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

Distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, father of New York City mayor 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.

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and a member of the departments of anthropology, political science, and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. His previous books include Good Muslim, Bad Muslim; Citizen and Subject; and When Victims Become Killers. Originally from Uganda, he now divides his time between Kampala and New York, where he lives with his wife, film director and producer Mira Nair. Their son, Zohran Mamdani, is New York City’s mayor.