The colonial power to separate law from morality is what defines the colonial situation

Evidence

It might appear at first sight that I am making a familiar argument about the introduction of “foreign codes.” But my concern here is neither with the geographical origin of the law nor with codification as such. I argue that it is the power to make a strategic separation between law and morality that defines the colonial situation, because it is this separation that enables the legal work of educating subjects into a new public morality. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1156

Categorization

• DEFINE: Asad’s core redefinition: colonialism is defined not by foreign codes or codification but by the strategic separation of law from morality.
• XREF: Directly parallels Cooper’s claim that secular modernity quietly imposes Christian-normative frameworks — here Asad shows ‘secular’ law did the same colonizing/educating work over Islamic morality.
• SEED: The analytic lever — ‘separation of law from morality as an educational project’ — could power an essay on how modern liberal states still treat religiously-grounded moralities as needing civilizing.