Media-cultivated outrage at Islam’s oppression of women justifies US military intervention.

Evidence

Outrage is an emotion that carries vast political potential. If we are outraged at the treatment of the oppressed Muslim woman, we are far more likely to support U.S. interventions in Muslim countries in the name of saving the women. The U.S. media participates in encouraging a particular form of outrage—outrage at the oppressive nature of Islam—while other forms of outrage are intentionally left absent, namely, that the United States has played a significant role in creating Islamic fundamentalism and current conflicts including 9/11 and the War on Terror. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 821

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘On Sacrifice’ article’s concern with how ritualized emotional narratives legitimate political violence, here applied to gendered humanitarianism as a justification for war.
• SEED: Angle: ‘the weaponization of feminist outrage’ — how a specific emotional register (outrage at Muslim men as savior narrative) is deliberately curated while the US’s own causal role in the conflicts is selected out.
• XREF: connects to: Media imagery ties Islam to violence against women to justify intervention