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

“The Holocaust was born at the meeting point of two traditions that marked modern Western civilization: ‘the anti-Semitic tradition and the tradition of genocide of colonized peoples.’ The difference in the fate of the Jewish people was that they were to be exterminated as a whole. In that, they were unique—but only in Europe.”

Mamdani’s analysis of Muslim identity is predicated on the malleable nature of identity. He suggests that 9/11 affirmed the Reagan-era binary of good versus evil, which was then projected onto Muslim identity. Mamdani argues that identity is more fluid than this binary allows, a point he illustrates by examining the changing position of Jewish people in society, particularly in the aftermath of a tragedy such as the Holocaust or 9/11. Muslim identity, like Jewish identity, can be understood in all its nuance.

“The result of an alliance gone sour, 9/11 needs to be understood first and foremost as the unfinished business of the Cold War.”

Mamdani seeks to reappraise the American response to 9/11, particularly with regard to Muslim identity. A key part of this is asserting that 9/11 was not the beginning of something new, but the continuation of “unfinished business.” Mamdani’s analysis of the events of September 11, 2001 does not begin with that date: Rather, he views the 9/11 attacks as the product of decades of war, otherization, and propaganda. Mamdani asserts that 9/11 is not a catalyst but a consequence of American involvement in the Middle East.

“For William Lind, the Cold War was the last in a series of ‘Western civil wars’ that started in seventeenth-century Europe; with the end of the Cold War, he argued, the lines of global conflict become cast in cultural terms.”

A key part of Mamdani’s argument is that America’s foreign policy exists relentlessly in the moment. Identities, alliances, and enemies are deemed immutable, only to be changed and reexamined several years later.