Mia Khalifa's icon status reveals the limits of intersectional feminism

For the past decade, one of the top-ranked performers on Pornhub has been a hijabi. Or, rather, a Lebanese Christian former adult actor who rose to fame for starring in a porn while wearing a hijab.

In the last month, Mia Khalifa - or Sarah Joe Chamoun - has been invited to speak at the Oxford Union and featured on the front cover of Huck magazine under the headline, “We Are All Mia Khalifa”.

But what does Khalifa’s rise say about the limits of intersectional feminism if someone whose niche was carved through co-opting the violent, racist, hypersexualised image of Muslim women can be considered the latest feminist icon?

From ancient orientalist art to modern day AI picture generators, the hypersexualisation of Muslim women sells. It’s little wonder, then, that Mia Khalifa rose to fame so quickly after appearing in pornographic scenes in a hijab and has stayed consistently popular on the platform despite having left the industry.

"The problem of Muslim women being overlooked in mainstream feminist spaces goes far deeper than Mia Khalifa and cannot be blamed on her, but her newfound status speaks volumes about the lack of genuine consideration for Muslim women within feminist thought and society at large"

But objectifying Muslim women goes far beyond surface-level images. It paves the way for real and pervasive danger too. Take, for example, how Shamima Begum was hyper-policed by the state or Boris Johnson’s comments about Muslim women in niqabs looking like letter boxes or David Cameron’s agenda to tackle radical extremism by teaching Muslim mums how to speak English.

And that’s before you consider the direct links between pornography consumption and violence against women and how the popularity of this so-called “hijabi porn” compounds the racism and misogyny already faced by Muslim women.

The problem of Muslim women being overlooked in mainstream feminist spaces goes far deeper than Mia Khalifa and cannot be blamed on her, but her newfound status speaks volumes about the lack of genuine consideration for Muslim women within feminist thought and society at large.

The long racist history of silencing Muslim women can be traced back to early orientalist texts.

Today, they are used by Western leaders to justify international horrors and forced to be extensions of state surveillance, writes @UmmKhadijah13 👇 https://t.co/ozV6v5X1Fr

— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) November 24, 2022

Khalifa has always had her harsh critics: the death threats from ISIS, the criticism from the Lebanese government and the public rejection from her own family. She also has her supporters: those who view her as a symbol of liberation for owning her sexuality and refusing to conform to social or religious codes of honour and respectability.

But for me, it’s complicated. While I would argue it’s none of my or anyone else’s business what a woman does with her own body, publicly disrespecting a religious garment that is so central to my own identity makes it another matter.

Muslim women are fetishised and otherised daily for their choice to wear the hijab, something that amounted to nothing more than a costume for Khalifa.

Of course, there are definite questions about how much agency any individual woman has within the adult film industry (especially as a woman of colour). Khalifa herself has spoken out about the exploitation in the industry, and about how she voiced her concern and was ignored while Pornhub continues to use her name and content without her consent.

But it’s also hard to ignore her repeated refusal to apologise to Muslim women, repeatedly dismissing justified concerns. Instead, she has insisted that it “wasn’t demeaning or degrading to Muslim women”. This suggests a  lack of regard for the way her actions have harmed and objectified an already disenfranchised group.

Of course, it is undeniable that Mia Khalifa is a symptom of larger, deeply-rooted systemic problems and a new-age version of feminism that is more about vapid representation than true inclusivity.

What her case shows is that you can take advantage of a community that you are not a part of - a community already persecuted and oppressed by the state - and still earn the status of girlboss feminist icon without acknowledging the communities you trod on to get there.

Seeing Mia Khalifa on the front of Huck magazine, I couldn’t help but feel like that cemented our bottom tier status as Muslim women in the intersectional feminism stakes. If “We Are All Mia Khalifa”, as the headline posits, then where does that leave hijabi women who object to the very notion of “hijabi pornography”? If her experience is the default feminist one, then is there any room for us?

"It's no coincidence that both Khalifa and Mohindra (neither of whom are actually Muslim women) get to move on from their reductive portrayals whereas us Muslim women remain bound to them"

Being a Muslim woman can feel exhausting, navigating the rise of rife misogyny and Muslim inceldom in our own communities while facing the harsh brutality of the state. We are seen as meek and oppressed, forbidden flesh and dangerous threats all at once, but never simply ourselves.

This is only made worse by damaging, superficial and downright racist portrayals of us in the content society consumes, from news to TV shows to porn.

Recently, actress Anjli Mohindra, who played a hijabi suicide bomber in the opening scene of BBC series Bodyguard, wrote about how playing terrorists is a rite of passage for “us brown folk”. To me, this was a reminder that Muslim women constitute nothing but a rung on the ladder to everyone else’s progress but our own.

For Mohindra, her portrayal of a terrorist may just be an embarrassing early career move. But as a Muslim woman, I will never forget how it felt to have a hit series on the country’s national TV channel open with a scene of a hijabi woman displaying just about every stereotype in the book.

It’s no coincidence that both Khalifa and Mohindra (neither of whom are actually Muslim women) get to move on from their reductive portrayals whereas us Muslim women remain bound to them.

Perhaps I’m so bothered by the recent rise of Mia Khalifa because I’m learning that intersectional feminism has no space for me after all. When representation trumps all else and liberation looks more like the rejection of codes and boundaries than the creation of truly inclusive spaces, it’s hard to see how hijabi women like me can find solace and emancipation in a value system that by its nature excludes us.

The unfortunate irony is that Muslim women need safe, liberating spaces now more than ever.

Nadeine Asbali is a secondary school teacher in London.

Follow her on Twitter: @najourno

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Opinions expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of their employer, or of The New Arab and its editorial board or staff.