Colonialists blamed Islamic endowments for economic stagnation and cultural decline

Evidence

But the French Orientalists, who drove colonialist policy, did not stop here: family endowments were said to have tied down, by their very nature, valuable property and to have prevented it from “efficient” exploitation, a fact that ineluctably led to economic stagnation. From here, it was a short and easy step to link this “stagnation” with cultural malaise and, indeed, a stunted civilizational progress (an argument that was, as I have already noted, imported and circulated by the Ottomans, under European hegemonic terms, in justification of their assault on the waqf). — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 239

Categorization

• XREF: Mirrors the West’s blaming of Chinese, Indian, and other non-European institutions for underdevelopment — the same ‘efficiency’ narrative recurs across colonial economics. — connects to: Failed reforms get blamed on poor people’s culture and attitudes — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 197