If you’re a reader, it probably feels like there isn’t a wide enough selection of novels published by Muslim authors, particularly if you read in English and search for books set in the diaspora. It’s a hunch that a quick stroll through Waterstones solidifies. So, when I say I feel excited reading about Muslim women in fiction, that shouldn’t be surprising. After all, I’m in that somewhat small, apparently anachronistic intersection of being both Muslim and a lifelong, avid reader. 

But here’s the rub. 

Milliseconds after I’ve read that name, my Icarus heart plummets into an unsettling feeling: dread. It isn’t that I’m not still curious and hopeful about what the story offers, but I’m wary of encountering something very particular, something that has led to disappointment on too many occasions in the past: the caricatured projection of hijab-wearing and practising Muslim women in fiction. Women who apparently represent me. 

When I tried unpacking this feeling, I found I couldn’t really pinpoint where it started. Being a self-diagnosed bookworm, of course I was one of those millennial Muslim teen girls who read Khaled Hosseini.

My little emo heart loved both The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns; I found the stories emotionally charged, devastating and, most importantly, bursting with identifiably Muslim characters.

In the latter book, the particularly sensitive portrayal of the plight of women at the hands of a dictatorial male figure was revelatory in that it reflected many real-life stories that I’d witnessed in my own community. In those days, it was so rare to see Muslim characters in a book catering for adults which wasn’t an obvious didactic offering by an Islamic publisher that the problematic undercurrent of pro-Americanism was entirely lost on me. Suffice it to say, it’s now glaringly apparent to me that Hosseini posits America in turn as a utopia to escape from the primitive confines of ‘Muslim’ countries or as a justifiable saviour for helpless brown subjects steeped in a misery wrought by a culture and religion that just can’t help being innately antithetical to freedom and democracy.   

Still, I find myself grateful for reading those two books to this day. They were part of the impetus that reformed my understanding of geopolitics, history and current affairs into a decolonial gaze. Afghans weren’t all lurking in rugged, malevolent mountains with AK-47s clutched in their arms since birth, the genocide enacted by the Janjaweed in Darfur wasn’t ‘just an African problem,’ the Arab Spring was a reaction to protracted interference by Western powers, the Iraq War was… well… it wasn’t a fight against WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), the two-state solution would be a travesty for Palestinians. And so on. 

And, although I believe that every experience and piece of knowledge or insight we are served has a (sometimes hidden) good, I can’t say that the rest of my exposure to ‘Muslim’ literature has been as useful as the introduction. 

Upon its release, Fatima Farheen Mirza’s A Place For Us sounded immediately intriguing: it was about Indian Muslims in the diaspora, centred around family, and there didn’t appear to be a terrorist in sight. As soon as it was available, I snapped up a copy from the library, devouring it in a few short days. And hated it. Without giving too many spoilers, the book wasn’t convincing and may have needed a few more edits: the central conflict was too heavy-handed and a character who the reader was supposed to love and adore simply because Mirza told us to, was a deeply irritating, selfish brat. But perhaps most eye-rollingly disappointing of all was the treatment of one of the three siblings in the story. Huda, the middle child of the three, was the one I related to the most: I was a middle child myself, wore a hijab and had dealt with various issues related to reproductive health since puberty. What struck me in all this was how her hijab became an inference for her submissiveness and blind conservatism, despite there being so much potential to explore it as a symbol of resistance against racial bigotry and prejudice. She could have been a central figure, but instead, was consigned to a ghost thread woven in the narrative and finally tied up by a tiny, tidy footnote.

I felt let down and unseen. Invisible.

But that was a singular instance and surely with the publishing industry ‘diversifying,’ hijabi and practising Muslim women would be given their platform? Not quite. The disappointments kept recurring. Again and again and again and again.

When it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, I read Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, and where the rest of the plot blurs out of focus, what I remember vividly is the depiction of the two sisters, both of whom wore the hijab. It started with promise: the older sister, Isma, deals with the debilitating and silently shameful treatment she receives at the hands of the Transport Security Administration (TSA) when she arrives in America to study. But the apparently principled, intelligent and staunch woman is later ushered into a scene where it takes her just a little consideration and a lot of desperation to free herself of her hijab for a man whom she invites to her flat and who, it transpires later, only has sexual interest in her younger, ‘prettier’ sister. 

