Colonial feminism used saving Muslim women to justify imperialism

Evidence

While sexually repressed Europe was fascinated and titillated by Muslim marriage customs even during medieval times, there was no systematic discussion of women and Islam until the nineteenth century. Commenting on Europe’s nineteenth-century obsession with Muslim women, one scholar stated that there “is no subject connected with Islam which Europeans have thought more important than the condition of Muslim women.” The dominant narrative that emerged was one that presented Muslim women as severely subjugated, oppressed, and little more than slaves. Just as the Muslim despots tyrannized their subjects, it was argued, they also tyrannized their wives and daughters. As various scholars have shown, in reality the European men who wrote about the plight of Muslim women had little access to these women to verify their assumptions. Coterminous accounts by Western women of the Muslim women they encountered reveal a more complex reality. Nevertheless, this narrative of the oppressed brown woman serviced the colonial enterprise. Western men could now ride off in their jodhpurs and pith helmets to rescue them. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 164 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Most women involved in the recent move toward a feminist revolution assume that white women have initiated all feminist resistance to male chauvinism in American society, and further assume that black women are not interested in women’s liberation. While it is true that white women have led every movement toward feminist revolution in American society, their dominance is less a sign of black female disinterest in feminist struggle than an indication that the politics of colonization and racial imperialism have made it historically impossible for black women in the United States to lead a women’s movement. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 464 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial administration targeted starving women first with anti-veil propaganda.; Kabyle women’s non-veiling became a colonial propaganda tool to divide Arabs and Berbers — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 239; Nineteenth-century Orientalism essentialized Muslims as intrinsically inferior during colonial expansion. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 201 (+22 more)

Related

• Colonial administration targeted starving women first with anti-veil propaganda. (similarity 0.91)
• A narrative about Muslim women’s oppression only emerged with European colonialism (similarity 0.90)
• The oppressed-Muslim-woman narrative was fabricated to justify colonial invasion. (similarity 0.90)
• The rescue-of-Muslim-women narrative originated in European colonialism (similarity 0.88)
• Imperial feminism frames saving Muslim women as the West’s civilizing mission (similarity 0.88)
• Victorian feminism was weaponized to justify colonial rule over Muslim societies (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial administrators framed Islam as inherently degrading women. (similarity 0.87)
• Victorian-Europe discourse reduced Muslim women to harem objects or helpless slaves (similarity 0.86)
• Imperial feminism framed Muslim women as needing rescue by a liberal West (similarity 0.86)
• Colonial feminism framed Islam as innately oppressive to women (similarity 0.85)
• Western feminism’s emancipatory desire is complicit with colonial power (similarity 0.85)
• Imperial feminism justifies conquest without improving colonized women’s conditions (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial-native feminist rhetoric aimed to train women as caregivers, not liberate them (similarity 0.84)
• Colonial rhetoric weaponized other men’s sexism to justify cultural erasure (similarity 0.82)
• Feminist positioning becomes a justification for imperial invasion of Muslim lands. (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The oppressed-Muslim-woman narrative was fabricated to justify colonial invasion. #corroborates (0.75) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 164
• White dominance in feminism reflects racial imperialism, not black disinterest #expands (0.55) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 464