Gendered Islamophobia in American War Narratives: From the Barbary Coast to the Graveyard of Empires

Abstract

In many American narratives on Islam, Muslim women are depicted as oppressed victims of their own cultures—symbols of the cultural values that America and ‘the West’ proclaim as abhorrent; damsels in distress that can only be rescued from their pitiful state by an invading outside force. This chapter shows how early accounts of enslavement, torture, and the deprivation of women’s rights that served to justify and heighten sea battles in the early 1800s are similar to stories that the Bush Administration used to justify its foreign policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how Muslim women were configured into the foreign policies of the Obama administration as it dealt with the Arab Spring and the rise of militant groups like Boko Haram and ISIS. The United States and Europe cast their interactions with the Barbary pirates and their legitimacy in fighting against them through the lens of oppression. The oppression of women was a particularly tempting and useful topic to engage as the West sought to present itself to the world as a beacon of freedom, liberty, and justice. The earliest resonances of Muslims and their relationships with women align with Islamophobic narratives that frame our understanding of the so-called War on Terror today. These discursive practices are not necessarily part of a driving central mission but are deployed as a means of encouraging support for war positions and strategies that are otherwise viewed with public scepticism. The net result is a marriage of imperial aims and Islamophobic narratives that perpetuates a climate of mistrust towards and loathing of American Muslims.