The moral imperative to address Muslim injustice can slide into endorsing Western civilizing missions

Evidence

Writers need the leeway to address any and all matters of concern, in particular those in which they feel a personal investment. However, Aslam’s response indicates the extent to which the default expectations engendered by topicality are never neutral, least of all when the subject matter is what is commonly deemed Muslim religious or cultural behavior. In the hands of more ideological writers, the moral imperative to address injustice becomes almost inseparable from wholesale endorsement of the neoimperial civilizing mission of the United States. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 26

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘subject matter is never neutral’ principle is a test one can run against a novel’s treatment of violence toward women or political repression — does the corrective framework reintroduce the civilizing mission? — connects to: American Orientalism justifies therapeutic violence against Arabs as civilizing mission — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 235; The civilizing mission frames privileged imposition on the ruled as an honorable burden. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 248