European women’s travel writing both echoed and contested myths about Muslim women’s oppression

Evidence

Broadly speaking, the thesis of the discourse on Islam blending a colonialism committed to male dominance with feminism—the thesis of the new colonial discourse of Islam centered on women— was that Islam was innately and immutably oppressive to women, that the veil and segregation epitomized that oppression, and that these customs were the fundamental reasons for the general and comprehensive backwardness of Islamic societies. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 504 (#contradicts, 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 (#expands, via linked claim)

His ostensible purpose in the book is to prove that travel in the Orient is important to “moulding of your character—that is, your very identity,” but in fact this turns out to be little more than solidifying “your” anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and general all-purpose race prejudice. We are told, for instance, that the Arabian Nights is too lively and inventive a work to have been created by a “mere Oriental, who, for creative purposes, is a thing dead and dry—a mental mummy.” Although Kinglake blithely confesses to no knowledge of any Oriental language, he is not constrained by ignorance from making sweeping generalizations about the Orient, its culture, mentality, and society. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 493 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Reading Muslim women’s plight as proof of Islamic depravity traces to colonial feminism — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209; Orientalist travel writing solidifies race prejudice rather than conveying knowledge — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 493; Colonial feminism framed Islam as innately oppressive to women — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 504

Broader Connections

• Colonial feminism framed Islam as innately oppressive to women #contradicts (0.80) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 504
• Reading Muslim women’s plight as proof of Islamic depravity traces to colonial feminism #expands (0.78) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 209
• Orientalist travel writing solidifies race prejudice rather than conveying knowledge #exemplifies (0.72) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 493