Unveiling the Qawwamun: Sexual Abuse of Muslim Men in the Gaza Genocide

This paper highlights the intersection between Israeli forces’ sexual torture of Palestinian men and Qur’anic theological masculinity of the qawwamun, the Muslim male ‘protector’.  While violence against Palestinian women is frequently reported in the Gaza Genocide, a hallmark of this genocide is an inversion of the womanist framework of sexual shame: rights agencies have cited that Palestinian men were overwhelmingly subjected to sexual abuse through “specific persecutory acts” by Israeli forces. This paper addresses the discussion of qawwamun beyond the existing feminist rubrics, to demonstrate how the concept theologically functions as a de-colonial stabilizer of Muslim selfhood against Israeli sexual excesses. While acknowledging the deep patriarchal inflection of qawwamun, the aim of the paper is to show how masculinity norms specific to Muslims are weaponized and destabilized by racist-imperial collusions to endanger Arab men and, relationally, cause further disempowering of Arab women.