Talal Asad on Humanism

"The places that most interested West European humanitarians in the nineteenth century were in the weakening Ottoman Empire. The massacres that occurred in European controlled territories—in the Belgian Congo, for example, in German South-West Africa, in the United States, in the Philippines, or in Algeria—did not call for “international” protection. But to regard this difference as a simple matter of double standards is to fail to see fully its ideological underpinning. The justifications of such violence were of course multiple, but the motive always included self-defense of humanity in the widest sense. States that kill in the course of their claim to be engaged in a universalizing project, that of raising “the best part” of humanity in the name of humanity as a whole, must be distinguished from the violence of “lower” societies.[36] And yet racist violence in European empires eventually became available in Europe itself.[37]" (thanks Saba)