Gendered Islamophobia casts Muslim men as terrorists and women as victims needing saving

Evidence

By “taking the veil,” the French state took its most strident step toward stripping its Muslims from a place in the nation. More specifically, it ushered in a new order of gendered Islamophobia bent on policing Muslim women’s bodies—women who were stereotyped as “powerless” beings oppressed by the “violent” Muslim males in their families. While Islamophobia imagined Muslim men as “terrorists,” its feminine dimensions cast Muslim women as imminent victims of that tyranny who desperately needed to be “saved” by the French state and its law. — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 702

Categorization

• XREF: Illuminates the save-the-women framing shared with colonial-era civilizing missions and modern anti-Muslim discourse; echoes the ‘white savior’ dynamic.
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the Complaints About Immodesty article’s cross-cultural moral panics: the French state’s ‘saving’ of Muslim women replays older sumptuary and modesty-policing patterns.