Vogue’s New World: American Fashionability and the Politics of Style 173

Fashion Theory, Volume 11, Issue 2/3, pp. 173–188

Reprints available directly from the Publishers.
Photocopying permitted by licence only.
© 2007 Berg.
DOI 10.2752/136270407X202736

Islamic Barbie:
The Politics of
Gender and
Amina Yaqin Performativity
Amina Yaqin is lecturer in Urdu Abstract
and Postcolonial Studies at the
School of Oriental and African
Studies (University of London). This article explores the significance of a new Muslim lifestyle doll
She has written on language and called Razanne who is being marketed over the internet as a role model
communalism in India, gender
for Muslim girls living in the West. While the doll is presented as an
and family in Salman Rushdie’s
novels, Pakistani culture, and alternative to hedonistic Barbie, it bears a striking resemblance to her
Urdu poetry. Currently she is and participates in the same consumer culture. In contrast to Barbie,
revising her monograph entitled
Razanne’s sexuality is downplayed and she has a headscarf (hijab) and
Imagining Pakistan and co-writing
a book with Peter Morey on full-length coat (jilbab) for outdoor use, which are designed to encourage
Stereotype and Performativity. modesty and emphasize her Muslim identity whilst at the same time
[email protected]
allowing space for following the latest fashions for indoor wear. The
174 Amina Yaqin

doll participates in the creation of a normative visual stereotype of the

Muslim, which has emerged both out of Western stereotypes of Muslims,
and the self-stereotyping that occurs amongst Muslims living in Western
contexts. In minority contexts, Muslims feel obliged to perform their
Muslimness through dress and other actions. Razanne, it is argued is a
stereotype of a stereotype. She participates both in the homogenization
of a transnational Islamic identity and the conceptualization of a global
Islamic community (ummah) that are taking place over the Internet.

KEYWORDS: Barbie, sexuality, gender, Muslim, stereotype

This article examines the refashioning of a gendered Muslim identity

that is taking place around an iconic Muslim lifestyle doll called
Razanne. The doll has been created and marketed by a Muslim couple
in the United States and is sold primarily through their Internet website,
Noorart. Razanne, with her visibly Muslim accessories of a hijab
(Islamic headscarf), jilbab (floor-length coat), and prayer rug is aimed
at capturing the imagination of Muslim parents who wish to provide
their children with suitable role models in the “Western world.” It can
be argued that she represents an attempt to normalize Muslim identity
through the lens of fashion.
Bearing a strong resemblance to Mattel’s Barbie, Razanne signifies a
new trend amongst a global Muslim community, which has increasingly
come under pressure in the international war on terror. The Muslim
company’s marketing strategy around Razanne relies on their toned
down mimicry of the recognizable branded product, Barbie. Thus,
Razanne embodies the modest Muslim woman who retains her cultural
and religious values while living in the west. With an estimated potential
market of eight million Muslims in North America, the consumer ethic
of brand buying has been utilized by a diasporic and ethnically diverse
Muslim community to capture a niche market of both ethnic minority
and Muslim buyers. Claims have been made that companies such as
Noorart have received an unexpected boost after the events of 9/11
from buyers who are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy
and who wish to dissociate themselves economically from the imperial
retribution that has followed in the wake of the events of September
11. A report by the Chicago branch of Reuters has argued that Muslim
Americans feeling the pressures of a renewed nationalism hinged around
the notion of a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West,
have turned toward Muslim-branded products as a way of asserting
their identity in the face of a narrowing view of their community.1
The popularity of Muslim-branded products is not limited to
North American consumers. Similar trends are taking place both in
the Middle East in Muslim-majority contexts and throughout Europe
where Muslims are in a minority. Significantly, there has been a variety
of Muslim dolls in the Middle East market ranging from the national
 Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 175

Figure 1
The two masks of the Muslim
Razanne doll: inside the house
and outside.

