal barriers head on.

When we arrive at the mosque a good 30 minutes before the Eid ul-Adha prayer is due to start, I wave off the Dutchman into the main entrance and I go round to the side entrance. I saunter up the stairs to the main area space, carrying Nootje in my arms. I find a spot near the door ( to make a quick exit if he starts bawling) in the front row, look around for the Dutchman in case I decide to pass Nootje over to him, and settle down.

The takbir is being chanted over a booming microphone, which freaks out Nootje a bit. He unusually lets me carry and rock him in my arms, hardly moving (very rare since he doesn't like being held unless we're walking or bouncing him) since he's an hour overdue for a morning nap - I have high hopes that he will zone out through the noise or maybe even fall asleep (a mum can dream can't she!).

There's a mother on my left, with a 1.5 or 2 year old girl in a pink dress, who is sitting quietly. Not five minutes pass when one of the women who is working today as an usher for all the congregants tell me that babies are not allowed in the main hall. I decide not to point out the toddlers in the men's area, who are shrieking. The mother beside me quietly sneaks away to the second row and her little girl almost melts into the pipes along the wall - she's just as stealth as her mum!

I have so much to tell this woman who's trying to chase me down to the vrouw met kinderen room. 

Did she know that God loves the laughter of children? That the Prophet would shorten the prayer if he heard children crying in the congregation? That the Prophet's original mosque was relaxed and inviting? That if families were so highly regarded in our religion, they should be able to sit and worship together in the mosque, which is meant to symbolise society? That asking me to leave the area because I was holding a baby made me feel like a baby is unclean, unholy and unworthy?

Instead of all that, I fumble out an answer in half Indonesian and half English and respond to her order as if it was posed to me as an option: it's okay, I'm staying here. She looks confused and tries her command again, this time in Dutch, stressing that "it's the rules". Another woman chips in with English, because I'm beginning to look like a right tourist who doesn't understand anything anyone is saying.

By this time, another mother has taken the empty space to my left, and she has two children: one looks about 6 or 7 and the other is older. She helpfully tries to encourage me into leaving ("This is the first time I'm here [in the main hall]. All these years I've been downstairs.") but this only makes me determined to not banish myself.

I simply shrug and smile to both women and assure them that I'm not taking extra space and that Nootje will be quiet. Mosque lady is not satisfied, but happily she moves away to usher more women downstairs as the main hall is filling up. Woman to my right is ambivalent, and no one comes to my support. Clock is ticking... ten more minutes to prayer. I continue rocking Nootje and whisper the takbir in his ear.

Finally! The prayer starts, and it's an exercise in balancing a 8kg weight while bowing and prostrating without putting any hands on the floor. Takbir seven times with one hand, and hope that the communal and extra loud "Ameen" doesn't startle Nootje. He doesn't mind the shift in orientation during the ruku', and I make an almost-there prostration with him right under me. 

After the prayer ends, he is looking super tired (nap is two hours overdue by now) so I pop out a boob under my hijab to feed him. He contentedly nurses to sleep and I get to listen to 15 minutes of the sermon. And no one seems to mind the two toddlers running around in the men's section during the prayer. (The section which, by the way, had two extra rows free, which could have been filled up with women.)

The imam tells us the story of how when God created Adam, God told all the malaikat (angels) to prostrate to the first human being. They all did so, except Iblis. Iblis believed that being created from fire was better than being created from clay. Because Iblis disbelieved, he was sent out of Paradise for his arrogance (7:11-18).

(Side note: I'm often quoted this story from the Qur'an by those who think that whatever I write or post is controversial, or that I'm being arrogant and stepping over my God-given womanly boundaries, whatever those may be. Essentially, likening me to Iblis... stay classy, guys.)

But I love how the imam interprets this story. To him, the moral of the this parable is that even though God creates beings from clay, fire and light, all the creations lived in Paradise together. While we humans, all made out of earth and are all flesh and blood, can't even live together on Earth. 

Post-sermon selfie

Use a “Muslim Woman”: Reasserting Dutch Values 101

This post was originally published on Muslimah Media Watch on 2 Dec 2013

A few weeks ago, I went to a small, local cinema in my city to catch a film. I’ve always liked going to this particular cinema because they screen international and independent films – a fresh change from the standard Hollywood fare at the bigger cinema.

The film was about to start, so I quickly ducked into the ladies’. After I washed my hands, imagine my shock at seeing the following poster pasted behind the door:

Source: Hivos

The text on the poster says (in Dutch):

“This woman is a symbol for all homosexual women and men in developing countries that, through Hivos’s human rights programme, can come out about their orientation.”

