Secularism and feminism rhetoric obscure the imperial interests behind Muslim evictions.

Evidence

Race thinking, in particular the melding of race and bureaucracy, render these evictions invisible or as instances of mere fidelity to the rule of law and a legitimate defence of civilization in response to the threat from those who do not share its values. We imagine that people are ‘security risks,’ not persons who ‘disappear,’ who are simply deported. Through appeal to the idea of a clash of civilizations, evictions become defensible. A pitiless secularism and monoculture is enforced in the name of modernity and not in the name of capital, invasions, occupations, and the structures of unequal citizenship they sustain. I have shown that if we reject the introduction of ‘sharia’ into the law, for example, it is easy to make the claim that we only do so because we are committed to secularism and not because a marking of Muslims as pre-modern serves the interests of empire. Similarly, who could be against the introduction of laws designed to prohibit the forced marriages of young Muslim girls to men outside Europe and to safeguard the right to make one’s own choices about marriage? One does not have to be a committed feminist to wish for the end of the Taliban and their relentless and punishing misogyny. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 400