Iranian twin duo of Dara and Sara to the Syrian doll, Fulla. Dara and
Sara were introduced to the Iranian market in 2002 as an attempt to
curtail the popularity of Barbie and Ken. Developed and marketed by
the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young
Adults in consultation with the Ministry of Education, the dolls are
supposed to represent eight-year-old siblings. They wear modest clothes
representing traditional values and Sara has a white scarf covering her
hair. According to an Iranian toy seller, Masoumeh Rahimi, the dolls
are an important addition to the market as they are representative of
Iranian values and a much-needed intervention against the “wanton”
Barbie whom she believes to be “more harmful than an American
missile.”2 The Syrian doll, Fulla, on the other hand has a similar body
type to Barbie and an equally expansive wardrobe. The most noticeable
differences between Barbie and Fulla lie in their clothing, lifestyles,
and hair color. The dark-haired Fulla wears a full-length black abaya
(thin all-enveloping cloak) that covers her from head to toe when she
is outdoors, has a wide selection of headscarves and, most significantly,
does not have a boyfriend. For the manager of a toy outlet in Damascus,
Mohammed Sabbagh, “Fulla is one of us. She’s my sister, she’s my
mother, she’s my wife. She’s all the traditional things of Syria and the
Middle East.”3
In Great Britain there has been a certain amount of interest in the
transnational Razanne and Fulla dolls since their arrival in the market.
They have been reported in both the national broadsheets and the
tabloid press. Ranging from The Guardian’s “Islamic Barbie” to The
176 Amina Yaqin

Daily Star’s “Burkha Barbie,” both Razanne and Fulla feed into the
public imagination of Muslim stereotypes reconfirming the popular
perception that Muslim values cannot be integrated with the demands
of modernity.
The matter of Muslim women’s dress itself has been a topic of public
controversy in England, particularly since 2002 when a thirteen-year-
old British Muslim girl, Shabina Begum, was suspended from school
for continuing to wear a jilbab and ignoring the school uniform code.
Shabina Begum stopped going to school and initiated legal proceedings
in court, supported by her guardian and brother and advised by the
Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.4 According to Emma Tarlo, this radical
Islamist group used the hijab/jilbab controversy as a means of advocating
rejection and resistance to “the West” from within “the West.” Hizb
ut-Tahrir is an extreme example of an Islamist activist group that has
operated in Britain since 1986. They are not in any way linked to
the production of consumable Muslim dolls. But what they share in
common with the creators of these transnational subjects is the fact that
they are contributing to the production of a fixed “visual stereotype” of
the Muslim women (Tarlo 2005: 3) and trying to make that stereotype
a reality.

The Creation of a Muslim Stereotype

Historically, television, radio, Internet, and the print media have all
participated in the cultural act of representing the other. It can be argued
that the new face of the transnational “other” in the Western media since
9/11 has been Muslim. This is not to say that Muslims have not been
part of an orientalized discourse pre-9/11 (cf. Said 1997). However, the
media reports that followed in the wake of 9/11 carried an ominous
ring for Muslim communities worldwide. The stereotypes closed in.
Depictions of Muslims crowding our television screens became—and
still are—none other than those well-loved staples of women in the
“uniform” of the veil, and rows of men prostrating themselves up and
down in prayer.
A common feature in the various media manifestations mentioned
above is the utilization of the stereotype for purposes of representation
of both the self and the other. In the case of Islam, the most familiar
representation of the stereotype takes place around the theme of female
sexuality. The two well-known stereotypes that feed into this discourse
have been discussed eloquently by Rana Kabbani with reference to the
cultural characterizations of Scheherazade from The Thousand and One
Nights, and Haideh Moghissi who has critically analyzed “orientalist”
and “Islamist” standpoints that normalize “Muslim” cultural practices
in relation to women in Western societies (cf. Kabbani 1986; Moghissi
2000).
Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 177

