When I think back to my earliest memories, I notice that some of my favorite moments involve film and TV shows. Growing up, I was able to feed my imagination by watching shows about werewolves, spies and kid geniuses. These films and TV shows opened my mind to endless possibilities and showed me that I, too, could do whatever I wanted. While I couldn’t relate to being a wizard or a mermaid, it created a space for creativity in which my friends and I felt genuinely happy. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that there was a lack of Representation on Screen as I was young and also didn’t wear the hijab as a child. This would then change as I grew up and started to put things into perspective.
When I think about the TV shows of my childhood, I’m brought back to my best friend’s bathroom. Here, we would gather in her white bath pretending to be mermaids forced to hide our true identity from our families. We muffled our giggles as we held our breath underwater to convince one another that we were mermaids. We would also make ‘potions’ which consisted of mud and leaves in our back garden to give us the power to be whatever we wanted.
This all started to change once I got older. I no longer felt like I could relate to the characters on screen as I realized pretending to be a mermaid or witch wasn’t realistic. I was now aware of how little representation there was on screen: I didn’t look like the people on TV.
At thirteen, I started wearing hijab for the first time. I had been thinking about wearing it for a while but was somewhat reluctant as the Western media portrayed the hijab and Islam as something negative. I didn’t want to be associated with that narrative. My first few years of wearing hijab were spent with the feeling of exclusion and insecurity as I had never seen a hijabi or Muslim character online who appreciated their religion on screen.
One day after school, I was watching one of my favorite shows at the time, Wolfblood (2012-2017), when a character came on screen and was wearing a hijab!!! The character’s name is Selina Khan and I remember feeling so excited that my favorite TV show had a hijabi character who was not being portrayed as the bad guy. The next day at school I couldn’t wait to tell my best friend, who is also Muslim, that there was someone like us in one of our favorite TV shows.
A few years later, while scrolling on my Instagram explore page, I stumbled across a Norwegian TV show called Skam (2015-2017). It is a contemporary show that follows the lives of teenagers in Oslo, Norway. One of the main characters’ friends, Sana Bakkoush, wears a hijab. Sana is a strong character who doesn’t shy away from her faith and is unapologetically herself. As I watched the show, I realized it was quickly becoming my all-time favorite. Unlike Wolfblood, this show was more mature and wasn’t fantasy. As a Muslim woman, Sana Bakkoush is so much more than a fictional character for me and Skam has become more than an escape from reality; it made me more comfortable in who I was and allowed me to be more confident in my faith.
As I continued watching the show, something happened that thirteen year old me would have never believed: The final season of Skam stars Sana Bakkoush and highlights her struggles growing up in a Western Country. While Sana had been in the first three seasons, a hijabi as the main character was something that I never saw before in Western media. The problem, however, was that since it was a foreign TV show it was unlikely my friends or people my age would ever come across Skam when looking through the channels on the TV. And so this is where I began to talk everyone’s ear off about this Norwegian TV show that came out in 3 minute clips everyday and would accumulate to one single episode at the end of each week. This representation made me feel secure in knowing that my people were being taken seriously on screen and that I didn’t need to worry about people’s preconceptions due to negative Muslim narratives.
This was only the beginning. A Netflix original showcased a hijabi character named Bean, played by Salena Qureshi, in the 2019 hit show The Society. While she wasn’t a protagonist, she still had her screen time like any other character and her faith never differentiated her from the other characters In fact, her religion was never brought up. While some may not like this I found it refreshing as we got to recognize her religion through her actions rather than her stating it.
This brings me to the most recent Muslim/hijabi representation on television as we look at Disney’s Ms Marvel (2022). Unlike The Society, this TV show’s protagonist is Muslim and the surrounding characters, including the protagonist’s friends and family, are also Muslim. The show looks at a superhero and her powers while also slipping in themes of faith. Similarly to Wolfblood, Skam and The Society, it showed Muslims in an honest way, a story where Muslims are not portrayed as the villains.
Representation on screen is so important as it has the ability to humanize minorities. When it comes to representing Muslims in TV and film, it makes the community feel more safe as they know non-Muslims are becoming educated on the real meaning of Islam. It allows for important discourse surrounding people’s differences and creates a safe environment for little girls and boys who are looking for someone who looks like them on television. Positive representation reinforces the idea that the factors which make us different are actually what make us unique and special.
About the Author: Yussra is a twenty year old student living in Dublin who loves writing and talking
about what she is passionate about. That includes film & tv, faith and books. She
is also interested in sustainability and aims to promote sustainable living.
