French and British colonial legal codes both aimed to recreate the Muslim subject

Evidence

This scholarly, juridical, and legislative discourse came to constitute the infamous droit musulman-algérien, which found parallel, but to a less aggressive degree, in the Anglo-Muhammadan Law that the British produced in India. The methods of the two forms of colonialism may have differed, but the aim of re-creating the Muslim world and the Muslim subject was the same. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 236

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did the Anglo-Muhammadan Law in India actually deploy scholars differently than the French Code Morand, given both sought the same transformation of the ‘Muslim subject’?
• SHARE: Send to anyone interested in comparative colonial legal history — the parallel between droit musulman-algérien and Anglo-Muhammadan Law is a neat comparative pivot.
• DEEPTHINKING: ‘Re-creating the Muslim subject’ through law is the paradigm-shifting claim: colonial legal codes did not merely regulate Muslims but actively reconstituted them as a category — the legal system itself as an instrument of ontological remaking.