More broadly, in the context of “the self” of Western modernity,

which is presented as antithetical to the tenets of religious morality, there
is an imposition of an ethical order that often seems to exclude Muslims
settled in non-Muslim environments. In this situation, the minority
Muslim communities often choose to visibly normalize discursive
religious practices in everyday life so as to distinguish themselves from
“the other.” Thus, as Muslims they find themselves having to perform
Islam in Western societies in order to normalize and universalize its
teachings both for themselves and for others. This takes the form of
wearing certain types of dress, performing ritual prayers five times a day,
and so on. These acts then become the markers by which Muslimness
is identified in non-Muslim countries. In so doing, Muslims inevitably
collude with non-Muslims in the formation of a Muslim stereotype.5
From a postcolonial perspective the most immediately familiar
paradigm for understanding the stereotype is probably that constructed
by Homi Bhabha in his essay, “The Other Question: Stereotype,
Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism.” Influenced by Freud
and Lacan, he presents the stereotype as a dualistic structure expressing
both fear of and desire for the “Other.” The stereotype, according to
Bhabha, marked by the knowledge of what is “already known” draws
its ambivalence from the constant act of repetition; therefore, “the same
old stories of the Negro’s animality, the Coolies inscrutability or the
stupidity of the Irish must be told (compulsively) again and afresh”
(Bhabha 1994: 77). Recently, Peter Morey has suggested that in order
to locate the stereotype discursively it is useful to consider Bakhtin’s
concept of dialogism (Morey 2004). This focuses our attention on the
historicity of utterances in society and thus suggests how the stereotype
can be understood in relation to the intersections of communications
instead of as a point of fixed meaning. Taking on board Morey’s analytic
viewpoint, I am interested in exploring that intertextual dialogic process
that exists between the representation of Muslims as stereotypes and
the deployment of some of these stereotypes by Muslim groups in order
to re-present themselves. In adopting these stereotypes, such Muslims
not only reinforce the stereotype imposed upon them by the West, but
they also construct a stereotype of their own other, the secular liberal
West through which a finite bounded notion of Muslimness can be
delineated.6 Therefore, to counter the dominant discourse of secularism
that perceives religion as other, some Muslim groups have initiated a
counter-offensive to normalize aspects of Muslim identity through the
concept of the transnational ummah.
It is useful to think about the frame in which the idea of the Muslim
ummah is constructed. The ummah is understood as a “global Muslim
community” and has traditionally operated within the context of trade
and travel networks. As a general code of practice, the Islamic ummah
privileges the Koran and Sunnah and regulates conduct in accordance
with the principles of Islam. It is not a national construct but has
178 Amina Yaqin

sympathetic overlaps with the territorial struggles of Arab nationalism

(cf. Asad 1999: 188–92).
In recent times cyberspace has become the most current form
of establishing or maintaining transnational Muslim networks.
Miriam Cooke and Bruce Lawrence argue that the Internet “reveals
a paradoxical aspect of the metaphorical function of networks: they
are de-territorialised and gender inclusive even while remaining socially
restricted in other ways” (Cooke and Lawrence 2005, see also Bunt
2005). My aim is to explore how the Michigan-based company,
Noorart, which markets Islamic education, toys, and other consumable
products over the Internet, participates in this de-territorialized ummah.
In particular I shall focus on the Muslim Razanne doll, Noorart’s most
popular product, arguing that it can be interpreted as a stereotype of a
stereotype.

Figure 2
Razanne: the transnational
product. Image courtesy of
Noor and Ammar Saadeh,
Noorart Inc. USA.

