The harem was attacked because it lay beyond colonial police observation

Evidence

The ‘position’ the British had in mind was that of modern motherhood; for the political and economic transformation of Egypt required a transformation of the household. … ‘The unwholesome – and frequently degrading – associations of the old harem life’, wrote Cromer’s Oriental Secretary Harry Boyle, should ‘give place to the healthy and elevating influence of a generation of mothers, keenly alive to their responsibilities as regards the moral training and welfare of their children.’ In such ways political power would hope to penetrate that ‘inaccessible’ space invisible to ‘the observation of the police’ and thus commence, recalling a phrase from a previous chapter, to ‘work from the inside out’. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 361

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that the harem was a problem specifically because it was an unobservable space — colonial power’s real object is making the invisible visible — is dense and worth sitting with.