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Abstract: For far too long, “unveiling” has been the subject of imperial fetish and Muslim women the expedients for western war. This Article reclaims the term and serves the liberatory mission of reimagining how Islamophobia distinctly impacts Muslim women. By crafting a theory of gendered Islamophobia centering Muslim women rooted in law, this Article disrupts legal discourses that presume that its principal subjects—and victims—are Muslim men. In turn, this approach lifts Muslim women from the margins to the marrow of scholarly analysis.
Gendered Islamophobia theory holds that state and societal tropes ascribed to Muslim women are oppositional to those assigned to Muslim men. It elucidates how prevailing ideas of “submissiveness” and “subordination” attached to Muslim womanhood, and the grand aim of “liberating Muslim women” that follows, are rooted in an imperial epistemology that caricatures Muslim men as “violent,” “oppressive,” and “tyrannical.” This discourse of “masculine Islamophobia” drives War on Terror rhetoric and policy, and shapes how scholars imagine and then examine subjects of Islamophobia. This scholarly fixation on Muslim masculinity first, isolates Muslim men as the presumptive targets of Islamophobia; second, overlooks the distinct ideas that drive “feminine Islamophobia” and the specific injuries it levies upon Muslim women; and third, perpetuates the erasure of female experiences with systems of Islamophobia from scholarly view.
Beyond unveiling theory, this Article also contributes original empirical data highlighting how Islamophobia differentially unfolds along gender lines. Finally, to illustrate the law’s role in producing gendered Islamophobia, this Article examines six cases within three areas of critical concern: first, hijab bans and state regulation of Muslim women’s bodies; second, terrorism prosecution; and third, immigration and asylum adjudication.
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