Consumer Culture: From Barbie to Islamic Barbie

It is worth considering how Noorart operates through a transnational

culture of consumerism that transports the values of an American
lifestyle with the new consumer subjects it creates. In another context,
Inderpal Grewal puts forward the inference that the multiple subjects of
transnational consumerism are not “in opposition to either globalization
or nationalism.” Grewal, writing about economic liberalization in
India and the phenomenon of the “traveling Barbie,” as exported by
Mattel, points out that Barbie in a sari is “not an Indian or South
Asian Barbie” but “what Mattel calls the traditional Barbie” who is
Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 179

essentially American in body but plays at being Indian through dress

and performativity. “The doll suggests that difference, as homogenized
national stereotype, could be recovered by multinational corporations,
that the national could exist in this global economy” (Grewal 1999:
800). But we have to question which nation is at the center and whether
the stereotype that is being fixed for the national imaginary is one
of an “exotic” ethnicity that merely reiterates the “normative power
of the center.” Radha Hegde focuses on the ethnicity element within
the multicultural packaging of Barbie arguing that “Barbie as ethnic
spectacle demonstrates how a certain type of ‘Indianness’ is created and
promoted through the white female body of a plastic Barbie. Indianness
is packaged as a newly improved product and sold as the Orientalist
fantasy of white femininity” (Hegde 2001: 131).
Barbie is a problematic icon for women, as has been argued
convincingly by Mary Rogers in her book on Barbie Culture (Rogers
1999). As an iconic doll she represents fantasy, and the gendered female
identity of a young white adult. She has no parents nor does she have
any children of her own. Her family consists mainly of siblings of whom
the most well known is Skipper. In addition, she has friends and, of
course, her boyfriend, Ken, with whom she broke up in 2004. Barbie
and Ken, who had been dating for forty-three years, have been replaced
by the pairing of Barbie with Blaine, her new Australian partner who
is a surfer from Sydney. This is part of a new reconstruction of Barbie
aimed at rescuing her sales from the doldrums. As consumers, we are
not simply tied to Barbie the doll but also to her lifestyle.
In order to understand the discursive construction of Barbie and her
lifestyle choices it is important to consider Mattel, the company that has
been instrumental in shaping the doll. Barbie became part of a global
transcultural network and was referred to as a “global power brand” by
the former Mattel president and CEO Jill Barad, who played a major role
in transforming her from a US$320 million domestic business to a US$2
billion global brand.7 She is marketed in 140 countries and is linked to
brand names from fashion designers such as Carolina Herrera to soft
drink companies including Coca-Cola. Barbie was introduced to the US
domestic market in 1959 and was the brainchild of Ruth Handler, the
wife of Elliot Handler, and co-founder of Mattel. Mrs Handler’s vision
of Barbie was inspired during a shopping trip in Switzerland when she
came across Lilli, a German doll based on a cartoon-strip character
and sold mostly to men as a sex object. Until that time, Mrs Handler
had been looking for an appropriate toy for her children who preferred
playing with adult dolls than with the baby-shaped ones available in the
market. It is ironic that through this act of cultural borrowing by Mrs
Handler, and later Mattel, that Barbie was transformed from one kind
of fetish to another (Rogers 1999).
Mary Rogers locates Barbie within the fashion industry as a mimetic
construct that allows women to imagine themselves as “perpetually
180 Amina Yaqin

young and ephemerally ageless” and essentially views Barbie’s identity

as performative despite her fixed plastic body. She argues that Barbie’s
assemblage of accessories points “to a self continuously in the making
under shifting circumstances.”

Barbie represents the sort of contemporary selfhood some see as

embattled and others see as liberated . . . [She] represents the sort
of interaction as well as the sort of selfhood ascendant in post-
industrial societies with their commodity cultures . . . her identity
hovers between two cultures, the modern and the postmodern
(Rogers 1999: 136).

