Victims, Terrorists, Scapegoats: Veiled Muslim Women and the Embodied Threat of Terror

Abstract

This paper explores potential motivations behind the recent surge of Islamophobic violence against veiled Muslim women in Canada and the United States of America. It analyzes the ways in which bodies of veiled Muslim women have emerged, post-9/11, as perilous bodies in discourses of culture and nationhood. The paper also examines the emergence of veiled Muslim women in discourses of “Islamic” terrorism through a case study of Tashfeen Malik and the 2015 San Bernardino shooting. The paper argues that because Malik’s act of terrorism disrupted hegemonic, hypermasculine, and heteronormative constructs of terrorism, she and other veiled Muslim women were subsequently viewed as cultural and corporeal threats to the nation in need of exclusion.