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.

QUESTION: This highlights a common Orientalist framing worth interrogating — how does this dehumanizing journalism shape policy or public sympathy?

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 516