Book Review: Veiled Threats: Representing the Muslim Woman in Public Policy Discourses by Naaz Rashid

The book is very well written and clearly organized; especially the short conclusions at the end of each chapter make it easy to follow the authors’ argument. As it deals with a very timely topic from a critical gender perspective, it is both valuable for readers interested in the topic as such and its empirical dimensions and for those who are interested in theoretical examinations of the way critical gendered dimensions are neglected in current research—not only concerning the specific field of female suicide bombings. When it comes to classroom uses, the book may be used in manifold ways. It provides valuable insight in gender issues in conflict and post conflict societies, especially if one aims at exploring women’s roles in conflict beyond stereotypical notions of women’s inherent peacefulness. In a broader sense, it is worthwhile studying the book as an example of how supposedly neutral discourses (also in academia) are based on masculine concepts both explicitly (sometimes on purpose) and implicitly.

The book is very well written and clearly organized; especially the short conclusions at the end of each chapter make it easy to follow the authors' argument. As it deals with a very timely topic from a critical gender perspective, it is both valuable for readers interested in the topic as such and its empirical dimensions and for those who are interested in theoretical examinations of the way critical gendered dimensions are neglected in current research-not only concerning the specific field of female suicide bombings. When it comes to classroom uses, the book may be used in manifold ways. It provides valuable insight in gender issues in conflict and post conflict societies, especially if one aims at exploring women's roles in conflict beyond stereotypical notions of women's inherent peacefulness. In a broader sense, it is worthwhile studying the book as an example of how supposedly neutral discourses (also in academia) are based on masculine concepts both explicitly (sometimes on purpose) and implicitly. In Veiled Threats, Naaz Rashid examines how "the Muslim woman" is socially constructed in the context of United Kingdom's counterterrorism policy in order to shed light on the relationship between state representations of gender and Muslims' racialization in immigration societies. The study focuses on "Empowering Muslim Women" (EMW), a series of initiatives undertaken by the UK government to engage Muslim women in the "War on Terror" by raising the aspirations of Muslim girls, improving Muslim women's religious understanding, and increasing women's civic engagement in Muslim communities. Using policy documents, parliamentary debates, political speeches, and interviews with 25 policy actors, Rashid shows that by discursively linking women's empowerment to antiterrorism, and by downplaying the significance of other, nonreligious dimensions of identity, EMW perpetuated a "civilisationist discourse" (p. 10) that dis-empowered Muslim women in the United Kingdom, ultimately limiting their capacity to forge intergroup solidarities.
Veiled Threats draws from and extends the literatures on Islam and feminism, intersectionality, and the role of multiculturalism and mutlifaithism in shaping attitudes to women's empowerment. The text underscores how the British state invoked feminism to reinforce "common-sense Orientalised stereotypes of Muslim women" (p. 175). It also brings neglected issues of race and class into the conversation in order to demonstrate the pitfalls of policies-and indeed research studies-that fail to consider how religion intersects with other salient dimensions of identity. Rashid concludes with a timely warning about the long-term and divisive consequences of policies that use reductive frames to tackle complex social problems.
Rashid's most innovative contributions stem from her combined use of discourse and "everyday practice" (p. 13) to tease out the effects of states' biased representations of "the Muslim woman." First, the study ties those representations to emerging scholarly critiques of feminism's alignment with the neoliberal state. This theme emerges, for example, in Rashid's analysis of how the EMW framed motherhood as a tool of Muslim women's empowerment. By calling forth both "individualised and collectivised" images of what it means to be a mother (p. 106), she argues, the program reinforced a "simplistic neoliberal logic of aspiration, selfimprovement and consumer citizenship" (p. 107). Echoing other critics of neoliberal feminism, Rashid warns that this "logic" obscures the structural inequalities that many Muslim-and non-Muslim-women face.
A second major contribution of Rashid's work derives from its focus on the material-as well as the discursive-consequences of states' gendered representations of Islam. In particular, she shows that the fact that "local authorities have been encouraged to fund projects that 'empower Muslim women'" puts pressure on women's organizations that might otherwise pursue nonreligious goals to "emphasize their Muslimness" (p. 67). In other words, EMW's institutional framework led Muslim women to engage in a kind of "strategic pragmatism" (p. 67), adapting their behaviors in ways that reinforced policy makers' reductive focus on Islam as a cornerstone of identity.
Finally, Rashid's work richly describes the role of discourse as a "site of struggle" (p. 12) in national projects attending to race and gender. Through her interviews, for example, she shows that policy actors often subverted the EMW policy narratives by calling forth counterhegemonic images of Muslim women's role in British society. In one instance, interviewees maintained that contrary to popular perceptions, Muslim women had been mobilizing on behalf of "women's issues" prior to the launch of EMW (p. 82). To the extent that these women faced obstacles to mobilization, moreover, Rashid's interview subjects claimed that these were as much the results of barriers in local and central government as they were products of hostility and harassment from Muslim men (p. 77).
One limitation of Veiled Threats stems from its cursory description of the study's 25 interview subjects. We are told that interviewees largely consisted of Muslim women "involved in the [EMW] policy initiatives" (p. 15). However, Rashid does not specify how these actors positioned themselves with respect to the British state's antiterrorism agenda. Should readers interpret them as agents of state power in the United Kingdom? Or are they better conceived as objects of the state's agenda? If both, how are the two roles interconnected? A more precise theorization of the nature of state power, and of the role policy actors play in its exercise, would go a significant distance in addressing this limitation.
In Veiled Threats, Rashid has produced an engaging and critical account of the ways that discourses and narratives around women's "empowerment" inform states' characterizations of Islam and Muslims in the context of the War on Terror. The study makes several empirical and conceptual contributions to our understanding of the links between states' quest for legitimacy, feminist discourse, and the gendered production of racialized "others" in immigration societies. Accessible to undergraduate and graduate students alike, Veiled Threats would be of interest to scholars of gender, race and nation, as well as those more broadly interested in understanding the work of policy in shaping societal meanings.