A narrative about Muslim women’s oppression only emerged with European colonialism

Evidence

Many scholars have written about what has variously been called “colonial feminism,” “gendered Orientalism,” and “imperial feminism.” With its origins in European colonialism (see Chapter 1), this ideological framework rests on the construction of a barbaric misogynistic “Muslim world” that must be civilized by a liberal, enlightened West. As postcolonial studies scholar Gayatri Spivak famously put it, the narrative was of “White-men-saving-brown-women-from-brown-men.” Commenting on Europe’s nineteenth-century obsession with Muslim women, Lockman states that there “is no subject connected with Islam which Europeans have thought more important than the condition of Muslim women.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 306 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Leila Ahmed has identified the colonial basis of this trope, pointing out that the tendency to read the plight of the Muslim woman as indicative of the corruption of the entirety of Muslim culture has its roots in the discourse of colonial feminism employed by imperialists such as Lord Cromer, the consul general of Egypt and no friend of feminist campaigners at home in Britain, to castigate Arab Muslim society for its backwardness on the basis of its treatment of its womenfolk. … Lila Abu-Lughod takes up and extends this point, indicating how such “culturalist” explanations for women’s oppression—which lay the blame squarely at the door of Islam—conveniently ignore the longer, entangled histories of the evolution of certain social systems, a story that, given the legacies of colonialism, the Cold War, and globalization, ought really to include Western support for the repressive regimes that have allowed such ideologies to thrive. … In works such as those I analyze here, which totally omit any consideration of previous U.S. interference in each nation’s affairs, selective decontextualization allows the author to attribute all the abuses we see to a brute named “Islam” that works everywhere to curtail human rights. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Leila Ahmed has identified the colonial basis of this trope, pointing out that the tendency to read the plight of the Muslim woman as indicative of the corruption of the entirety of Muslim culture has its roots in the discourse of colonial feminism employed by imperialists such as Lord Cromer, the consul general of Egypt and no friend of feminist campaigners at home in Britain, to castigate Arab Muslim society for its backwardness on the basis of its treatment of its womenfolk. Ahmed comments on how the same set of assumptions pervades even academic feminist scholarship: “To this day, the struggle against the veil and towards westernization and the abandoning of backward and oppressive Arab Muslim ways … is [sic] still commonly the framestory [sic] within which Western-based studies of Arab women, including feminist studies, are presented.” Lila Abu-Lughod takes up and extends this point, indicating how such “culturalist” explanations for women’s oppression—which lay the blame squarely at the door of Islam—conveniently ignore the longer, entangled histories of the evolution of certain social systems, a story that, given the legacies of colonialism, the Cold War, and globalization, ought really to include Western support for the repressive regimes that have allowed such ideologies to thrive. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The rescue-of-Muslim-women narrative originated in European colonialism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 306; Colonial feminism framed Islam as innately oppressive to women — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 504; Reading Muslim women’s plight as proof of Islamic depravity traces to colonial feminism — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The rescue-of-Muslim-women narrative originated in European colonialism #corroborates (1.00) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 306
• Reading Muslim women’s plight as proof of Islamic depravity traces to colonial feminism #corroborates (0.90) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209
• Colonial feminism framed Islam as innately oppressive to women #expands (0.85) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 504
• Reading Muslim women’s plight as cultural corruption has colonial roots #corroborates (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209
• Changing European society, not Muslim women, drove the oppression image #complicates (0.80)
• Imperial feminism framed Western intervention as rescuing Muslim women from Muslim men #expands (0.80)