Said argued that this knowledge was used to support an imperialist agenda, pointing to the ways in which foreign policy was influenced by Western scholarship that produced an understanding of the Middle East as savage, untamed, and uncivilized. These cultural images painted Arab and Muslim men as barbaric by showing Arab women in subservient and hypersexualized roles, such as in a harem. These Orientalist images have always been gendered, with men depicted as having innate violent tendencies toward their own women. The portrait of men as inherently abusive was used to justify the conquest and colonization of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East on the grounds that it would benefit from a civilizing hand (Said 2014).

XREF: Connects to Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) and broader postcolonial theory; also relates to critiques of media representations.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 28