Colonial rule was justified as abolishing cruel indigenous practices

Evidence

The historical process of constructing a humane secular society, it is said, has aimed at eliminating cruelties. Thus it has often been claimed that European rule in colonial countries, although not itself democratic, brought about moral improvements in behavior—that is, the abandonment of practices that offend against the human. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 530

Categorization

• XREF: The colonial civilizing-cruelty justification is the exact template by which Islam gets coded as premodern — corroborating Cooper-adjacent vault claims about how secular-liberal modernity positions non-Christian norms.