Another version of the poster has a slightly different text, and ends on an appeal for donations:

“There are countries where people cannot say what they want, and cannot be who they are. Hivos, a development organisation, wants to give a voice to as many of these people as possible. Because everyone should be able to be, and say, what he or she wants. Support Hivos GIRO 1969.”

As you might imagine, my shock was not so much “OMG a Muslimwoman is lesbian” but “OMG misuse of images of veiled women (yet again)!”

When I posted this picture and my reaction on Facebook, bemoaning the use of a veiled brown woman to homogenise and represent developing countries as homophobic, I received an interesting reaction from a white Dutch woman.

This acquaintance made a clear comparison between “Islamic countries” and Holland. Illustrating her argument with a story that her daughter is lesbian and is able to live a perfectly heteronormative life (hoping to marry, have children and build a household), she stated that she was glad that her daughter was born in Holland and not in “Islamic countries”.

I believe this is the main reaction that the poster intends to arouse in its main viewers – middle class white Dutch people who wish to help those in developing countries: that they should feel grateful for the “freedom” and “tolerance” in the Netherlands and extend their generosity to other countries that are not as “free”.

Attempts by fellow queer Muslim women to add nuance to her argument only led to a flat out denial of any marginalisation of LGBTQ groups (for example, those of colour) in the Netherlands, and her reinforcement of the idea that Islam is (and Muslims are) inherently homophobic. In fact, she even accused me of not being sufficiently “tolerant” because I found her category of homophobic “Islamic countries” to be reinforcing stereotypes and erasing complex socio-political histories.

I still wonder about the logic behind this campaign by Hivos. What do they mean, exactly, that this “veiled lady symbolises the difficult fight against homophobia”? That all Muslims are homophobic? That all countries with Muslim laws are homophobic? That LGBTQ Muslims always want to come out? That LGBTQ Muslims need the support and solidarity from development organisations in the Global North to help them?

Further reading reveals that Hivos holds the hegemonic, liberal feminist idea that “the position of lesbian women as a measure of freedom” can and must be applied to all countries. However, such an universal idea of freedom has already been sharply critiqued, interrogated and questioned by women scholars such as Saba Mahmood,Gayatri Spivak and Lila Abu-Lughod.

As I found out, the woman in the poster is not even Muslim.

The woman in the picture is in fact Papu, a Bhopa woman from the Thar desert in Rajasthan, India, photographed by Mirjam Letsch, a Dutch photographer. In fact, in some areas in rural north India, married Hindu women veil themselves in front of certain people like older male in-laws. According to the website set up by the photographer, Papu has a husband, children, and supports her family by playing music on the streets. Most importantly, the Papu Photo Project was actually set up to support Indian “dowry victims” – women who are mutilated, set on fire, or killed for not being able to provide sufficient dowry. Not LGBTQ women who are unable to come out.

Source: NRC Charity Awards

This campaign was selected in 2011 for a charity awards competition by NRC, a Dutch newspaper. Taking a quick look at the website of this year’s awards, I found another example of the use of the image of a brown woman in hijab as a way to catch the viewer’s attention, using stereotypes about Muslims.

The text on the poster by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Foundation below says “I am against equal treatment” (presumably, of men and women). This poster plays on the stereotype that Muslims (and especially Muslim women in hijab) are never for gender equality, unlike white Dutch people – ignoring and erasing the work of Dutch Muslim organisations and platforms that believe in gender equality such as Al Nisa and Nieuwe Moskee. It turns out upon closer inspection of the text, that the ad is about cancer treatment.

This is exactly the purpose of the image of the veiled Rajasthani woman on the Hivos poster. By juxtaposing an image of what seems to be a Muslim woman from a developing country together with the text “I am lesbian”, the organisation intends to get the attention of a certain kind of viewer. This viewer is assumed to believe that Muslims are homophobic because LGBTQ Muslims are oppressed (only) by religion, and that homophobia is a problem of developing countries and not countries with lots of “freedom” like the Netherlands. 

The poster in fact merely reinforces the self-image of white Dutch people, helping them feel good about themselves (which they then act upon by hopefully donating some money).

Source: Author's own photo

In one article on their website, Hivos mentions the arrests and legal penalties for gay/lesbian people in Malawi and Uganda (perhaps more relevant to another poster from the same campaign, which pictures a black man with the words “I’m gay” ). According to Hivos, these incidents justify the use of the image of an Indian woman (so they do know that she’s Indian!).Hivos adds in the same article that “whether or not this lady herself is a lesbian, does not matter”. 

However, it matters because 1) the text says “I am lesbian”, and 2) it means that the organisation is playing on the stereotypes of a veiled woman, without caring if the woman herself is lesbian.

