Colonial knowledge targeted the Other while Islamic juristic knowledge targeted the Self

Evidence

By the last quarter of the century, the French managed to break up the Algerian legal class and its system of law and legal education, in near-exact parallel with the Ottoman scene. Deprived of their resources due to the expropriation and centralization of waqfs and to various French administrative and educational reforms that changed the structure of the Shariʿa, the ulama were subjected to a qualitative diminishment in the very pedagogy and hermeneutical practice that defined their functions. As happened in other colonial contexts, the socioepistemic mechanisms that reproduced the legal profession largely ceased to exist, and in its place a European system of legal reproduction was installed, with new courts, new types of jurists, lawyers, and European codes of every type and shape. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 245 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Levinas made the Self-Other relationship philosophy’s central concept — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 625; Colonial power endowed scholarly knowledge about Islam with authority — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 187; Colonial knowledge treats Orientals as a fixed Platonic essence — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 122 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Colonial powers dismantled Islamic legal reproduction by expropriating waqfs and replacing legal pedagogy #complicates (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 245