Colonial discourse distinguished offensive suffering from redemptive, necessary pain.

Evidence

In the process of learning to be “fully human” only some kinds of suffering were seen as an affront to humanity, and their elimination sought. This was distinguished from suffering that was necessary to the process of realizing one’s humanity—that is, pain that was adequate to its end, not wasteful pain. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 538

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad’s core distinction between ‘wasteful pain’ and ‘pain adequate to its end’ that underlies the moralization of cruelty.
• XREF: This distinction maps onto Christianity’s valorization of redemptive suffering (Christ’s passion) and explains why the West sees its own pains as meaningful while others’ (e.g., Islamic punishments) as merely cruel.
• QUESTION: How does this distinction between adequate and wasteful pain play out in the modern moral panic over specific Islamic punishments (hudud) but not over the pains of war or incarceration?
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the dense constructive core of the whole chapter — the moral asymmetry of pain — worth sitting with.