This commodification of dolls has also been discussed by Ann Ducille

in relation to debates on multiculturalism and Mattel’s failure to
accommodate racial difference despite the promise of cultural diversity.
Her critical reading is in response to Mattel’s targeting of the ethnic
market in the early 1990s when racial difference was addressed in
the form of the “brown skinned” Shani, “honey coloured” Asha and
“deep mahogany” Nichelle. Ducille sees these as a mere symptom of the
commodification of Afro-chic (Ducille 1994: 47–68).8
The debate about Barbie’s suitability for a Muslim audience in
particular was ignited in 2003 when the Saudi religious police declared
“Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing
clothes of the ‘Jewish’ toy already banned in the kingdom—are
offensive to Islam.”9 Even more interesting was the appearance of the
Fulla doll in Syria, as mentioned earlier, who is a mimicry of Barbie but
a veiled one. Most significantly she is a bestseller in Egypt and other
Muslim countries. Since her launch her rise to fame has been faithfully
recorded by publications in the US and UK. In one of the UK tabloids,
The Daily Star, she is captioned as “Burka Barbie: she puts fun into
fundamentalism” with an accompanying close up of Fulla’s face in full
black hijab.10 The cover story itself is continued inside where juxtaposed
against the uncovered “free” breasts of Annie the Page 3 girl, we see the
demure and fully covered Fulla dolls with the accompanying caption,
“Burka Barbie can’t see Ken.” The underlying message being sent out to
the readers is that of the incompatibility of liberal Western values with
“modest” Arab values.
While Razanne has not enjoyed the same kind of tabloid publicity as
Fulla, she has been in existence for longer and has come to represent the
personification of Islam in the West for transcultural Muslim subjects.
She was first introduced to the children’s market in the US via the
Internet in 1996. Her publicity campaign in the Middle East and the
UK was launched in 2004. Prior to that she had only been marketed in
the US, Canada, Singapore, and Germany. This doll is the brainchild of
an American couple, Noor (Sherrie) and Ammar Saadeh. According to
Noor, Razanne provides an alternative to the “overly sophisticated and
Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 181

skimpily dressed Barbie doll.” She is, as Jo Tatchell of The Guardian

called her, “the Islamic Barbie” (Tatchell 2004). She comes with a heavy
dose of ideology. The website advertising the Razanne doll includes
the usual informative descriptions of the doll as well as a text box
highlighting the educational benefits that will be gained by children
who play with her. Other than the universalizing attribute of shaping
interactive play, it is said that Razanne “builds Muslim identity and self-
esteem,” “provides Islamic role model, promotes Islamic behaviour.”
She comes in various guises. There is an “in and out” Razanne, who
dresses in the latest fashions including short skirts while at home but
dons the jilbab coat and hijab when going out to signify her modesty.
She is, to quote her creators, “more than just a fashion statement.” She
comes with her distinctive coloring book, which gives us a day in the
life of Razanne from daybreak to sunset. There is also Playday Razanne
who demonstrates that Muslim girls can have fun in the playground as
long as they dress modestly in a loose-fitting jumper and scarf. Another
role she can adopt is that of a Muslim Girl Scout. Continuing the range
is a professional group of Razanne dolls including “Dr Razanne” and
“Teacher Razanne” who, according to Ammar Saadeh, reinforce the
importance of education and religious piety in Islamic society as well
as shattering the stereotype that Muslim women cannot have careers
(Tatchell 2004). The most recent addition to the range has been that of
the ethnic category in the Playday Razanne collection. These Razanne
dolls wear “light and breezy two-piece sets” or shalwar kamiz worn
by Asian Muslim women. They epitomize “Fun-Time Razanne.” The
information included with the doll explains that the shalwar qamiz
is a modest dress that combats conditions of extreme heat. The three
ethnic variations are: Caucasian, “Pakistani Indian,” and black as well
as racial colorings ranging from fair skin/fair hair, olive skin/dark hair
to dark skin/dark hair. Questions have been raised about the possibility
of a future Ahmad doll but so far the creative team have no plans of
mimicking Barbie’s heterosexual matrix with Ken by introducing a male
Muslim doll. In the words of the Razanne story maker and creator,
Noor, “it wouldn’t fit with Razanne to have a boyfriend” (Tatchell
2004).
It is not only Muslims who are enjoying the benefits of Razanne. There
have been various messages of support posted on the website message-
board from non-Muslim friends and supporters, mainly commenting
on the pleasing modesty of Razanne in contrast to Barbie’s nakedness
and immorality. Noor’s other half, Saadeh, has emphasized the message
behind the doll saying, “The main message we try to put forward
through the doll is that what matters is what’s inside you, not how you
look.”11 But the dilemma for the Islamic Barbie is that it does matter
how she looks because she has to personify Islamic identity through role
play and religio-performativity as her story unfolds. Saadeh, in response
to Mattel’s ethnic representations of the Moroccan Barbie and Leyla,
182 Amina Yaqin

