Western journalists describe veiled Muslim women as faceless victims lacking personhood

Evidence

Maureen Dowd, columnist for the New York Times, described Saudi Arabia as a “suffocating, strict, monochromatic world of white-robed men and black-robed women.” She characterized the women as “faceless” and “ghostly,” suggesting that their humanity is covered up by their black robes. Referring to the “ghostly women” of the United Arab Emirates, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle made this point more explicitly: “Sometimes you can see their faces. Sometimes just their eyes. Sometimes you see nothing at all of the humans beneath the black shrouds.” A reporter for the Toronto Star described the horror she felt at the sight of Muslim women wearing chadors in Paris: “Those dead, shuttered, hollowed-eyed faces were the ugliest image of enslavement I have ever seen.” She added that such a sight “was literally sickening.” All of these descriptions share in common the assumption that Muslim women who wear the veil lack both an individual identity and a full sense of personhood. They are passive, voiceless victims who deserve our pity but otherwise have nothing to offer us except an opportunity to play the role of savior. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 516

Categorization

• XREF: The savior-narrative vocabulary directly echoes the author’s earlier chapter themes about Western rescue discourse toward Muslims. — connects to: Native informants trace Muslim women’s oppression to Islam’s alleged lack of critical thought — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 476; Western media frames Islam chiefly through terrorism and women’s oppression. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 499; Western media depicts Muslim women solely as passive victims stripped of agency — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 510 (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Circulating veiled-woman imagery deadens Westerners’ sense of Muslim women’s diversity #expands (0.85) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 394
• Gendered Islamophobia imposes the most distorted stereotypes on veiled Muslim women. #corroborates (0.80)
• Media coverage of Muslim women collapses them into an oppressed-or-dangerous binary #expands (0.75) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 407
• Rare positive portrayals of Muslims cannot offset the dominant dehumanizing narrative #corroborates (0.75)
• The veil ban discourse silences Muslim women’s own autonomous voices #expands (0.70) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 167
• Western discourse displaces Muslim threats onto obsessing over women’s clothing #expands (0.70) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 356
• The perceived threats posed by female Muslim converts challenge false stereotypes about oppressed Muslim women and create fear for nationalists by challenging Western societal norms of… #complicates (0.65)
• The hijab-oppresses-women narrative is sexist and contradicts surveyed Muslim women #contradicts (0.60) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 373
• Many similar articles to Booth’s story have been written by women such as Theresa Corbin, a white convert living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Corbin wrote an article in 2014 for CNN titled I’m a… #complicates (0.60)