Evangelical rescue approaches fail because they never name violence’s structural causes

Evidence

Fadime Sahindal was murdered by her father. How do we keep her murder in mind at the same time that we remember what it can mean to those who are anxious to draw a line in the sand between barbaric Muslims and civilized Europeans? As I have written elsewhere, strategies to confront violence against women, of the kind Fadime Sahindal died from, fail if they mostly work to instal the colour line between modern white subjects and pre-modern non-white subjects, between those who help and those who require assistance. Strategies born of such evangelical impulses seldom undermine the structures and practices that both give rise to and sustain violence against women for the simple reason that such structures are not even acknowledged. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 338

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Supports the ‘On Sacrifice’ and grievance articles’ shared thread that violence interventions aimed at ‘saving’ targets miss structural sources; also directly relevant to how feminist rescue rhetoric displaces material analysis.