French state Islamophobia targets Muslim women while citing their liberation from Muslim men

Evidence

Despite what women accomplish or achieve, French Islamophobia espouses that unrelenting, violent trope: that tyrannical Muslim men lord it over their women, holding the hijab in one hand and a balled fist in the other, stripping them of their individuality and stealing their autonomy. … In essence, French Islamophobia is shaped by fears of hypermasculine and brutal Muslim men that the state longs to quell and kill, like it did in 2005, when policemen murdered Benna and Traore. But it is directly enforced upon the bodies of Muslim women, whom the state polices with impunity in order to “liberate” them from the oppressive hands of their fathers and husbands. “The dominant discourse in France is that the hijab is an oppressive tool used by Muslim men to hide and silence Muslim women,” writes French Muslim intellectual Rokhaya Diallo. “This is why, when French Muslim women come out and say that they choose to cover their heads in public spaces, their agency to make this decision is being questioned.” This French obsession with the hijab, and the female Muslim body that it adorns, has devolved into a legal psychosis hallmarked by the headscarf ban. As feminist scholar Gayatri Spivak famously stated, “White men [joined by white women] saving brown women from brown men” characterizes the logic of state-sponsored Islamophobia in France. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 717

Categorization

• XREF: Spivak’s ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’ directly parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ article’s thesis on dress-policing as identity signaling.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — French headscarf policing is a contemporary instantiation of state-imposed dress norms as identity control.