Zayn Malik And Racism In One Direction

By Guest Contributor Marwa Hamad

One Direction member Zayn Malik. Via IrishCentral.com

I’ll admit it: I am a 22 year old part-time music journalist and full-time social-justice activist who gets relentlessly mocked on a daily basis for my immense and unwavering love for a little boy band sensation known as One Direction. If the glossy poster plastered by my work station of five UK boys grinning goofily at me is any indication, my loyalty as an over-aged fan of these kids is a truth that I’ve come to embrace.

The biggest chunk of this appreciation can be attributed to the fact that, for the first time in a long time, I actually feel represented in popular culture as an Arab, Muslim, and “brown” woman. Zayn Malik, the only Muslim person of colour in the band, is someone I can look to and think, you and I might have a thing or two in common. From reading his bandmates’ tweets about taking him out to Eid dinner, to seeing the Arabic script inked across the 19-year-old’s collarbone, I’ve found somewhat of a happy place in Zayn’s presence within the white-dominated world of mainstream pop music. I am now able to watch TV, listen to the radio, and open magazines to find something I can relate to for a change.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, or at least be horrendously tainted by the obvious fact that the inclusion of a Muslim person of colour in a boy band doesn’t mean the exclusion of racist undertones in the way that the media, the public, and his management choose to pigeonhole him.

In one of Zayn’s most recent interviews with the English magazine Fabulous, he talked about his decision to temporarily deactivate his Twitter in August stemming from Islamophobic comments he’d been receiving.

“Nasty things [were being said on Twitter] like I was a terrorist. How can you justify that? How can you call me that and get away with it?” Zayn said. “We live in 2012 and I thought we’d moved forward.”

I can’t speak on behalf of Zayn with regards to his experiences and wouldn’t dream to, but I can speak of the way that the past few months of being a racialized fan have left me feeling upset, queasy and, quite frankly, more than a little angry. I will even attempt to do so without talking about that one time an extreme right-wing columnist said Zayn was pimping Islam on people’s children through his “boy band Jihad” and that the only direction he was facing was Mecca–because I’m still not entirely sure what in the sweet heavens the author meant and if she was even sober when she wrote the piece.

Money-Making Move: The Mysterious Bad Boy

Via Brit-Asian.com

Since the start of One Direction, it was clear that Zayn’s keepers had hand-picked him to be the mysterious, brooding bad boy with an unpredictable streak. He was the group’s A.J. McLean, the Donnie Wahlberg. After all, Malik had tattoos (gasp!), smoked cigarettes (oh my!), and was caught flipping the bird to a pap one night (sound the alarms–this guy is on the loose!).

At first, I went along with it. As someone who enjoys wearing the occasional pair of combat boots and a good leather jacket that screams “I’m a rebel, fear my wrath,” I enjoyed seeing someone that I could relate to on a cultural level also rocking a pair of Doc Martins, skintight black jeans, and a perma-scowl to make clear his zero-tolerance attitude for any funny business.

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