Figure 3
Muslim Scout Razanne. “‘I’m
honest, kind and trustworthy...’.
Muslim Scouts organizations
all over the world help build
character and skills for success
in this life and the next.” Image
courtesy of Noor and Ammar
Saadeh, Noorart Inc. USA.

a slave in the court of a Turkish sultan, responds as follows, “It’s no

surprise that they’d try to portray a Middle Eastern Barbie either as a
belly dancer or a concubine.” Both dolls have not had very good sales
figures and it is interesting to note Saadeh’s own acknowledgment that
Razanne is a critical response to these kinds of stereotypes. However,
one of the key differences between Razanne and Barbie is that the Barbie
is an extremely bendable toy doll while Razanne is not flexible at all.12
This significant difference quite clearly impacts on children’s experience
Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 183

of both dolls and while Muslim children may recognize themselves in

Razanne their experience of the doll will not be the same as with the
Barbie.
In order to analyze critically the ideological implications of Razanne it
is useful to consider Judith Butler’s theoretical approach towards gender
in her influential study Gender Trouble. She examines the genealogies of
gender in a Foucaultian sense, decentering any notions of a foundational
discourse. She argues:

Precisely because “female” no longer appears to be a stable notion,

its meaning is as troubled and unfixed as “woman”, and because
both terms gain their troubled significations only as relational
terms, this inquiry takes as its focus gender and the relational
analysis it suggests (Butler 1999: xxix).

This relational analysis includes the historical contextualization of

the discursive elements that have contributed toward the formation of
sexuality such as language discourses, psychoanalysis, and the body. By
illustrating the different constructions of gender, Butler is able to derive
her conclusion of a “performative theory of gender” in which:

The subject is not determined by the rules through which it is

generated because signification is not a founding act, but rather
a regulated process of repetition that both conceals itself and
enforces its rules precisely through the production of substan-
tializing effects (Butler 1999: 185).

Hence, gender identity is not predetermined but is enacted repetitively

according to cultural practices. Butler goes on to propose a set of parodic
practices within gender performativity, which subvert the “categories of
the body, sex, gender and sexuality.” Later reviewing her own work
in Gender Trouble she has commented that her example of drag as a
parodic practice is not meant to illustrate a liberatory perfomativity,
instead she has included it to critique the “false naturalization” and
“unity” of gender relations. Her point is that there is no original that
exists so drag as a copy of a copy pushes the boundaries of representation
into a hyperreality of stereotyped roles.
I wish to engage with this idea of gender performativity with regards
to Barbie and Razanne. Barbie creates the stereotype of a white American
blue-eyed blonde-haired beauty that is the object of desire. She has a
voluptuous body, her accessories are in tune with modern fashions, and
she imbibes a significant proportion of the luxurious comforts on offer
in material society. She even has her own bubble bath. Barbie is marked
with desire. Razanne on the other hand has been described as possessing
a pre-teen body and a sensible and modest attitude in contrast to
Barbie’s frivolity. She too has accessories but they are predetermined by
184 Amina Yaqin

