Feminist positioning becomes a justification for imperial invasion of Muslim lands.

Evidence

What marks these popular books as emblematic of the post-9/11 era is their authors’ positioning as feminist and their common insistence that the violence Muslim women endure at the hands of Muslim men is not only an indicator of barbarism but, more importantly, a reason to invade, occupy, and civilize Muslim communities. In tracing the role that gender plays in the ideological justifications underpinning the American bid for empire, I show how white nations are invited into the project of empire as members of a superior race, a race distinguished by a commitment to gender equality, democracy, and human rights. Here Muslims are imagined as camp inmates by virtue of being insufficiently modern, a condition that is assumed to be innate. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 62

Categorization

• XREF: Builds directly on the reader’s article ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — the civilizing narrative about saving Muslim women is the modern face of the dress-and-modesty moral panics. — connects to: Cassin used women’s status to justify withholding rights from Muslim colonies — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 270; Orientalist binaries made imperial intervention in Muslim societies seem morally obligatory. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 184; Imperial feminism frames saving Muslim women as the West’s civilizing mission — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 294 (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the immodesty article’s thesis: the moralized female body remains the battleground where civilizing missions are justified.