Bringing situated knowledges, Islamic values, and identity into the newsroom: Muslim female journalists in Canadian media and counter-narratives to Islamophobic discourse

This paper explores the experiences of Muslim women in Canadian journalism. Through a critical discourse analysis of qualitative interviews with eight Muslim female journalists, this research elucidates their experiences with a gendered-religious nuance considering the specificities of gendered Islamophobia. It further moves past the established discourse of racialized women in media facing burdens of representation to examine how they unite their lived experience as Muslim women with journalism epistemology to challenge gendered Islamophobic discourses and unite Islamic values with journalistic practice. Drawing on theoretical frameworks like critical race theory and Orientalism, this research ultimately finds that the women challenge dominant discourses of objectivity in journalism and Islamophobic discourses surrounding Muslim women. They accomplish this by drawing on Islamic principles in their professional practice, ultimately contesting a key tenet of Islamophobic, Orientalizing discourse that establishes Islam as antithetical to Western values and Muslims as unable to integrate into increasingly secular Western society.