Colonial Liberalism
I recently read Aria Nakissa's article on the colonial history of human rights and here's my personal summary of the paper.
I recently read Aria Nakissa's article on the colonial history of human rights and here's my personal summary of the paper.
Liberalism is a complex discourse which gives a central place to human rights principles. Liberalism began to emerge around the eighteenth century, and at this time introduced the modern concept of human rights (or “rights of man”). According to liberalism, all humans are entitled to certain rights that are based on liberal ideals. These ideals include liberty, equality and humaneness/mildness in legal punishments. These human rights are dynamic and constantly shifting as new freedoms are discovered in a process of 'moral progress'. Existing laws are constantly reformed to embody liberal ideals. Laws/norms which fall short of shifting liberal ideals are seen as violating human rights.
Premodern religions are often at the receiving end of liberal ideals due to their restrictions on certain freedoms. These restrictions, which are in place to maintain social bonds of marriage, family and community within religious and cultural societies are seen as 'barbaric' human rights violations according to liberals.
Premodern traditions such as those of religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Buddhism tend to be at the receiving end of liberalism's criticism on human rights violations. This is due to the equities, responsibilities and restrictions these traditions put on individual member's freedom and liberty in order to maintain social bonds of marriage, parenthood, family, and community as well as devotion to spirit beings (e.g God in the case of Islam, Judaism and Christianity).
The desire to maintain and strengthen these bonds come from human's biological-rooted psychology. Premodern traditions also value individual liberty and freedom but not at the cost of social cohesion. The highest value in liberalism is the freedom and liberty of the individual even if it leads to the destruction of social bonds that maintain the integrity of the family and community. Liberalism prioritizes constant increases in individual liberty and equality and values decrease in social/legal violence even if it leads to destruction of social bonds. Europeans in the 19th century noticed the mass disintegration of social bonds across the globe due to liberalism.
Due to their views on religion, liberals advocated for the reform of premodern religions even if it meant radical and unconvincing reinterpretations of scripture to fit in with the ever-shifting human rights standards and constant moral progress. They successfully reformed and reinterpreted scriptures of Christianity and Judaism in order to ban child marriage, slavery and restrictions on women's education.
According to liberal ideology, human societies improve overtime morally (human rights) and materially (science, economics and technology). This improvement is referred to as 'civilizational progress' or in modern times, development. Western nations are regarded as the most civilized or the most developed.
Since the late 18th century, the westerners believed that it was the 'white man's burden' to carry out a civilizing mission and spread this progress to the rest of the world via imperialism so that they may advance just as the west has done. It was expected that the traditional societies will resist.
The empire sponsored the research of the cultures and societies they wanted to civilize. They studied the norms, racial traits and religions of these cultures, analyzing and translating their texts in the process. This gave rise to Orientalism - a western understanding of the rest of the world through the lens of liberalism.
In the study of Islam and Muslims, they discovered the Sharia which is a system of laws and instructions in the religion that guides the members at different levels of the society, from the individual to the state level. The Sharia contained various norms that regulated trade, commerce, criminal punishment, dressing, diet, worship and family life. The Sharia also endorses some forms of violence for the sake of maintaining/strengthening valued social bonds. From a liberal perspective, Sharia violates human rights. Jihad, which is a self-defence mechanism in the Sharia that is meant to protect Muslim societies from non-Muslim invasions, is seen as an affront to liberal ideology. According to liberals, politics and warfare should not be guided by religious considerations.
In the 18th century, liberals used a project that combined moral progress with religious reform. This started in Europe but the template was used to rule imperially outside Europe. By the early 19th century, human rights was used to reform Hinduism in India by banning widow-burning and child marriages. By the mid-19th, imperial policy makers were doing the same with Islam, offering support to indigenous Muslim reform movements.
Muslim states contained a large and advanced infrastructure that consisted of an integrated political, religious and educational system. The liberals decided not to destroy this infrastructure to avoid hostility from the native populations. Instead, they split the Muslims into 2 camps; 'good' Muslims that supported their reform projects and 'bad' Muslims who rejected it and were inclined to fanaticism and revolt. The liberal Muslims were given social and political influence within the religious infrastructure while the 'fanatical' Muslims were repressed socially and politically. The empire created a policy called Muslim policy that was divided into 3 projects aimed at reforming Islam; human rights project, religious reform project and a security project.
Human rights and Religious reform
Sharia law was partially maintained in areas of marriage, family, divorce and inheritance but was completely overhauled in most other areas of the legal institution and replaced with laws imported from Europe.
Educational institutes were built for western education. Hybrid institutions that taught western ideas about progress along with Islamic education were also established with the goal of influencing the conservative Muslim population and the next generation of religious scholars to be more liberal and follow a reformed Islam that was more welcoming of western liberal ideas.
