Gender is a central axis along which Islamophobic discourse operates

Evidence

More specifically, by focusing on women, I advance several interconnected arguments, focusing on Muslim women as objects of Islamophobic discourse; women as producers of Islamophobic discourse; and on some of the complications involved in delineating where Islamophobia begins and ends. I argue that Muslim women occupy “center stage” in Islamophobic discourse in two distinct and contradicting ways: As objects of hate crimes and discrimination, Muslim women have Islamophobia mapped onto them directly and as representations of Muslims in American society; as objects of anti-Islamic discourse Muslim women are represented as victims of their religion, culture, and Muslim men, and thus in need of saving, liberation, and intervention. Women as producers of Islamophobic discourse, both non-Muslim and Muslim, justify the second set of discourses in the service of a range of political goals, and, their own gender matters for the effectiveness and impact of their arguments. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 492

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the chapter’s analytical framework of ‘gendered Islamophobia’ with its three prongs.
• XREF: The ‘saving Muslim women’ move parallels the author’s earlier work and Gayatri Spivak’s ‘white men saving brown women from brown men.’