Gendered Islamophobia casts Muslim women as victims needing state rescue

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: The ‘saving Muslim women from Muslim men’ frame appears throughout French, US, and Indian Islamophobia discourse — connects to Abu-Lughod’s critique of ‘saving’ in the War on Terror.