One of the central underpinnings of Islamophobia is the theoretical construction of Muslim women as “Other”. Going hand in hand with colonization, the overall Orientalist imaginary has depicted Muslims as misogynistic, homophobic, and gynophobic in contrast to the normal and enlightened Western European subject. Liberation psychology, as a field of decolonial work, emphasizes several main tasks one of which is the recovery of historical memory in relation to how humans see each other and the world. This paper builds on the work of recovering historical memory to emphasize the Indo-European origins of misogyny and patriarchy and the subsequent cover-up of this history as a part of the legacy of colonialism and current narratives of Islamophobia. The paper concludes that the work of psychology should include decoding reality to uncover the true nature of the origins of patriarchy, thus building new, revitalized understandings of human society.
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