Emel, British Muslim ‘lifestyle’ magazine, had a feature on Muslim bloggers. They appear to have failed with the front cover for at least one of the bloggers they featured, Indigo Jo:
The second sister requested some physical details about me as they wanted to design an avatar, which is a cartoon representation of someone. I’m not too happy about the whole idea of avatars, because they involve hand-drawn pictures of people, which are at best disapproved of in Islam unless they’re really necessary. I’m OK with photos, though, so I sent them the only decent one I have of me. Well, when I saw the magazine, I first went up to the Starbucks on the first floor of Borders in Charing Cross Road, and when I saw the queue, went to the basement and finally found a vacant seat.
As you can see, the cover features three superhero-like characters, including a muscular male, an attractive Somali-looking sister with matching purple hijab and robe, and a seated young-ish male with a tidy beard. The hairstyle and dress sense are not quite mine, but what made me do a double take was, well, the seat. It’s a wheelchair. What was I doing in a wheelchair? Admittedly, I do spend much of my blogging time sitting down, but I sit in an office chair, which has wheels, but not as big as the one on his chair. Also, I admit that I’ve done a lot of blogging on disability issues lately (and there’s more to come insha Allah), but I’ve never told anyone I’m disabled, because I’m not!
plimfix 6:31 am on October 4, 2009 Permalink |
I think it looks like a cross-between a wheelchair and a unicyle.
A Hussain 10:11 am on October 6, 2009 Permalink |
Emel has often been shunned by mainstream Muslims because of its lack of grounding on its views and perspectives. Many have dubbed it a Pakistani lifestyle magazine as opposed to a Muslim one. People of Pakistani decent and converts to Islam are over represent in its features, regardless of whether they characterize Muslim, Islam or the Muslim community of the UK. Features on Anila Beig, Saeeda Warsei and James Caan, are some example of individuals who have very little to do with Islam or Muslim community but yet heavily featured on Emel. Anila Beig known more for her anti Muslim articles in the Sun newspaper by the Muslim community often mocked the hijab a symbol of Islam.
There are many Muslim communities that are hardly featured such as Somali community or the very tight nit Muslim Bangladeshi community that form the largest Muslim community in UK or Turkish community living in Hackney. This is not surprising when looking at the team of people behind the magazine who hardly reflect the diversity of the Muslim communities in the UK.
The magazine is often too glamorised for a community that forms a large part of the lower working class populace, and often does not deal with issues faced by the Muslim community. Despite having the free publicity from CNN, BBC and many of the media cooperation in the western world, who the Muslim community are already suspicious of, the magazine has a meagre 20,000 subscription
A Hussain 10:21 am on October 6, 2009 Permalink |
“attractive somali-looking sister in a hijab” Very imaginative details to something that looks like a marvel comic sketch, the most that can be gathered from it is that it’s a ‘women in a hijab’