Is it a stretch of the imagination to feature an actual lesbian brown woman, whether Hindu or Muslim, for a really effective campaign? These two posters in effect racialise LGBTQ issues as a problem of “others” in “developing countries” and not “at home”. More importantly, why claim to support one marginalised group while further marginalising another?

Dutch Muslim Women Make a Mark on Society

This article was first published in Aquila Style.
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A few months ago, the former Queen Beatrix (who is now known as Princess Beatrix) of the Netherlands announced that she would abdicate the throne on April 30, and her son Willem-Alexander IV would be the new king (and the first since 1890!).

Also known Koninginnedag, or Queen’s Day, this date is a much-loved holiday for Dutch people involving dressing up in orange, flea markets, street performances and making merry.

Many Dutch companies responded with special offers and discounts on their goods to celebrate this last Queen’s Day. Al Nisa, an organisation for Dutch Muslim women, saw this as an opportunity to promote their organisation and send a message of appreciation and thanks to the royal family. Al Nisa’s warm relationship with the royal family has been expressed in the form of invitations to dinners and New Year gatherings, to recognise and acknowledge the importance of the organisation’s work.

But one incident in particular made the deepest mark on Al Nisa. In 2012, Queen Beatrix made a diplomatic visit to the United Arab Emirates and Oman, where she visited some mosques. As a mark of religious respect for these places of worship, she wore bright blue and red headscarves over her trademark wide-brimmed hats.

In a debate in the Dutch parliament after her return, right-wing politician Geert Wilders claimed that she was ‘legitimising women’s oppression’ by wearing a headscarf. Queen Beatrix was said to have heaved ‘a deep sigh’ and in a most politically incorrect way, dismissed these comments as ‘nonsense’ – a highly exceptional response that was much appreciated by Al Nisa. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, supported her actions as a mark of respect for a house of worship.

Al Nisa’s campaigns have historically aimed to react quickly to comments made by politicians in the public domain, to avoid a negative political climate by clearing up misconceptions in an informative and unique way. Previous campaigns have focused on the debates to ban the burqa (‘Get Real’), and the mistrust and misconceptions surrounding Muslim women (‘Real Dutch’ and ‘Do You Know Me?’)

Al Nisa hoped that the new monarch, King Willem Alexander, and his wife, Queen Maxima, would continue the open-minded attitude of his mother. So they decided to send them a message to bring society together with a new campaign.

A change of royal rule is usually characterised by issuing a new set of coins or stamps. The new king has just been celebrated with his own set of stamps. How crazy would it be to see a stamp with a Muslim woman, majestically radiating with a vision?

Al Nisa got a designer to make a Moroccan dress known as a kaftan, with silver details on the buttons and belt. For the colour, they chose orange – the colour of the Dutch royal family. In the final image, the model wears a bright orange hijab complete with a tiara. She looks off into the distance, arms akimbo, with confidence and poise.

The stamps were launched on April 30 to celebrate the royal abdication and coronation, as the country celebrated nationwide. The royal family also received a set of stamps as a sign of appreciation from Al Nisa.

In the first few days of the campaign, there was an immense wave of positive comments through social media. The campaign was covered by local Dutch newspapers and radio, and did not escape attention from Austrian and French media as well.

One thousand two hundred-fifty stamps have been sold so far, with orders still being taken. One supporter is even planning to use these stamps for his wedding invitations!

With only a few weeks to work on and execute their pro-bono campaign, Al Nisa inspires us to see just how much can be achieved with the creativity, passion and commitment of a few Muslim women.

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If you’d like to buy some stamps to support this campaign, send an email to info@alnisa.nl.

Ethnic Makeup: Good migrant, bad migrant.

This post was originally written for Poskod.sg, published on 13 Apr 2013.
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"Meet the whole world at The Hague Market"

Judging a book

My first experience with Holland was a tin of condensed milk of the “Dutch Lady” brand. Many of you might have grown up with it as well: a fair-skinned milkmaid wearing a blue and white traditional dress, holding a pail of milk, freshly expressed from the black and white cows behind her, munching on green grass, with windmills in the far horizon. Today, tourist advertisements for Holland emphasise the Keukenhof tulips and windmills. In particular, the tourist video playing on loop at the Dutch Consulate will endlessly repeat that “The Dutch are among the tallest people in the world.”

Don’t blame me for thinking that Holland was full of tall, white, milk-drinking people frolicking among tulips and/or windmills.