Then, just this year, I was influenced into buying Sufiyaan Salam’s debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz, which sounded stylistically unique and, being set in the north, contextually fresh. However, my misgivings came about only a few chapters in. When the three protagonists entered one of those shady Pakistani restaurants overrun by men, Salam described it as ‘the exact inverse of quranic depictions of hell,’ incorrectly imbuing a contentious hadith about women being the largest demographic in hell with the incontestable authority of divine scripture. In another moment, he described niqabi women as having ‘kohl’d eyes like postcard invitations reaching out through letterbox slits,’ which (giving him the benefit of the doubt) I chose to interpret as a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of Boris Johnson’s 2018 Islamophobic comments. However, the utter absence of any developed niqabi characters elsewhere in the book only served to cast the women as inhuman, shadowy forms – robbed entirely of humanity.

And this is the issue.

In a climate where Muslim women are increasingly deemed alien and unknowable, the continued lack of real development afforded to visibly Muslim women characters by Muslim authors is a betrayal.

You’d expect a little more integrity from them. Regardless of whether or not a critique of faith and cultural norms is a main theme of the story, it is disingenuous to leverage these women as mere plot devices and archetypes. This kind of tokenism has real-world implications, particularly as a large number of non-Muslims – fed the narrative that Muslim women are repressed, uneducated and untrustworthy – will never have any meaningful proximity or relationships with Muslims.

In fact, these false representations go further than tokenism. Rather, it enables some Muslim authors to espouse views imported from white feminism, and by extension, white superiority. In Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women, Shahed Ezaydi discusses a conversation she had with Koa Beck (author of White Feminism), who stated that ‘white feminism can be practised and asserted by anyone regardless of their racial identity.’ She goes on to say that she ‘intentionally chose the term “white feminism” for (her) argument because this is an approach to gender equality that ultimately asks you to aspire to whiteness and not equal rights.’ It isn’t that Muslims can’t be critical of their own faith and community, but that it becomes problematic when they parrot views that perpetuate harmful stereotypes. The hijab in particular suffers from a very negative reputation; Muslim women who wear it are already treated as pariahs forced into submitting to patriarchy. They are automatically uneducated, cowed, terrified or else brainwashed. So,

when stories are presented without a more nuanced and diverse representation of hijabi women, it can be argued that legitimacy is being given to stereotypical views when Muslims are the ones giving voice to them.

And, again, the cycle of harm continues as it becomes crystal clear that Muslim women are not trusted with their agency and that the hijab must be stripped off them. It seems that in this case, violation of the person cannot occur, as the object is very much in need of liberation. As Ezaydi states, ‘gendered Islamophobia at the heart of white feminism is inherently violent.’

The Real-World Consequences of Harmful Archetypes

Many of the Muslim women I know feel more unsafe and ostracised now than they ever have in their lives. As someone who can recall the aftermath of both 9/11 and 7/7, in which my father wore his Man City t-shirt everywhere to offset the long beard that marked him as a Muslim man, the air hangs more pregnant with hateful intent. According to a report conducted by Tell MAMA, ‘data shows a 103% increase in targeted anti-Muslim hate towards people who are visibly Muslim when comparing 2023 and 2024 data sources.’ That means that an upsurge in targeted hate occurred in just a single year; in fact, 2024 saw the highest number of recorded hate cases since the organisation’s founding in 2011/12. Not only that, but literally stepping outside your door feels threatening: since 2012, there has been an increase of 2,253% in the number of reported street-based violence. And knowing the lack of trust that many Muslims have in institutions, I can confidently say that many people don’t report when they’ve been victims of hate-based aggression.

In Veiled Threat: On Being Visibly Muslim in Britain by Nadeine Asbali,

the fear of a racist attack manifests in ‘not standing at the edge of the Tube platform because that video of a hijabi being thrown in front of an upcoming train is still etched into the insides of your eyelids.’

And it’s true: when I read these words, not only did I remember the grainy video instantly, without prompting, but it’s also the reason that I always stand against a wall or ensure no one is behind me when awaiting a train on the platform. 

