Neoconservative discourse exploits women’s rights to mark Islam as foreign.

Evidence

This section discusses several examples of Islamophobic discourse in which the oppression of Muslim women by Islam takes center stage. This oppression takes many forms, but it is emphasized, written, and spoken about, and publicized by a range of actors from Newt Gingrich to Pamela Geller and Phyllis Chesler. And it serves a neoconservative and right-wing agenda to mark Islam as a religion not only foreign to the United States but also threatening the very foundations of its society. The assumed gender inequality and oppression of women by Islam is juxtaposed with a quintessentially American gender-egalitarianism and respect for women’s rights that can only be described as ironic in the face of recent political developments regarding women’s reproductive rights in the months leading up to the 2012 presidential elections. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 532

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core thesis that Islamophobia relocates the problem to the frightened subject — here the ‘protector’ of women serves as a vehicle for marking Muslims as foreigners.

Related

• Islamophobia discourse weaponizes Muslim women’s oppression for a neoconservative agenda (similarity 0.95)
• Islamophobic discourse weaponizes Muslim women’s oppression to mark Islam as foreign and threatening (similarity 0.92)
• Islamophobic discourse uses Muslim women as pawns to serve imperial and domestic agendas (similarity 0.90)
• Feminist rhetoric can function as a tool of imperial and nationalist agendas (similarity 0.85)
• Gender is a central axis along which Islamophobic discourse operates (similarity 0.85)
• Western women’s post-feminist agency is constructed against the figure of the oppressed Muslim woman. (similarity 0.85)
• Islamophobic rhetoric uses Muslim women’s oppression to justify war (similarity 0.84)
• Blaming Islam for oppression omits Western support for repressive regimes (similarity 0.84)
• Liberal and far-right Islamophobia converge on gender rights claims against Muslim culture (similarity 0.83)
• Islamophobic discourse addresses Muslim men while reducing women to objects (similarity 0.83)
• Gender has been severely neglected in Islamophobia scholarship (similarity 0.83)
• Feminist discourse becomes Islamophobic when it abandons critique for rescue (similarity 0.82)
• Islamophobia fuses religious bigotry, racism, and gender stereotypes (similarity 0.82)
• Islamophobic rhetoric becomes hardest to challenge when feminist spokespersons adopt it (similarity 0.82)
• Muslim women are central to Islamophobia as both targets and producers of it (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Islamophobic discourse uses Muslim women as pawns to serve imperial and domestic agendas #corroborates (0.90) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 542
• Some American feminism serves imperial goals toward Muslim women. #corroborates (0.85) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 560
• Gendered Islamophobia intersects feminist, antiracist, and neoconservative agendas simultaneously. #expands (0.80) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 583
• Bush-era discourse gendered Muslim others as incapable of self-determination #exemplifies (0.75) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 47
• Western discourse displaces Muslim threats onto obsessing over women’s clothing #expands (0.70) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 356