religious conformity or professional obligations. So Praying Razanne

has a prayer rug, the schoolgirl has a backpack and books, the teacher,
a cell phone, laptop, briefcase and sunglasses, and so on. Razanne’s
responsibilities begin from sunrise when she gets up to say her Fajr
prayers, and during the day she has a sensible and modest dress code
wearing her jilbab and hijab whenever she goes out. Her creators state
that “Razanne helps Muslim girls understand that in the home they
can be the ultimate fashion statement” on the condition that they dress
modestly outside. In other words, Razanne is marked with the loss of
that very desire that is cultivated by Barbie. Appropriating a modest
universalizing Muslim identity for children who grow up in Western
societies, she is a parodic response to Barbie. She is the stereotype of a
stereotype. The report on CNN.com plainly states that Razanne “the
new girl on the block doesn’t give Barbie much of a run for her money.
After all, Barbie is everything Razanne is not—curvaceous, flashy and
loaded with sex appeal.”13 I would argue that Razanne’s performative
behavior is an attempt to stabilize the meaning of “Muslim woman”
and set it firmly within the foundational discourse of Islam. Here there
is also an important link to be made with anti-colonial sentiment and
Figure 4
Razanne dresses up for the nationalist movements. Also interesting to note is the desexualization
festival of Eid. Image courtesy of Razanne in contrast to the sexualization of Barbie. Unlike Barbie,
of Noor and Ammar Saadeh,
Razanne comes equipped with sensible white underpants that cover her
Noorart Inc. USA.
reproductive organs while Barbie’s sexuality is fetishized through her
amply proportioned breasts.
Various scholars working on nationalism have illustrated the ways in
which women are appropriated as symbols of identity and differentiation
in the struggle toward liberation. One such scholar, Valerie Moghadam
in her overview of the gender dynamics of nationalism, revolution,
and Islamization has remarked that nationalist struggles tend to make
motherhood sacred and categorize cultural identity as an expression
of women’s role and status. In Islamist movements, gender politics
take a central role and women become the carriers of tradition and an
“authentic” Islamic identity. They represent the structures of the family,
the home, and religious ideals (cf. Moghadam 1994).
It can be argued that Razanne presents a counter-hegemonic move
against the hegemony of a multinational brand such as Mattel’s Barbie.
Similar trends have been seen with the multiplication of Islamic brand
names in the market giving such products as Mecca Cola, Qibla cola,
and Ummah chocolate, which compete alongside Coca-Cola and
Cadbury’s.
The web-based company Noorart who have launched Razanne
represent a clearly articulated educational subversion of the norms of
American society, utilizing the Internet as a space of alterity. They are
tapping into the lucrative market for children’s toys with a thoughtful
parodic response to products such as dolls, children’s books, nursery
rhymes, etc. that have often been a source of anxiety for Muslims
Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 185

bringing up children, especially girls, in Western societies. In this sense,

Razanne is indeed “more than just a fashion statement.” She represents
a way of life.
With regards to Noorart it is worth considering that they rely on
the culture of commodification to re-create their own subjectivity but I
argue that in doing so they are tied to a singular transnational culture
of consumerism that creates new consumer subjects but still transports
the values of an American lifestyle. Michel de Certeau (1997[1974])
has argued that the new colonialism of the twentieth century forcefully
manifests itself through cultural forms. He speaks of the dominance
of a centralized culture in free market economies where technocracies
and corporate trusts commodify culture as a singularity and expect
a celebration of “culture in the singular.” Those marked celebratory
cultural forms present us with a reception of culture and not a depiction
of the act by which individuals appropriate “what others furnish for the
needs of living and thinking.” De Certeau emphasizes the importance of
tracing those individual trajectories of everyday practices that subvert
this culture in the singular, which “always imposes a law of a power.”
The everyday historicity of the performativity of social practices makes
up Certeau’s alternative conceptualization of a plural culture. This
“culture in the plural,” he argues, makes an endless appeal to battle and
is a “labor to be undertaken over the entire expanse of social life.”
Noorart represents a key moment in the shifting attitudes of
the migrant Muslim community settled in North America (Howell
2000). They are no longer content to sit back and be stereotyped and
marginalized. Instead, they have embarked on their own project of
self-representation with the potential of universalizing an Islamic code
of behavior amongst young Muslim children.14 Historically, Islam has
been highly differentiated according to the cultural codes of different
regions. On the other hand, madrassahs have long been generating a
politicized universal Islamic code of ethics amongst Muslim men, as
demonstrated by institutions such as Jamat-e Islami (Nasr 1996). What
is interesting about Noorart is that they have used the medium of the
Internet to spread a globalizing image of young Muslim girls that is
in direct response to the dress codes of the dominant self in Western
countries. This Muslim self participates in a liberal lifestyle but does
so by ring-fencing a modest and Islamic lifestyle beginning with early-
years education. The hijab and the jilbab are thus normalized as key
components of Muslim identity for children from the age of three years.
This fashioning of a gendered dress code is not done in isolation, for
children also engage in a dialogic pattern of familiarization through
story telling. For instance, Noorart’s website offers heroic tales such as
“The Swirling Hijab,” in which the hijab ranges from a flying carpet
to a sword, building on themes from The Thousand and One Nights.
There is also the “Meat-Eating Vegetarian,” a story focusing on the
dilemmas faced by young children who adhere to a halal meat diet
186 Amina Yaqin

