Depicting the Veil: Transnational Sexism and the War on Terror.

• Author: Fischer, Sarah
• Position: Book review

Depicting the Veil: Transnational Sexism and the War on Terror

By Robin Lee Riley

London and New York: Zed Books, 2013, 182 pages, 17.99 [pounds sterling], ISBN: 9781780321288.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In Depicting the Veil, Robin Lee Riley examines a critical and often overlooked effect of September 11th, 2001: the Western media's portrayal of Afghan and Iraqi women. Riley argues that U.S. policy and, consequently, the media, portray Afghan and Iraqi "women (and indeed all women believed correctly or incorrectly by the Western media to be Muslim) as weak and in need of rescuing, and simultaneously as mysterious, dangerous, and evil" through transnational sexism. This form of sexism, Riley claims, is unique in its "deployment, use, and propagation of ideas about Muslim women to Western audiences ... through popular culture" (p. 2).

Riley analyzes stories and "cultural artifacts" produced by Western journalists and entertainment companies over a ten-year period. Her evidence ranges from articles that ran in The New York Times to the plot and characters of Sex and the City 2. Riley's initial chapters address the media's portrayal of Afghan society and women's veiling in it and the representation of Osama bin Laden's wives. In later chapters, she examines the portrayal of Saddam Hussein's female family members and high-ranking female politicians in Iraq. Here, Riley further emphasizes that, absent stereotypical tropes, Middle Eastern women are essentially absent from the media. The final chapter questions the predominant understanding in the West of women's liberation.

One of the most notable strengths of Riley's analysis is her emphasis on how women were used as pawns in the invasions. She states that prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, politicians portrayed Afghan and Iraqi women as meek, "a handy excuse" to justify war, but post-invasion, politicians and journalists portrayed the same women as "dangerous, the creators of baby terrorists--or as screens for male bloodthirsty terrorists" (p. 39). Furthermore, media failed the public by promoting such images while repeating "the Bush and Obama administration's [sic] ostensible concern for Afghan women without question, and ... portray[ing] Islam as primitive and archaic" (p. 39).

Later, Riley argues that the media also failed by not investigating the dangers to women that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq brought: the death and injury of family members, loss of income, and increasing...