Who Is a Bad Muslim, and Why Will Mayor Mamdani Always Be One?

So what did Mahmood Mamdani mean when he was talking about Good Muslim, Bad Muslim? As a scholar of Islam, the good Muslim, bad Muslim binary, when I first started getting into academia in this field of study, was such a prevailing discourse.

Meaning, good Muslim, bad Muslim is one of those frameworks that becomes so ubiquitous and so used that sometimes you almost forget that there's a person who coined this or was the person who really gave the theoretical structuring and bona fides to what this term means.

It's kind of like, you know, the word Orientalism.

We know that Edward Said is the one who coins and gives a real theoretical understanding to what Orientalism is.

But just like Orientalism, this idea of good Muslim, bad Muslim also becomes so used in scholarship and so widespread that you almost, like, forget that there is somebody who coined it and theorized it and is the reason that we use it so much today.

So I just bring that up to introduce it, to also lay out the absolute popularity of this book and the absolute popularity of Mahmood Mamdani's framework for understanding- How people in the US talk about Muslims.

So he writes this book in 2005 and what he wants us to do in this book to the reader is to teach them something about how this phrase that is being used all of the time, that there are good Muslims and there are bad Muslims, right? Take out Muslims, and you can put there are good Blacks and there are bad Blacks.

There are good these people and bad these people.

But following the war on terror, following 9/11, the idea that there were some good Muslims and there were some bad Muslims was frequently a political discourse in order to say that my Muslim neighbor is a good Muslim.

Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are bad Muslims, right? By saying, "Oh, Islamic fundamentalists are bad Muslims, but my, my child's soccer coach, who also happens to be Muslim, he's, he's a good Muslim," right? And so during this time, this phrase was frequently used to distinguish some good Muslims from bad Muslims.

So what was ...

What would make some Muslims good, and what would make some Muslims bad? Well, it turns out, like with any binary discourse, it is a moving goalpost.

But what the, the motor that keeps moving that goalpost, Mahmood Mamdani wants us to see, is whether or not this person aligns with US Western strategic interests.

So what does that mean? Good Muslims at this time are seen as those that align themselves with Western political interests.

Bad Muslims are seen as those who do not align themselves with Western political interests.

What this binary does is that it equates something like terrorism, political violence, to people's religion and culture in erasing the socio-historical and political context that give rise to those moments of political upheaval, of terrorism.

So a huge part of this book is challenging the idea that terrorism and political violence can be reduced to people's cultures or to people's religion.

And what the good Muslim, bad Muslim binary discourse does is that it reduces acts of political terrorism and political violence in politics in general as reducible to people's religion and culture, absolving the larger historical, social, and political context that give rise to people's politics.

A huge part of this book that he publishes in '05 is tracing a history of how the US basically sets up what would become terrorist regimes through their work in the Middle East during the Cold War era.

This is an extremely, extremely interesting history.

I'm going to, of course, link the book in the show notes, but if you are interested in how the very forces in which the US declares war against during the war on terror were at one point supported by the US during the Cold War as a proxy of challenging Russia, the Soviet Union, that is an extremely, extremely interesting history.

That is very well-written by Mahmood Mamdani in this book.

But w- the reason why he goes through this history of showing us why something like 9/11 did not come out of ... was not just a random act of violence by bad Muslims because Islam is inherently bad or because folks who are Muslim and from, quote-unquote, the Middle East or who are, quote-unquote, Arab are just bad people.

And so in this context in which that history is totally erased, you get a good Muslim, bad Muslim discourse where it is people's culture and it is people's religion that leads them to be in opposition to US Western strategic interests, even though those same people who are considered now bad Muslims were once aligned and supported by US political interests.

What this binary does is it just reduces basically that complexity to people's identities.

So what did Mahmood Mamdani mean when he was talking about Good Muslim, Bad Muslim? As a scholar of Islam, the good Muslim, bad Muslim binary, when I first started getting into academia in this field of study, was such a prevailing discourse.

Meaning, good Muslim, bad Muslim is one of those frameworks that becomes so ubiquitous and so used that sometimes you almost forget that there's a person who coined this or was the person who really gave the theoretical structuring and bona fides to what this term means.

It's kind of like, you know, the word Orientalism.

We know that Edward Said is the one who coins and gives a real theoretical understanding to what Orientalism is.

But just like Orientalism, this idea of good Muslim, bad Muslim also becomes so used in scholarship and so widespread that you almost, like, forget that there is somebody who coined it and theorized it and is the reason that we use it so much today.

So I just bring that up to introduce it, to also lay out the absolute popularity of this book and the absolute popularity of Mahmood Mamdani's framework for understanding- How people in the US talk about Muslims.

So he writes this book in 2005 and what he wants us to do in this book to the reader is to teach them something about how this phrase that is being used all of the time, that there are good Muslims and there are bad Muslims, right? Take out Muslims, and you can put there are good Blacks and there are bad Blacks.

There are good these people and bad these people.

But following the war on terror, following 9/11, the idea that there were some good Muslims and there were some bad Muslims was frequently a political discourse in order to say that my Muslim neighbor is a good Muslim.

Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are bad Muslims, right? By saying, "Oh, Islamic fundamentalists are bad Muslims, but my, my child's soccer coach, who also happens to be Muslim, he's, he's a good Muslim," right? And so during this time, this phrase was frequently used to distinguish some good Muslims from bad Muslims.

So what was ...

What would make some Muslims good, and what would make some Muslims bad? Well, it turns out, like with any binary discourse, it is a moving goalpost.

But what the, the motor that keeps moving that goalpost, Mahmood Mamdani wants us to see, is whether or not this person aligns with US Western strategic interests.

So what does that mean? Good Muslims at this time are seen as those that align themselves with Western political interests.

Bad Muslims are seen as those who do not align themselves with Western political interests.

What this binary does is that it equates something like terrorism, political violence, to people's religion and culture in erasing the socio-historical and political context that give rise to those moments of political upheaval, of terrorism.

So a huge part of this book is challenging the idea that terrorism and political violence can be reduced to people's cultures or to people's religion.

And what the good Muslim, bad Muslim binary discourse does is that it reduces acts of political terrorism and political violence in politics in general as reducible to people's religion and culture, absolving the larger historical, social, and political context that give rise to people's politics.

A huge part of this book that he publishes in '05 is tracing a history of how the US basically sets up what would become terrorist regimes through their work in the Middle East during the Cold War era.

This is an extremely, extremely interesting history.

I'm going to, of course, link the book in the show notes, but if you are interested in how the very forces in which the US declares war against during the war on terror were at one point supported by the US during the Cold War as a proxy of challenging Russia, the Soviet Union, that is an extremely, extremely interesting history.

That is very well-written by Mahmood Mamdani in this book.

But w- the reason why he goes through this history of showing us why something like 9/11 did not come out of ... was not just a random act of violence by bad Muslims because Islam is inherently bad or because folks who are Muslim and from, quote-unquote, the Middle East or who are, quote-unquote, Arab are just bad people.

And so in this context in which that history is totally erased, you get a good Muslim, bad Muslim discourse where it is people's culture and it is people's religion that leads them to be in opposition to US Western strategic interests, even though those same people who are considered now bad Muslims were once aligned and supported by US political interests.

What this binary does is it just reduces basically that complexity to people's identities.