Just because you have millions of followers, doesn’t make you right. And just because you wear a hijab, doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want without being scrutinised. But most of all, if you have a public platform and use it to build your brand and business, you should expect to be fully accountable for what you say.
This is the story of Kuwaiti blogger Sondos Al Qattan, her comments about Filipino domestic workers and the subsequent backlash.
What we should hope for from this sorry tale is that it becomes a turning point in our public conversation, shedding light on serious social problems surrounding domestic workers’ rights and true empowerment for all women.
After complaining to her 2.3 million followers about maids having one day off each week and holding on to their own passports, because if they run away “who will refund me?”, Ms Al Qattan sought to silence her critics by explaining that she does pay her workers and doesn’t beat them.
This hardly seems worth applauding. I’d hope Ms Al Qattan can see the irony in fighting for her own autonomy while being complicit in crushing that of other women.
She has been dropped by the beauty brands for whom she acts as an ambassador. While comments on her social media are blocked, she has just posted images of herself decked in a heavy gold necklace and bangles. From someone who has quibbled about a domestic worker's day off and "refunds", the pictures seem distasteful.
The first result of this episode must be that protecting the rights of workers is put firmly on the agenda. But more significantly, the respect and perception of workers must radically shift. They are not objects, but real human beings.
Ms Al Qattan has also just released a statement asking why her critics are not talking about humanitarian crises elsewhere. It's simple: to say that one day off a week is excessive, to hold a worker's passport so they can't "escape" and to demand a refund in exchange for a human being is a humanitarian crisis.
Next, she has claimed that the criticism she's facing is an attack on Kuwait, the hijab and Islam as a whole. She's wrong. This is a criticism of Ms Al Qattan's specific and toxic attitudes, which as it happens are in contravention of Islam's guidelines on treating people with respect and dignity.
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Read more from Shelina Janmohamed:
Today too many men are migrating to the dark side
Make your selfies the souvenir, not the experience, at this year's Hajj
This week a group of online trolls tried to drive me from public life. I won't let them win
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There are many women like Ms Al Qattan who in the past decade have orchestrated a positive shift in the public presence and depiction of Muslim hijabi women. This has been a welcome development.
And yet while a Muslim hijabi might be breaking down barriers and prejudice, she can still be complicit in the oppression of others.
The bottom line is this. Building your own "liberation" on the backs of others is not a form of empowerment. Influencers and advocates (whether explicit or implicit) of freeing women from traditional constraints – as the rise of the female Muslim hijabi influencer has been all about – cannot do so at the expense of other women.
And just because you are female, Muslim, brown, Arab or hijabi and therefore suffer systemic discrimination – including abuse levelled at the hijab to justify Islamophobia – it doesn't mean you can't be a proponent of systemic injustice. If women who are "breaking barriers" are to mean anything, then it means breaking them for everyone.
This is a very clear example of how privilege comes in different guises. Once can be both discriminated against and a perpetrator of inequality, at the same time. As women, we need to avoid building our own "freedom" and "equality" off the backs of other women.
And so if freedom and equality for women is to mean anything, it must mean women interrogating their own actions.
Dear Ms Al Qattan, as hard as it is to admit, the comments you made equated human beings to objects. Your hijab, your millions of followers and the many barriers you might have demolished don’t offer immunity from holding views which – and I’m sorry to use harsh words – are utterly abhorrent.
Please don’t hide behind your hijab. You have a chance here to do some soul searching and then to use your platform to make a truly radical transformation to the lives of millions of people and to make a paradigm shift in one of our most urgent global conversations about the rise of modern slavery.
If you are truly in the business of influencing to make life better for women, by changing opinions, then the first one you need to change is your own.
Shelina Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World
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Indoor cricket in a nutshell
Indoor Cricket World Cup - Sep 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
16 Indoor cricket matches are 16 overs per side
8 There are eight players per team
9 There have been nine Indoor Cricket World Cups for men. Australia have won every one.
5 Five runs are deducted from the score when a wickets falls
4 Batsmen bat in pairs, facing four overs per partnership
Scoring In indoor cricket, runs are scored by way of both physical and bonus runs. Physical runs are scored by both batsmen completing a run from one crease to the other. Bonus runs are scored when the ball hits a net in different zones, but only when at least one physical run is score.
Zones
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
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Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
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Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
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- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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Cricket World Cup League 2 Fixtures
Saturday March 5, UAE v Oman, ICC Academy (all matches start at 9.30am)
Sunday March 6, Oman v Namibia, ICC Academy
Tuesday March 8, UAE v Namibia, ICC Academy
Wednesday March 9, UAE v Oman, ICC Academy
Friday March 11, Oman v Namibia, Sharjah Cricket Stadium
Saturday March 12, UAE v Namibia, Sharjah Cricket Stadium
UAE squad
Ahmed Raza (captain), Chirag Suri, Muhammad Waseem, CP Rizwan, Vriitya Aravind, Asif Khan, Basil Hameed, Rohan Mustafa, Kashif Daud, Zahoor Khan, Junaid Siddique, Karthik Meiyappan, Akif Raja, Rahul Bhatia
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More coverage from the Future Forum
The candidates
Dr Ayham Ammora, scientist and business executive
Ali Azeem, business leader
Tony Booth, professor of education
Lord Browne, former BP chief executive
Dr Mohamed El-Erian, economist
Professor Wyn Evans, astrophysicist
Dr Mark Mann, scientist
Gina MIller, anti-Brexit campaigner
Lord Smith, former Cabinet minister
Sandi Toksvig, broadcaster
Scoreline
Liverpool 3
Mane (7'), Salah (69'), Firmino (90')
Bournemouth 0
Omar Yabroudi's factfile
Born: October 20, 1989, Sharjah
Education: Bachelor of Science and Football, Liverpool John Moores University
2010: Accrington Stanley FC, internship
2010-2012: Crystal Palace, performance analyst with U-18 academy
2012-2015: Barnet FC, first-team performance analyst/head of recruitment
2015-2017: Nottingham Forest, head of recruitment
2018-present: Crystal Palace, player recruitment manager
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Springtime in a Broken Mirror,
Mario Benedetti, Penguin Modern Classics
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Rating:**
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