It really does scare me. But I want to emphasise that my fear isn’t the point here. What matters is how obvious the rise in anti-Muslim hate across the UK is. It’s such a tangible threat that the UK government appointed a charity – the British Muslim Trust (BMT) – dedicated to monitoring the upsurge in Islamophobia. In 2025, the organisation published a report on the escalation of attacks against Muslims which confirmed that this was a nationwide issue, as ‘attacks occurred in 23 towns and cities across the UK.’ It really struck me, and a lot of other people, just how many attacks were carried out against mosques. Between July and October of last year, there were 27 verified attacks on mosques, including graffiti, hate signage, a projectile attack and arson. Recent BMT data shows that this has now more than tripled, with 70 incidents now being recorded; news outlets such as The Guardian and Novara Media reported that this translated as attacks occurring at an average of 1 every 5 days. Violence, the easy tool available to any Islamophobe, seems to lurk just around the corner. 

This mantle of violence is alarmingly taken up by Muslim men, who have long been disenfranchised and othered – as far back as Othello being dubbed a ‘Barbary horse’ whose allegedly bestial genetics would father children without a grasp of language. Quite aside from being cast as primitive, sexual predators or stupid brutes, a chronically online generation has found its mouthpieces in the form of figures spearheading and advocating for the manosphere. The apparent bravado of men such as Andrew Tate, Mohammed Hijab and Jordan Peterson, coupled with the idea of brotherhood in Islam, lulls many Muslim men viewing their content with a sense of purpose and solidarity. HOPE not hate, the leading organisation of anti-far-right advocacy in the UK, reported that in 2024 ‘51% of young Muslims support Tate,’ a number which climbed to 72% of young Muslim men when factoring in gender. 

This is all very troubling as these online personalities rely on a rhetoric that mythologises women as the antagonist, spurning men’s pursuit of dignity and success. As male anger builds against a feminism that allegedly yanks the stability the nuclear family seemed to hold for their fathers, a wedge widens between the two genders. The depiction of Muslim men as domestic tyrants continues in perpetuity. In Etaf Rum’s Evil Eye, although the protagonist is able to break from patriarchal control, violence in men is inherent and remains a curse that they cannot break from.

And so it is that white feminists feel justified in upholding the story of Muslim women being saved from their greatest aggressors, Muslim men, whether that means escaping from them, release from their faith or a removal of the hijab.

It would be refreshing, and maybe even revolutionary, to also see Muslim men portrayed with more nuance: as allies in the fight against racism, as unafraid to hold perpetrators of gender-based violence to account, as having a respectful relationship towards women they have a romantic connection with.

One would hope, then, that it would infiltrate reality. That life would imitate art.

Books That Get Representation Right

This is not to say that there are no Muslim-authored books that eschew the jaded alienation of hijabi Muslim women. The following are books which get it right; the central protagonists are all presented in a variety of ways and in different genres. In Leila Aboulela’s novel, Minaret, the reclamation of the protagonist’s faith is authentic to the worries and priorities that a practising Muslim woman faces. Additionally, Zoulfa Katouh’s second YA book, The Ocean Would Paint Me Blue, is set in New York and details the trauma that facing Islamophobic violence and cruelty can wreak upon a teenage girl. Then there’s also At Sea by Y.M. Abdel-Magied, the thriller in which the main character’s Muslim identity is only a matter of characterisation against the core conflict of being a female engineer in a male-dominated deep-sea rig that is both hostile and insular. There are also a slew of Muslim romance titles that, although a minuscule amount when compared to the variety of Regency romances, actually deliver a significant amount of choice for readers of the genre. Some of the romance and YA authors are now almost household names: S. K. Ali, Uzma Jalaluddin, Na’ima B Robert, whose characters navigate such issues as love, family dynamics, and self-worth, all with the Muslim gaze at the forefront.  

It can be easy to view these authors, who have had the courage to publish in a climate that is arguably hostile to visibly Muslim representation, as the standard bearers for every ‘hijabi’ woman, but the truth is that each story depicts only a cross-section of the Muslim woman experience. I should know, I have hundreds of documents on my computer with stories I’ve written detailing practising Muslim women of varied ages, situations and backgrounds.

The narrative of the visibly Muslim woman is no single thread, nor stitch or even tapestry – it’s incredibly diverse.