On the other hand, Singapore has consistently portrayed itself to be a country of immigrants (to the point of ignoring the indigenous population) who can keep on receiving foreigners as long as they fit into certain ideas of class and race. While Holland has yet to admit that it is indeed a multicultural country, Singapore has created four ‘races’ or socio-politically constructed categories, often referred to as CMIO (Chinese/Malay/Indian/Other), which Kat has beautifully unpacked previously, and which Chua Beng Huat criticises for being a ‘neutral empire’ in creating ‘racial’ divisions and managing ‘racial harmony’, peace and equality.[i]

What’s sure is that the constant “gloat[ing] of Chinese hegemony” means that people I meet in Holland either think Singapore is part of China, or they insist I’m not Singaporean because my skin is “so brown!” (excuse me—olive or sawo matang, please).

"Tea"

When I was studying in France, I was often told that I looked Polynesian, with some people even comparing me to their relatives who lived on Wallis and Futuna islands (a French territory in the South Pacific). Because I spoke fluent French, many people I met simply assumed that I was born in France. People try to make sense of strangers by connecting them to their country’s heritage; in this case, the Polynesian territories of France.

So it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise that I would be constantly taken as Indonesian.I’ve been told repeatedly by Indonesian friends that I have a typical Javanese appearance (which helped me to blend in with my Indonesian domestic workers respondents when I was researching for my thesis). I have been told once that I look like I’m “from the East Indies”, the biggest Dutch colony, (which says something about the relationship of contemporary Dutch society with their colonial past).

I accept that in Singapore I am often mistaken for a domestic worker when I’m hanging around my Pasir Ris heartlands. I used to be offended before I knew better, but now I see it as a form of solidarity with them. Before I went to study in Holland, I expected to be simply taken as an Indonesian in Holland but as I found out, it was a little more complicated than that.

"Friends for life"

Good migrant, bad migrant

The majority of the Indo people in Holland arrived in a series of migrations called the ‘repatriation’, after the Second World War, when most Eurasians of mixed Dutch (and other European) and indigenous ancestry left what was then the Dutch East Indies. The Dutchman’s (my husband, but that’s another story) grandmother (born in a town close to my own grandparents in East Java) was one of these migrants.

Many Dutch people my age have some ancestor from what is now Indonesia, and might possibly have grown up or lived for some time in Indonesia themselves. During the Japanese occupation of 1942-45, many were put into Japanese concentration camps aimed at eliminating European presence. Later, when they arrived in Holland, they may have also suffered some sort of discrimination or feelings of a loss of belonging because of their mixed ancestry.

"Healthy/You'll find it at The Hague Market"

My father-in-law is proud to tell me that his mother “completely integrated” by learning Dutch; only speaking Javanese occasionally with her brothers and sisters. Hans van Amersfoort posits that the Indos’ familiarity with Dutch language and culture before coming to Holland, and also their Dutch citizenship, helped them to “seamlessly assimilate” into contemporary Dutch society.[ii]  As a result, migrants today from Indonesia who move to Holland for studies or marriage are more likely to be accepted—at least at face value—as authentically ‘Dutch’.

The fact that white Dutch people will talk to me in Dutch automatically is a sign that my Javanese appearance has some cultural capital. Other appearances that ensure a positive welcome are being white, or Chinese.

"Present/You'll find it at The Hague Market"

"Fashion/You'll find it at The Hague Market"

A group of ‘good’ migrants are those of Chinese-Surinamese descent, or those who look Chinese, no matter the country of origin. Formerly a Dutch colony, Suriname saw a lot of Surinamese migration to the Netherlands after its independence in 1975. Just like Singapore, Suriname is also made up of several ethnic groups (besides their indigenous Amerindians) which include Chinese, Hindustani, and Javanese: their ancestors originally came over as contract plantation labourers from China, India, and Java respectively. In addition, Surinamese migrants to the Netherlands also include Maroons (descendants of West African slaves) and Creoles (mixed West African-European ancestry).

"Party/Meet the whole world at The Hague Market"

Singapore also has categories for its temporary labour force, based on their countries of origin: ‘expats’ or high-skilled workers, and ‘foreign workers’ or low-wage transient workers such as male construction workers from mostly Bangladesh, and female live-in migrant domestic workers from mostly Indonesia and The Philippines (this group forming the bulk of all foreigners in Singapore).

To put it rather crudely, thanks to its history of colonisation, Holland has a population that is mixed: white, black, yellow, brown, and every shade in between. But in right-wing political discourse, migrants are racially profiled according to their socio-economic status, conflated with their religion or ethnicity. Another right-wing discourse is that these newer migrants from Turkey and Morocco (1960s onwards) are ‘parasites’, ‘Islamic terrorists’ or ‘criminele allochtonen’ (from a foreign soil, with the tendency to be involved in crime). Now, which ethnic group in Singapore faces the same conflation of socioeconomic status and ethnicity?

