As a college sophomore and member of technology-educated Generation Y, I tend to believe myself worthy of the title “tech-savvy.” I imagine, in true Millennial style, that I have a pretty strong grasp on media technologies and their potential. Ousseina Alidou‘s conversation on Muslim Women, Activism, and the New Media in Kenya on November 14, brought me down a notch. I understood the ways in which our (American or Western) thoughts could use social media to reach and aide activists on a global scale, but I had spent much less thought on the ways in which social media could not only provide a pre-made discourse for global voices, but also allow them to construct their own. In her lecture and conversation on the topic, Dr. Alidou introduced the role of social media in the development of an alternative modern discourse for the self-representation of Muslim women within both secular and Islamic spheres.
Of course social media facilitates discourse, that’s what it was created for, after all. We needn’t look very far to see social media’s organizing potential. Only look back to the eruption of the Arab Spring revolutions, and the demonstrations and protests organized through tweets and Facebook posts. Or heck, how many events were you invited to today on Facebook? On small and large scales, social media provides powerful tools to be reckoned with.
Alidou explained that Muslim women tend to bear the brunt of the generally negative imagery of Sub-Saharan Africa. You know the stereotype–the “oppressed Muslim woman,” reduced to only her religion and her sex. Alidou described how African Muslim women can undo this stereotyping by producing an alternative self-representation in various domains, creating “an alternative vision of their reality” that articulates their own stand on their status within their religious and secular communities. Social media and other media technologies provide Muslim women of that silenced part of Africa, the Sub-Saharan region, a voice that may speak louder than the existing victimizing and state-controlled discourses. Rather than executing humanitarian activism from within a defined “legitimate”–and often limiting–mold, Muslim women can forge their own activism.