The Barriers to Writing Nuanced & Layered Muslim Characters 

As a writer who is yet unpublished, I find this aversion to writing intelligent, complex and faith-driven Muslim women doubly unsettling. You see, I don’t necessarily blame the authors for the lack of real representation. The trend, it is obvious to see, is to publish what is marketable to the masses. And faith, whether Muslim or not, doesn’t equate to sales. The 2024 UK Publishing Workforce: Diversity, inclusion and belonging report found that 61% of the respondents were non-religious and 2% identified as Muslim. Overall, people from ethnic minority groups made up 15%, a decrease of 2% since 2022. 

What all these numbers mean is that despite publicity, ethnic and religious diversity in publishing remains low and with a lack of representation in an industry that acts as the gatekeeper to publishing, the barriers to becoming a traditionally published Muslim author remain difficult. On top of that, according to the last census in England and Wales, undertaken in 2021, belief in a religion had dipped by 13.1% to 46.2% – for the first time, more of the population didn’t practice a religion than those who did. In a climate where profits matter most, taking risks with publishing marginalised stories is an easy decision not to take. If Muslim women themselves were to try publishing stories where they are both British and practising Muslims, the worry is that they wouldn’t succeed. The largest problem is the hijab and what it means to a Western gaze. 

So why is the veil so problematic to the West? Have you ever noticed one of the trump cards that ‘keyboard warriors’ defending the hijab like to deploy is that Catholic nuns are covered? It’s well-intentioned, but in the English-speaking world, Catholics have had a bad rep for centuries. King Henry the Eighth arguably started it all when he divorced himself (and his country) from the Pope, but I want to look at more recent history. The stories of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland, where pregnant, unmarried women and girls were hidden away from society so their families wouldn’t have to face the shame of their pregnancies, left a scar on the country that led many to feel a great discomfort with the institution of the Catholic church. These ‘laundries’ were run by nuns, who acted essentially as the jailers of the women and girls left with them. The idea of nuns, women already deemed as apart from the troubles and lives of ordinary people, became mired in a sort of austere secrecy and domination that was completely at odds with modern ideas of individual liberty. 

In literature, it’s enough to mention Atwood’s seminal The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood presents a theocratic regime where women’s subjugation is highlighted by their clothing, which includes a sort of wimple (like a nun’s head covering); the enduring popularity of this book and its more recent TV adaptation tell us how much it has hit home with modern audiences and their sensibilities. The rationale of these examples, originating in the Christian tradition, is transposed upon the hijab. 

But the hijab, it appears, doesn’t conform well. Although some Muslim women are undeniably confined to domestic labour and may be deemed ‘hidden’ from society, the truth is that the Muslim iteration of the veil does not also equate to isolation from society. In fact,

Islam is a community-based way of life, meaning that the hijab travels, walks down the street, enters cafes, hops onto the bus, sits behind the steering wheel, comes bleary-eyed into the office at 9.04 am.

Despite the literal, physical diversity of both hijab styles and the women who wear them, there tends to be an idea of all hijabi women being a monolith representing the same ideas, culture, class. Swathed in black. The truth is that even in my closest friendship group, you could pick us all out from a mile off. The hijab isn’t, like the nun’s habit, an indication that the woman is perhaps sequestered to a ‘nunnery.’ Of course, modern nuns may not also be hiding behind the grille of a monastery door, but the idea here is of public perception – what people believe. A nun’s story is told in black and white, by a history of secrecy. When a Western audience deems a hijabi woman as unknown, they don’t view it as a failure of normalisation, they view it as an inherent unseen, something they just can’t live with, a thing kept apart. Other. 

The work to undo this is an uphill climb. And a steep one. Normalisation begins with acknowledging that the hijab is more than someone’s assumptions about Muslim women’s oppression, that its iconography needs an overhaul, a reset that is directed by Muslim women themselves. That women in hijab are multifaceted and inhabit the same spaces as everyone else: they are Safa from accounting, Nusaybah in HR, Bismah at the local checkout till, Jenna who owns your favourite café, Laila from number 10 with the fudgy brownies – and also the compelling, dynamic protagonist in a book that isn’t about what she wears on her head. The hijab can be a symbol of faith, an introduction to a person’s identity, a political icon, but the terms by which it is presented need to be fixed by the pens of the women who wear it day after day.