Security Project
The European empires utilized authoritarian rule to control indigenous populations and compel
them to accept progress. Authoritarian rule was typically justified with reference to a liberal legal doctrine known as the “state of exception” (or “state of emergency”). The doctrine holds that the government is not bound by ordinary liberal laws (and human rights protections) when an extraordinary threat exists (e.g., military invasion, natural disaster, pandemic). Rather the government must be given maximal discretion to counter such a threat. For the European empires, indigenous populations posed an extraordinary threat, as they sometimes revolted - attacking European officials and settlers. Indigenous revolts made use of bombings, assassinations, and robberies.
By the early twentieth century, Europeans commonly used the term “terrorism” to describe indigenous revolts.
Colonial security measures were fundamentally discriminatory. Rather than targeting individuals, they targeted
entire groups based on their racial, cultural, and religious traits. Muslims were subject to the same security
measures as other indigenous groups. However, in the case of Muslims, such measures entailed uniquely intense
forms of religious discrimination informed by concerns over fanaticism and jihad rebellion.
Freedom of expression was repressed and imperial officials banned Muslim newspapers that criticized the oppression of Muslims by the Europeans. Officials also curbed the preaching and teaching of jihad.
Security measures denied rights of privacy to indigenous persons. Hence, officials regularly searched their bodies
and homes on a massive scale (e.g., “cordon and search” operations). Officials obliged indigenous persons to supply information about their lives upon request. Extensive surveillance systems were also built. In the case of Muslims, the empires established official departments and networks of informants to surveil religious scholars, madrasas, mosques, and Sufi orders (e.g., the French Bureaux arabes and Bureau des affaires musulmanes, the Dutch Kantoor voor Inlandsche zaken and Algemeene Recherche Dienst).
Movement was restricted and monitored. Problematic Muslims were banned/deported from going to certain areas or districts. Security measures authorized officials to detain indigenous persons for lengthy periods without trial, based on general suspicions or secret intelligence. When tried, these persons were denied protections like juries, access to lawyers, rights of appeal, and restrictions on use of the death penalty. Laws empowered officials to use violence with minimal justification and limited liability (e.g., discretion to administer corporal discipline, no inquests for persons killed during security operations) (French, 2011, pp. 74–104; Mamdani, 1996, pp. 125–127). Accordingly, during times of unrest (e.g., in Algeria, Indonesia), the empires made significant use of tactics that were formally illegal, such as torture (beatings, electrocutions, rapes) and extrajudicial killings/disappearances. Unlike Europeans, indigenous persons were not allowed to possess weapons–ensuring they were kept in a vulnerable state
In the Post-Colonial Era, the imperial control of non-western people has acquired a diplomatic tool without discarding the military aspect entirely. After WWII, various colonies were given their independence and the UN was established with the US being the primary funder of the UN. The UN now takes the place of the empire. Through it's instruments, western nations use a carrot or stick approach to enforce liberal norms on non-western societies. The poor countries are given promises of economic assistance in the forms of donations, loans, technology etc and the militarily weak countries are threatened with military force.
The Christian missionaries of the colonial era have been replaced by UN NGOs funded by western institutions (e.g states, foundations, corporations) that further the interests of US and western nations in Muslim countries. Through these NGOs, the UN pushes various new human rights laws on on Muslim states e.g CEDAW, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights etc.
Muslim states with 'good' leaders gradually change their laws and incorporate UN human rights norms while NGOs document human rights violations and wage media campaigns and protests amongst other forms of activism they use to push the human rights agenda. (e.g decriminalization of blasphemy and extramarital sex).
In Education, a reformed Islam that agrees with the human rights norms and encourages compliance with the government and new laws is promoted though schools and religious authorities. NGOs create media content based on this reformed Islam and disseminate it online and in print.
Using tactics from the colonial era, Muslim states use 'state of exception' to enact draconian laws and militaristic restrictions on the Muslim populace to suppress dissent and terrorism from those deemed fanatical or rebellious. Restrictions on movement, mass surveillance, searches and arrests are a few examples of these methods.
After 9/11, a string of terrorist attacks led to about 4000 deaths in western states. The US launched GWOT(Global War on Terror) which has led to over 2 decades of war and an exaggerated fear of terrorism. GWOT has led to invasions of Muslim countries by the US military and over 2 million deaths as well as 38 million refugees and displaced persons. The disparity between western deaths and Muslim deaths is reminiscent of colonial conflicts.
This article was a difficult read for me despite the short length but I'm glad I did. I got a better understanding of the history of colonisation of the Muslim world. It also broadened my understanding of the colonisation of Africa and how many African traditions lost their cultural practices. While the abolition of some of those cultural practices - the objectively horrendous ones are justifiable by the sharia (e.g the killing of twins in Calabar, Nigeria), I personally don't agree with the methods and motivations of the liberals. Their methods led to the destruction of social bonds that were necessary in keeping families together. Liberalism is a bad solution to a worse problem in this scenario.