Secular law regulates violence rather than eliminating it

Evidence

Producing a civilized Europe and a stigmatized and closely watched non-West, these laws and policies foreclose a consideration of other factors that operate in the lives of Muslim youth. For example, they do not foster a positive climate in which Muslim youth and more progressive Muslims can internally contest patriarchal narratives. Instead, they polarize. Like Storhaug’s handbook for Muslim girls on the perils of their culture, they do not imagine what an educational approach that promoted more positive ideas of Islam might actually accomplish. Instead of considering school dropout among young Muslims as a clear indicator of Muslim cultural deficit, we might consider, as so much schooling literature has shown, that schools in fact fail racial minorities through an inattention to their specific educational needs, and through a school climate of racial hostility. Teaching young Muslims about the superiority of European culture increases this racial divide and does not respond to educational needs more directly connected to their mastery of the curriculum and to the hostility of the school environment. It may well be that laws and policies such as those currently being considered stigmatize and exacerbate tensions within communities more than they actually give rise to the conditions under which less violence might occur. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 316 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Typically, this mode of explanation by analogy presents “the secular” (the law) as a desacralized version of “the religious” (the ritual). Yet the internal structure of the two cases is not the same. Modern law defines the liability of legal persons such as landlords prior to any tort, whereas scapegoats are constituted in relation to specific transgressions. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 470 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Civility veils socially sanctioned violence rather than ending it. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 250; Legal change does not alter the underlying racecraft that produces anti-Muslim violence — Cyra Akila Choudhury, Racecraft and Identity in the Emergence…, 509; Secular law and religious ritual do not share an underlying structure — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 470 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-forced-marriage law polarizes communities more than it reduces violence #complicates (0.80) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 316
• Secular law and religious ritual do not share an underlying structure #complicates (0.72) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 470