Good Muslim, Bad Muslim:
America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror
Mahmood Mamdani

Amidst the patriotic fervor that gripped the US after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a few dissenting voices claimed we had it coming. While a slew of books have come out over the past few years to support this argument, Mahmood Mamdani's Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is one of the few to examine thoroughly the phenomenon of modern Islamic terrorism and to demonstrate how its rise is a political reaction to imperialism. In this excellent, well-documented book, Mamdani dispels the notion that terrorism is based in culture (rather than politics), and explains 9/11-and the popularity of terrorism as a tactic-as the direct result of the Cold War.

The book examines the Western premise that "bad" Muslims practice terrorism, are "fundamentalists" and hate freedom, while "good" Muslims are modern, secular and support US foreign policy. The underlying assumptions, of course, are that any Muslim could be a terrorist and that good Muslims should be ready and willing to prove their patriotism and loyalty.

Today, the definition of "political Islam" as a religious and cultural phenomenon dominates most of the literature and debate on the subject. Mamdani refers to this sort of thinking as "Culture Talk":

Culture Talk assumes that every culture has a tangible essence that defines it, and it then explains politics as a consequence of that essence. Culture Talk after 9/11, for example, qualified and explained the practice of "terrorism" and "Islamic." "Islamic terrorism" is thus offered as both description and explanation of the events of 9/11.

Culture Talk has turned Islam into a political category, rather than a religious one; simultaneously, it denies the very real, political nature of Islamist movements by regarding them as the result of a "clash of civilizations." Too often, the differences between Islam (as a religion) and Islamism/political Islam (as a political movement) are obscured. Thus, all Muslims are seen as potential terrorists, while Muslim terrorists are assumed to be acting out of "fundamentalist" religious beliefs. More accurately, Mamdani points out, fundamentalism is strictly religious in nature, and terrorism is a political tactic.

Political Islam, Mamdani's preferred term, is entirely different from both terrorism and fundamentalism: It is neither necessarily violent nor the work of religious leaders. Political Islam was not created in order to answer spiritual questions, but to address very worldly problems: to end imperial occupation and create social reform in oppressive societies. "Driven more by intellectuals than by clergy," Mamdani writes, "these movements argued that Islam is not 'a mere religion' but is more like a political ideology that addresses all aspects of our social existence."

One of the most valuable (if mildly confusing) aspects of the book is Mamdani's description of different kinds of political Islam: radical and conservative groups, society-based (democratic) and state-based (focused on the seizure of state power) social movements, nationalist and ideological philosophies.

With this as background, Mamdani digs into meaty questions: If Islamic politics is so varied, why do we only see conservative, ideological, state-based movements that employ terrorist tactics? How did a fringe philosophy become so popular in such a short period of time? The answers, he writes, lie in the end of the Cold War and Washington's strategies of proxy war, "low-intensity conflict" intervention in Afghanistan. Mamdani's history lesson here is dizzying and complete, covering mercenaries in Laos, the Congo, southern Africa and Central America, and the elevation of highly ideological Islamist factions in Afghanistan.

In his final chapter, Mamdani links this creation of conservative terrorist movements to their popularity in much of the Third World, demonstrating that violent methods in service of social movements are neither new nor specific to Islamism. There is more than one side to these issues, Mamdani argues, and the popularity of such extreme methods necessitates that we examine terrorists' grievances. Terrorists are not simply born; they are created. Terrorists do not act out of religious conviction; they act as a response to an unjust society. "Terrorism," Mamdani concludes, "is not a necessary effect of religious tendencies, whether fundamentalist or secular. Rather, terrorism is born of a political encounter."

Review by Erin Wiegand
12.05.04

Support LiP by ordering from our partner, a leading independent bookseller