European states regulate Muslim citizens’ private lives through gender-equality laws

Evidence

The policing of Muslim communities in the name of gender equality is now a globally organized phenomenon, an argument I make in chapter 4 through an examination of Norwegian laws on forced marriages. Several European states have sought to regulate the conduct of Muslim populations in Europe in the name of protecting Muslim women from their violent communities. Typically, these initiatives are understood as necessary in order to forcibly ‘deculturalize’ feudal and hyper-patriarchal migrants to Europe who are Muslim. … Through such moves as regulating the age of consent and family reunification, European states create a category of citizen whose private life choices are controlled. For Muslims, public space is literally shrinking as they encounter constraints on their social and cultural practices that do not apply to other citizens. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 63

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how ‘protecting women’ language functions as a technology for carving out an unequal citizenship category in nominally liberal states.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing material on moral panics and on how high-minded ideals (propriety/dress, sacrifice) get weaponized for social control.