Egypt’s legal secularization hinged on colonial police and prisons

Evidence

There was also the question of how liberal governance (political, moral, and theological) was to be secured during the different phases of state building and dismantling—of how, according to many reformers, liberty, modernity, and civilized life were to be achieved. It was in response to that question that the law had to acquire new substance and new functions and to employ new kinds of violence. For colonial punishment—the institution of a police force and a prison system—was central to the modernization and secularization of law in Egypt. And it gradually replaced previous forms of violence. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1043

Categorization

• XREF: Direct corroboration of the Cooper thread: liberal governance is not neutral procedure but requires specific institutional violence to be secured, paralleling how Cooper shows market liberalism requiring state enforcement.
• ADDENDUM: Useful for the sacrifice/decorum-through-institutions theme (‘Small acts of decorum toward corpses’): here the state monopolizes legitimate violence and displaces older punitive forms.