Britain framed Gulf maritime conflict as Wahhabi piracy to justify imperial control.

Evidence

Throughout the nineteenth century British imperial policy met numerous challenges to their dominance of trade. Both piracy and Wahhabism were at the forefront of this challenge. They were both viewed as a threat to empire and to British dominance in spaces of strategic importance for global trade. In the Persian Gulf, nearly all maritime conflict involving Sunni Arabs was categorised as piratical and inspired by so named Wahhabism from Central Arabia. — Robin Alexander Plant, Discuss the Relationship Between…, 4

Categorization

• SEED: Argue that ‘piracy’ was an administrative category Britain used to convert commercial rivals into outlaws — a legal fiction with modern echoes in counterterrorism designations.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how moral panic labels (immodest dress, barbarous ritual) function as class and identity signaling; here the label is ‘pirate’ rather than ‘immodest’.