This chapter provides a critical analysis of 30 local and international online newspaper articles and focuses on the common language used in the latter sources to represent certain Muslim women living in the West. More specifically, the paper outlines a debate corresponding to media representations of the Muslim Association of Canada’s request to ban the burqa (transliterated henceforth as burka). In October 2009, the Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) called upon the country’s federal government to prevent Muslim women from covering theMore.. ir faces in public (Lewis, 2009), ostensibly due to incidents involving burka-wearing bank robbers, in addition to the negative images and stereotypes associated with Muslim women’s cultural use of the garment. Most notably, the decision made by the late Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the then Grand Imam of Cairo’s al-Azhar University (the chief centre of Arabic literature and Sunni Islamic learning in the world), to ban women from wearing the burka or face veil encouraged the MCC to adopt a similar position with regard to establishing a ban on the public use of burkas (Worthington, 2010).

The study was undertaken by two researchers. The first is May Al-Fartousi, a Canadian Middle Eastern educator whose interest in the topic stems from her role as a Muslim scholar striving for social justice and equity underpinned by Islamic principles. Al-Fartousi favours an Islamic school of thought whose practices do not include the use of the burka. However, Al-Fartousi addresses the issues related to banning the burka in a Western context wherein the political, cultural, and social aspects differ completely from those in Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Moreover, Al-Fartousi’s interest in this issue is inspired by her own schooling experiences as an Arab Muslim female student who has lived in the Middle East as well as in Canada, and who has faced the pressures of social differences and racism. As a child wearing the hijab (ie, head scarf) in the Middle East, her school experience was not positive—she was home-schooled in Grades 11 and 12 due to a secular policy that prevented female students from observing hijab in regular classrooms. Similar to the recent debate on banning the burka, Al-Fartousi argues that this decision may isolate some Muslim women and prevent them achieving certain basic rights.