ABSTRACT

Civilization narratives have always included discussions of the treatment of women. Although often perceived as the backbones of cultural transmission and as protectors of tradition, women are sometimes also seen as making vulnerable the same traditions they teach to new generations. B. Mazlish has noticed that ‘in almost all discussions of civilisation since its conceptualisation by Mirabeau, the status of women has been mooted as the measure of the level of civilisation’. The chapter provides some examples of how ‘civilizers’ among both Muslims and Western non-Muslims use the rhetoric of gender in their struggles to civilize. Bracke, in an article titled ‘From “saving women” to “saving gays”: Rescue narratives and their dis/continuities’, provides a convincing argument that the rhetoric of saving gays from Muslims is a parallel version of saving Muslim women from Muslim men and it is part of a ‘civilizing mission’.