Stereotypes do nothing but create expectations for certain cultures and religions. The biggest reinforcer of stereotypes is media. We, as writers, have an obligation to report on what we deem is wrong, but we are also expected to see things from every angle.
Last night a friend of mine sent me a skit BBC published, which made me sick to my stomach.
The video starts off with a woman in a burka saying, “It’s only three days until the beheading and I’ve got no idea what I’m going to wear!”
Now this might be funny but this joke is not a joke. It might be hard to grasp the idea of how painful it is to see your own family member being beheaded, but this joke is making a mockery of the suffering the victim, and the family of the victims must go through. When ISIS beheads someone, they send the head back to the family most of the time. Sitting at home and seeing someone make a joke like this may provoke unimaginable emotions for those families. Truly disgusting.
It also makes a very poor attempt at normalizing this type of horror. Public beheadings and executions are frequent in ISIS territories. While it is common to witness, and many citizens are required to witness this person losing their life, it is not something that should be normalized. To suggest that the biggest worry about a beheading is "not knowing what to wear" makes these horrors seem as though they have lost their severity. It is not something that is common, nor is it something that should be normalized. Those who go to these atrocities go unwillingly, and the last thing on their mind is what they should be wearing.
This joke can also reinforce gender stereotypes of women caring more about looks than anything else. When she says she has nothing to wear, it makes it seem as if appearance is what women consistently work for.
Then you have a woman named Mel who goes on to say, “Abdul seduced me online, he had me at free healthcare.” Another woman in the video Hadiya says, “I’m so glad I’ve moved over here. It’s everything those guys on the chatrooms told me it would be…and it’s full of so many wonderful surprises!"
Reading about ISIS recruitment methods, this type of dialogue is common. ISIS promises these young women everything, from free health care to free housing. Just a few years ago, the "ISIS Bride" Aqsa Mahmood was releasing blog posts about how ISIS allows young women to live in houses bill free. She emphasized how ISIS has modern amenities, plus more. What recruiters do not want these women to know is that, in actuality, living situations are poor and these women are used as pawns in the war effort.
Recruiting young girls is not something new; ISIS has been doing it for a while now. Making promises of a better life for these women, sometimes even young teenage girls. When these girls fall trap to these false promises, their lives are turned upside down. They become slaves to ISIS, cooking, cleaning, and constantly being raped but their recruiters. It’s also “funny” how they included another sensitive topic in this joke as well.
Free healthcare, let’s make a mockery of the international issue of healthcare. Those families who don’t have access to it. What a wonderful idea, BBC.
Zaynab is this woman who’s been married six times. “So, this is my sixth marriage. I’ve been widowed five times…” Then an explosion occurs, implying her sixth husband committed a sacrificial suicide. “…six times.”
Zaynab lets out a resigned smile and acts like this is normal. Since when is losing five, no six, husbands to jihad a normal thing? Many families have lost their mothers, fathers, brothers, uncles and more to the senseless violence that occurs over there. This isn't normal, nor is it funny.
However, Zaynab's resigned smile inadvertently shed some truth. Women that are recruited have no control over their lives, and often they just accept this fate and hope that they can move forward without losing their lives. Zaynab's smile indicated that she has become almost desensitized to her situation, something that a lot of these women become once they see the daily violence that ISIS causes. It is true that these women often remarry after their husbands die. They have no say in who they marry, and it's often pretty quick.
People often think the men who wear the suicide vest are the most invested in ISIS, but they are the most manipulated. Young boys are recruited during their very vulnerable teenage years. Hormones running, and the need for belonging growing they are easily manipulated at this age. Promises of 72 virgins, with a false religious backing, would cause these hormonal naïve teenage boys to believe anything. They’re sucked into this life of false promises and are tricked into giving themselves up for religion, with the hopes of being rewarded.
Later, in the video the women are bragging about the suicide vest their husbands got them. Women are not manipulated like young teenage boys, they are often forced to wear these vests because it’s “a woman’s duty to obey her husband”, and while in the real world these women are hopeless and afraid. “Ahmed promised me with it yesterday” which is a very real scenario but this completely disregards the severity of it. BCC makes a mockery of all the poor, innocent souls that were forced to die and kill others with them. But BCC didn’t stop there, they also pinned the women against each other because creating competition between women is what society does best. Judging each other on their vest, sprinkling on fat jokes, this network has really outdone itself.
Suicide vests are not a fashion statement. The name says it all about what these objects really do. These vests are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. How is talking about it as though it's the hottest dress off of the Milan runways helping the cause against suicide bombers?
The video ends with a few second glimpse of next week’s episode. Having one of the women chained to the stove, enforcing the whole idea of women belonging to the kitchen and Muslim women being bound to the house all in one.
This particular scene gave me an eerie feeling. It reminded me of those "60 Minutes" episodes that we would see here in America about kidnapped women who were chained in a dingy basement while their captors did unspeakable things to them. Along with it promoting the idea that Muslim women belong in the kitchen, it gave me the (accurate) idea that these women were being held captive and were being raped and beaten like a kidnapping victim.
I have never been so disappointed in a video before. This video took every single issue that I care about, that I try to fight for every day, and made a mockery of it. Videos like this are what’ll start the desensitization to the suffering of Muslim women captured by ISIS. Normalizing violent behavior like ISIS's is only making the fight against terrorism harder. I would usually ask for an apology but BBC must a lot more than an apology to undo all the damage this video has created and will create.
Muslims are so much more than this video, or any type of comedic video, makes them seem to be. They are strong, faithful, powerful human beings with convictions and a strong will to do right in their lives. While videos like this promote the idea of ISIS house life as a funny show, it actually is a dark, harsh reality filled with pain and sorrow. More than 2 million people have fled Syria, on top of other ISIS controlled domains, to be able to live their lives in a way that ISIS prohibits them from living. Using this type of attempted comedy only minimizes the torture that these families go through every day, and feeds into the harmful fallacy that these people are proud of what is happening to their land.
To laugh at their sorrow is to laugh at your sorrow. Pain is universal. Borders are irrelevant when talking about the pain that our global citizens face. We all have one heart, one mind, one soul. We have the power to sympathize, to help, to heal. We as a society are better than this.
