Hashtagging Islam: #JeSuisHijabi, social media, and religious/secular identities in the lives of Muslims in Winnipeg and St. John's, Canada

Abstract

In the fall of 2015, after a Canadian federal election rife with negative rhetoric toward Muslims and a concurrent rise in anti-Muslim incidents that occurred alongside November terrorist attacks in Paris, the Canadian Ahmadiyya Muslim community launched a Twitter hashtag campaign called #JeSuisHijabi. With it, the organization stated that it aimed to challenge misconceptions of Islam and Islamic garb that led to anti-Muslim attacks across Canada. An offline campaign accompanied the hashtag; information booths sought to teach non-Muslims about Islam and the hijab, while encouraging them to try on the garment. With analysis of tweets generated with the hashtag #JeSuisHijabi and consideration of qualitative interviews conducted with Muslims in Winnipeg, MB and St. John’s, NL on their use (or not) of hashtags and the Internet in general, I show that the way in which some Canadian Muslims use hashtags to communicate identity complicates the so-called separation between religious and secular spheres. This thesis argues that “religious” hashtags can complicate common notions of a religious/secular binary at work in contemporary Canada, and can serve as a means to understand everyday religiosity in the public sphere.