in a predominantly non-Muslim environment. Finally, we also find

reappropriations of familiar nursery rhymes such as “Twinkle Twinkle
Little Star,” which include references to God up above, in the effort to
shape a culturally aware new Muslim identity.
Razanne is marketed as a fashion trend, which competes alongside
Barbie and Bratz dolls. She sports the latest fashions at home in the
domestic sphere and dons her outerwear for public life. She conforms to
the public/private dichotomy, which has been commented on in Muslim
reform movements, but the ambiguity in her private sphere comes from
her appropriation of the latest Western fashion trends alongside the
performativity of her ritual obligations as a Muslim. Noorart thus offers
an alternative conceptualization of Muslim identity by engaging with
current market trends and the centralized culture of commodification.
However, by positioning Razanne in response to the discourse of
Western secular femininity it is arguable whether Noorart actually
manages to break out of the frame of stereotyped representation, or
whether the stereotype is merely reinforced through the universalizing
of a female Muslim subject. Women as always are made to carry the
burden of an entire culture.

Notes

1. Andrew Stern, “US Muslims seek alternatives to American Products,”

http://www.noorart.com/Convention France.
2. html http: //news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1856558.stm, accessed
April 3 2006.
3. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20051027,
accessed October 31 2005.
4. Shabina Begum lost her case against the school in 2004. This deci-
sion was temporarily reversed in 2005 when she won her case in
the Court of Appeal. The school then took the case to the House of
Lords where the judgment went against Ms. Begum. For an engaged
analysis of the sartorial agenda of Hizb ut-Tahrir and its connection
to the Shabina Begum case, see Tarlo (2005).
5. Discussion on the stereotype and representation in this article is
drawn from a larger argument, which is part of a joint monograph
with Peter Morey (in preparation).
6. For a demonstration of how Islamist activists rework popular Western
stereotypes of Muslims into Muslim stereotypes of the Westerners,
see Tarlo (2005).
7. Barbara Brotman, “The Workplace: Under Fire”, January 9 2002,
Chicago Tribune. http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/hits/
020109ct.htm, accessed February 5 2005.
8. I have devised the term Afro-chic borrowing from Saadia Toor’s
article where she identifies Indo-chic as a highly desirable consumable
cultural commodity amongst diasporic Indians.
Islamic Barbie: The Politics of Gender and Performativity 187

9. “Saudi Religious Police Say Barbie Is a Moral Threat,” Wednesday,

September 10 2003. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,
96961,00.html.
10. Daily Star Tuesday November 15 2005, front page, p. 3, p. 6.
11. Quoted in The Associated Press, “Muslim Doll offers modest alterna-
tive to Barbie,” 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/10/
08/muslim.barbie.ap/index.html.
12. I am grateful to Sharmila Sen for alerting me to this key difference.
13. See The Associated Press, “Muslim Doll offers modest alternative
to Barbie,” 2003.
14. See Kari Haus, “Quest for the Muslim niche market: entrepreneurs
and artists offer-up fresh fair for long-neglected minority,” 2006,
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3130288.

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