Product Description

In this brilliant look at the rise of political Islam, the distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen? 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21909 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-21
• Released on: 2005-06-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Osama bin Laden’s pronouncements are rarely published in full in the United States, but transcripts of his messages-often available overseas-provide startling insight into the political, rather than religious, nature of his thinking. "Labeling us, and our acts, as terrorism is also a description of you and your acts," bin Laden said recently. "Our acts are a reaction to your acts." In this meandering rumination on modern-day terrorism, Mamdani takes a controversial step by agreeing with bin Laden, at least on this point; he argues that groups like al-Qaeda are generally motivated by legitimate political grievances with U.S. foreign policy. "In a nutshell," Mamdani writes, "the U.S. government decided to harness and even to cultivate terrorists" during the latter half of the Cold War as it sought to roll back the Soviet Union’s global influence. Now, with that legacy coming back to haunt its creators, Mamdani concludes that "no Chinese wall divides ‘our’ terrorism from ‘their’ terrorism. Each tends to feed the other." These ideas evolved from a series of talks the author gave at New York’s Riverside Church in the weeks after 9/11, and the book retains the informality of those discussions. There are flashes of inspiration, among them a thoughtful distinction between "political Islam" and "Islamic fundamentalism," two terms that are frequently and wrongfully used synonymously. There are also frustrating digressions, and Mamdani makes few attempts to address potential dissenters. Still, readers who can overlook these drawbacks will find that this study does make provocative connections across disciplines and continents-finding similarities, say, between Liberian and Zionist settlers. Mamdani is searching for big ideas, not nuances, and in this he is successful, making his book an important contribution to the national discussion on terrorism and Islam.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Many of the many post-September 11 books probing the causes of Islamic terrorism invoke Samuel Huntington-esque notions about clashes of culture; many of the same books would like to dissociate the "war on terrorism" of the twenty-first century from the more conventional conflicts of the late twentieth century. Both these notions are Mamdani's targets in this book. Politicizing notions of Islam by differentiating between secular, Westernized ("good") Muslims and fanatical, medieval ("bad") Muslims, Mamdani argues, misrepresents the often apolitical character of Islam. It also dangerously ignores cold war-era American complicity in the turbulence of the Muslim world through the waging of proxy wars, particularly the one in Afghanistan in which, says Mamdani, the CIA created Osama bin Laden. Those familiar with Noam Chomsky's recent work will likely find some of Mamdani's arguments familiar, particularly his discussion of imperialistic political violence, racism, and the modern state. Where Mamdani is unique and particularly compelling, however, is in drawing on his African-studies background to back up his assertions about violence, terrorism and Islam. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“Mamdani strips open the lies, stereotypes, and easy generalizations on which U.S. policy toward the Muslim world is founded. Dismaying but essential reading.” —J. M. Coetzee

“This provocative and thoughtful inquiry raises hard and serious questions. It is a valuable contribution to the understanding of some of the most important developments in the contemporary era.” —Noam Chomsky

“Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a brief, readable plea to Americans to stop listening to the shuck and jive about a ‘clash of civilizations’ and start learning some practical political history.” —The Village Voice

Customer Reviews

A very tentative four stars
I went back and forth on how many stars to give this book, and I finally decided on four, perhaps against my better judgement. The first chapter of the book was amazing and that chapter, for me, alone made the book worth the time. In this one chapter he was able to formalize a lot of ideas that had been swirling around in my head from the other books I have been reading. It was a great chapter dealing with US concepts of what Muslims are and how those concepts influence our actions but are really based on a flawed and one-sided perspective. A "good" Muslim is considered someone who supports US actions even though those very same actions could be detrimental for the "good" Muslim, while the "bad" Muslim is the one who defies the US. The problem with the concept of the "bad" Muslim is that it lumps all Muslims who disagree with US policy into one group, but the fact is that some of these people are not terrorists hell bent on destroying us but instead are people who have legitimate grievances with US policy. The first chapter was excellent.

After the first chapter, though, the author flies off topic and never returns. Instead of following the first chapter's theme and the tile's theme the author spends the rest of the book critiquing US foreign policy of the last forty years. While a lot of the author's critique is legitimate and well detailed, it has nothing to do with the title of the book. The author doesn't even focus any of the remaining book on Muslims or Islam but instead focuses on US policy and only writes of Muslims in an ancillary way. Muslims and Islam is put on the periphery. This would be fine if the title of the book was "US Foreign Policy" but it isn't.

The reason why I still give the book a good rating is that the information is good. This book is the first I have read that focuses on the CIA and US interventionist policies and carries that focus to its contemporary conclusion in this way. It's linear which gives the reader a clear picture of where we were and how we got here.

At the same time the author treats US policy as if it operates in a vacuum and is not affected by other factors domestic and foreign. Of course it is difficult to take that broad of a picture and condense it into three hundred pages, but I still see this as a flaw.

All in all I do recommend this book. A lot of the material will be rehash for those well versed in the history of US foreign policy, but the way the author connects the dots I found to be worth the effort. Also the copy I read the notes were not numbered or identified in any way in the text, so the note section was completely worthless for me. I am assuming this was a mistake in my copy and not something that every other copy had as well.

Essential knowledge on Islamism
Whoever wants to talk about Islam, its political and religeous implication on modern world should read this book
The reader learns much about the origins of terrorism, which often has been orchestrated and initiated by
US-Politics and by powerfull US-organizations. I have bought this at amazon.com in it's original english-language version as well at amazon.de in a very satisfying german translation. The german paperback-edition is even much "worthier". This important book should be translated in other languages, also in arabic and hebrew.

A sound bite to counter a sound bite?
This is a tough book to review--while it does have some valid points to make, it descends all too often into polemics. And even polemics aside, the book has problems at times. Some problems that caught my attention were:

1) While Mamdani criticizes several writers for characterizing Muslims into the "good" and "bad" camps, he can equally be accused of not recognizing the differences in foreign policies between the Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations.

2) Mamdani takes stance that religion, politics and culture must be viewed separately and are not linked. While I would not disagree that politics can be separated from religion and culture, I have a hard time understanding his stance on separating religion and culture--the way many of us learned anthropology, religion is considered part and parcel culture. (But then again, Mamdani avoids defining culture and what constitutes it.)

3) The historical context of America's proxy wars is told in a very one sided fashion. Missing is the activities of the Soviets, and to a lesser extent the Chinese, in a variety of Third World countries. Furthermore, in terms of the rise of political Islam, terrorism and the modern concept of jihad, his account differs from Kempel's Jihad.

4) The section on the rise of al-Qaeda and the Taliban has a heavy reliance on newspaper articles from the Los Angeles Times and Rashid's book on the Taliban. Missing from his story is Burke's book on al-Qaeda (or his articles from the Guardian), and use of other American, and British or French newspaper sources.

5) The presence of endnotes gives the book a scholarly air, but the reader needs to realize there is a lot missing on a variety of topics. Not only are works like Burke's and Kempel's missing, Mamdani has the tendency to make statements, assuming that they are facts as such and not opinions, need to be referenced and footnoted. One example is on page 92 dealing with how long the South African government could have supported Renamo without US support.

6) Mamdani contradicts himself at times. Probably the best example of this is his critique of co-existence/tolerance on page 173, and his call for it in the closing pages of the book.

While this book does make for compelling reading on America's proxy wars and America's selective use of terrorist groups against its opponents, it is far from a scholarly account. Mamdani's book ends up reading like a set of cobbled together sound bites that are trying to counter a sound bite. A much more nuanced and better referenced book on the topic is Richard Bonney's _Jihad: From Qur'an to bin Laden_.