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

By Mahmood Mamdani

Book Overview

Distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, offers an "exceptionally clear and] especially shocking" (San Francisco Chronicle) examination of political Islam, the factors that led to 9/11, and the global repercussions on Muslims everywhere.

"This provocative and thoughtful inquiry is a valuable contribution to the understanding of some of the most important developments in the contemporary era."--Noam Chomsky

In Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to
a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen?

Mamdani dispels the idea of "good" (secular, westernized) and "bad" (premodern, fanatical) Muslims, pointing out that these judgments refer to political rather than cultural or religious identities. The presumption that there are "good" Muslims readily available to be split off from "bad" Muslims masks a failure to make a political analysis of our times.

Political Islam, Mamdani argues, emerged as the result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed America's embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. He writes with great insight about the Reagan years, showing America's embrace of the highly ideological politics of "good" against "evil." Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the "moral equivalents" of America's Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars came to an end with the invasion of Iraq, where, as in Vietnam, America was not fighting terrorism but nationalism, a battle that cannot be won by occupation.

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a provocative and important book that will profoundly change our understanding both of Islamist politics and the way America is perceived in the world today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385515375
• ISBN13: 9780385515375
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Harmony
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Excellent, important reading.

This is the best of the forty or so books I have read recently on the results of recent US foreign policy, on forms of political Islam, on the roots and character of terror, as well as on common misperceptions. Chapter two on "Culture Talk" is itself worth the price of the book. The origins of our enemies in US policy, CIA training, even University of Nebraska contracted textbooks is damaging to the myths supporting US policies now.Discussion is painfully frank, honest, and thought provoking. Some will be unwilling to face this.The origins of the worst may be in the Reagan era and now with this preemptive war but Carter and Clinton's errors are noted in what is a constructive rather than partisan analysis.The types and motives of political Islam is a useful antidote to the simplistic poisonous tripe so common from the Media and the Administration and even scholars who should know better like Lewis and Huntington.The summary of major costs of the focal Afghan War include, and continue to include, eroding democracy at home; US blowback from the creation of international trained and experienced terrorist Alumni; dramatic increases in Drug trade and users from financing methods of the wars; increased incoherence and decreased communication between the CIA and FBI. One can add that Press self censorship and complicity recently rated the US as not in the top 20 world wide for having a "free Press." The author does not mention that after first disarming then attacking Iraq the US `bully' inadvertently makes a case for nukes for all for some deterrent (remember that word?).The analysis of an commonality of irrational interest with Israel as another settler state and the discussion of the nature of suicide bombing will upset assumptions widely held but deserve thoughtful consideration.Read this book! More importantly, THINK about what is said. Definitely worth buying. I'm giving a copy to the local library too!

Great Book

This is a fine book, a real eye-opener. For people who don't have a lot of background in Islamist politics, the first half is a hard read because the issues are extremely complicated. However, this is good place to start if you want to try to begin sorting the threads of religious and political Islam. For US citizens with even a modicum of political background, the rest is a piece of cake, and fascinating. Especially interesting is reading about how the Clinton administration was shackled and thwarted as it tried to accomplished some of its more humanitarian objectives. While I believe that Mamdani is not an apologist for 'suicide' bombings, some people are going to have difficulty with his explanation of this phenomenon, which he frames in light of Israeli aggression and compares to similar oppression and violent reactions in South Africa. In any case, it forced me to think of what drives this behavior, and how far humanity must be pushed to the wall in order to exhibit it. The final chapter is heart-wrenchingly poignant, and calls for a world-wide peace movement in the face of what the author believes to be one of the most volatile political scenarios in recorded history: the 'good vs. evil' standoff between the political Christian Right and militant political Islam, a standoff with no hope of negotiation or reconciliation - a fight to the finish resulting in total annihilation of the other.

Must Read

Mamdani, who is a professor of political science at Columbia, has written one of the best books on this topic. This book brings out issues that are often disregarded in the media. Mamdani provides a very clear and through analysis of the Islamic world and the origin of the modern tension between the U.S. and Muslim countries. I specifically liked his analysis of Reagan years. Overall, the book is well-written and all the claims in the book are supported with ample evidence.

Think Outside the Box

The book explodes the myth of the `good' versus the `bad' Muslim and renders baseless US claims that the war on terror is a war between good and evil, civilized and uncivilized peoples. Mamdani locates the origins of terror in American Cold War foreign policy and shows how Al Qaeda is a product of American efforts to `contain' and `rollback' communism. These efforts did not just produce `Afghan jihad' with all the pernicious apparatuses for terror supplied by the CIA, it also created conditions for the movement to grow into an independent organization targeting the Soviet infiltration of Afghanistan and later directing its ire against Egypt, Saudi Arabia and yes, the US. But for Mamdani, terror is not simply an anti-American thing; rather, on many occasions American terror has had equally devastating consequences in Angola, Mozambique and Nicaragua. Reading this book leads you to understand whose definition of terror is in operation at the moment and why this definition receives lukewarm support in the international community. Mamdani knowledge of Islam in general and political Islam in particular is exceptional and his analysis of different strands of Islamic thought in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria is meticulously matched by his understanding of political processes in these countries. A must read book if you want to think outside the `you are either with us or against us'box.