A Singaporean in Holland

If you look Chinese, you won’t have a problem. Even though the Chinese-Dutch community can remain insular, politically speaking they do not pose a problem because they can be rather well-off and/or own significant businesses. More recent migrants from China come via networks that are already existing in various Dutch cities. A girlfriend (Chinese born in Holland, grew up in Shanghai and now studying in Amsterdam) explained the familial closeness of these networks, i.e., “all the Chinese people in Amsterdam know if I’m dating a white guy”.

Preserved herring, a Dutch delicacy

If you look Indian, you might be mistaken for a Hindustani. The reception to this community is ambivalent: they own most of the tropische winkels (neighbourhood stores that sell ‘exotic’ produce, spices, dried fish, etc.), but they cannot escape the racialised policing of public places that target young, dark-skinned men. A close girlfriend (Hindustani Surinamese born and living in Holland) laments that working in a Dutch government bureau meant constantly explaining where her parents were from and making sure that she was using enough fancy Dutch vocabulary to prove her fluency.

If look Malay, you might be mistaken for an Indo or an Indonesian, both of which are two completely non-threatening groups. (This is shown by the seemingly class-based political classification of Indonesian migrants as ‘Western’ foreigners, alongside the Americans and Japanese.) I am often mistaken for being (honorary white) Dutch, with the expectations that I should be able to speak Dutch. And if I cannot (yet), I must assimilate by learning it. I can never be an expat, who are never expected to assimilate.

If you look nothing like the above categories, congratulations. A friend of mine (white Canadian woman married to an Indian man) was even told by a Dutch girl before moving to Holland that she would have “no problems integrating” because she was white, while her husband would have some problems. Yet they were moving to Holland because he got a job here!

"Meet the whole world at The Hague Market"

Migration and Islamophobia

When I first came to Holland, I was surprised to hear from an Egyptian-Dutch friend that she thought Holland was “one of the most Islamophobic countries in Europe”. I saw plenty of women wearing headscarves in the streets and trams and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Later on I realised that while Indonesian-looking Muslim women in their neat instant-hijab did not attract any attention, Turkish- or Moroccan-looking Muslim women sometimes got dirty looks. Increase the degree of nastiness in this order: whether she’s wearing a long skirt or jeans, a long dress, or a face-covering.

In solidarity with other Muslim women, I immediately took up arms—psychologically. I was ready to explain to politically liberal, young white Dutch people that Muslims are not just those who wear a beard or a headscarf. When one such young man asked me whether I had faced any negative prejudice for being Muslim, I admitted that because I didn’t wear a headscarf, and because I look Indo(nesian), not many people would assume I was Muslim. “Ah, then to us you’re not really Muslim!” His reply revealed just how ethnic appearances and religion had been easily conflated, in addition to socioeconomic status.

According to Liz Fekete, before 9/11, the Dutch government was more concerned with the economic integration of migrants with a Moroccan or Turkish background.[iii]  These communities had migrated to the Netherlands from the 1960s as contract workers (and thus not expected by the government to stay), and were currently experiencing high levels of unemployment and poverty after decades of marginalisation. At the time, Dutch security measures primarily focused on asylum-seekers and migrants. However, after 9/11, security services took the view that Islam per se constituted a ‘threat’, and very quickly Muslim migrants or asylum-seekers all became threats by default.

"Fruit/You'll find it at the Hague Market"

Ethnic makeup

I was once called a ‘Chinees kontje’ in the street; this racialised slur only reveals a lack of knowledge about the different ethnic communities within Holland, and greater issues of migration patterns in general. Simply because I “don’t look like a Muslim”, I don’t face the full force of Islamophobia, even though it is a personal and social wound.

Somewhere on the hierarchies of race, religion and migrant status, my privileges shift in comparison to what I might have in Singapore, where they remain rather static. I didn’t think twice about being politically categorised in Singapore, but Holland has its own set of categories.

And then I think, amidst global processes, what does it mean to be Malay? Or Chinese, or Indian, or Other?

Notes
[i] Chua Beng Huat, “Multiculturalism in Singapore: an Instrument of Social Control,” Race and Class 44, no. 3 (2003), 58-77.
[ii] Hans van Amersfoort, “Immigration as a colonial inheritance: post-colonial immigrants in the Netherlands, 1945-2002,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Commission for Racial Equality, 2006.
[iii] Liz Fekete, A Suitable Enemy: Racism, Migration, and Islamophobia in Europe, (London/New York: Pluto Press, 2009), 43-73.