To know right from wrong is essential, even though sometimes it is well outside our comfort zone.
If Zohran Mamdani had not risen as a political earthquake, we wouldn’t even be talking about him, let alone digging deep into the roots of his entire family tree. I’m familiar with his mother Mira Nair, not only because of her offbeat films but because she studied in Bhubaneswar. I also knew of his grandfather Amrit Lal Nair, a top bureaucrat from Odisha, who focused his post retirement years on social work and education in the tribal heartland of Gumla in Jharkhand. What I didn’t know was about a book that his father wrote.
Mahmood Mamdani, a Professor in Columbia University is a well known name in the global academics, who was listed among the top 20 intellectuals who believed in human justice. In 2020 he was voted among the world’s top 50 thinkers in terms of analysis and academic output. His niche was not in religious learning but in International studies about the impact of colonization. And the book that created a political and religious storm was released in 2004. It was called ‘Good Muslim, Bad Muslim’.
It’s important to remember that 9/11 just didn’t come out of a vacuum. But when it did, the Good, the Bad, and the Ordinary Muslims were ALL challenged- ‘You are either with or against us’. No context. No background. No debates. Anyone who dared to mention the issues or the politics was ‘enabling terrorism’. Those who agreed were ‘Good’ and those who didn’t were ‘Bad’. The rest didn’t matter.
In that abysmal atmosphere, Mamdani had the guts to write the iconic book, daring to go against the presumption by all News Channels that the attack happened because Quran was a book of Jihad; it was an order by the ‘Sharia’ and ALL those who practiced Islam and believed that ‘God is Great’ were a bunch of evil, cave dwelling fanatics living in the dark ages. It was so easy to throw in some buzz words in Arabic like Jihad, ‘Allah Hu Akbar, Mujahideen, Shariya and…… Khallaaaas! End of story.
With 9/11 the terrorists not only hijacked planes but also hijacked a religion, putting all their Muslim brethren across the globe in danger. Terrorism had finally found a faith and its ugly face was Islam. What I’d like to know is, how does the metaphorical reading of sacred texts translate to hijacking, murder and terrorism? As far as I knew, Jihad literally translates to ‘Struggle’, which are of two kinds- Jihad Akbar and Jihad Asgar-the greater and the lesser. The first is a spiritual struggle against your weak self and the second is about self preservation and self defense, or what the Christians call a ‘just war’. But 9/11 became a moment in history when a Super Power tried to harness one version of Islam and the ‘struggles’ that every Muslim now has to endure.
The book has five chapters- ‘Culture Talk’, ‘Modernity and Violence’, ‘The Cold War’ and ‘Blowback’, ‘Terrorism and Human rights’ and ‘Rethinking of Policies’. It deals with how Islamic terrorism is a political byproduct of the Cold War-era of Western policies, especially the U.S. It highlights the funding of jihadist groups during the Soviet-Afghan war, pointing out how it should be understood in light of the geopolitics of US- Soviet, rivalries; and how ‘radicals’ aren’t born from Scriptures but from modern political grievances or from the agony and ashes of a war. To quote him:
‘When terrorists attack we are told that their religion is the root cause. But when America bombs a country we are told that this is an unfortunate necessity that we have to do.’
So violence is justified or excused when done in the name of an empire. But when it is done by ‘others’ it is blamed on the religion.
Mamdani digs deep into the roots of terror; of the US’s involvement in Afghanistan, of how the CIA succeeded in defeating communism; how it funded, trained and sold weapons to the Afghan Mujahideen; of how they explicitly financed ‘Jihad’, by publishing Qurans and manuals encouraging violence and distributing it free to all the Madrasas; how they funneled 3 billion dollars, sent experts in ammunition and in warfare and had training camps for the locals on how to make ammunition and explosives.
The book outlines how some turbaned men were even invited by Ronald Reagan into the White House and hailed as the ‘gentlemen who were the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers’. But once the wars were over and democracy demolished, the foot soldiers were left on their own, without any support for schools, for housing or food or for healthcare. Out of which would rise a core group called the ‘Al Qaeda’.
To quote him: ‘The group Al Qaeda is a consequence of our own strategy. Blowback is the name we have given. Yesterday’s allies have become today’s enemies. The same fighters who were trained to kill in the name of freedom were later hunted as terrorists. Not because they changed, but because the enemy changed. The same people who you trained but abandoned; the same people who once were ‘Good Muslims’ became ‘Bad Muslims’ just because your geo political analysis shifted to who the enemy is.’
Just imagine the chaos of the consequences. When weapons, ammunition and military training is given free of cost and then powerful backs are turned, what is left behind is an illiterate army of militia, mobsters, gangsters and monsters who might give the world a ‘Blowback’. Therefore it is not rocket science to understand that the Quran was used for propaganda and Radical Islam was born in Washington and Islamabad. Not in Mecca or Medina.
The roots of a temporary terrorism, which began from politics, ended up spreading and strengthening itself across the globe. What began with a Cold War intervention, continued to grow with the ongoing global inequality related to the legacy of Western colonization. He even mentions the case of Israel. Remember, this book was written TWENTY years ago. And the reality of the Palestinians and the ongoing genocide confirms that. In fact the book was written when Al Qaeda was eliminated and when all Americans cheered. But from the embers of the fire an even more radical group emerged and that was ISIS.
He concludes by telling that the solution to terrorism does not lie in what the West calls moderate Islam or what the West calls ‘Good Muslims’- the ones who blindly obey the policies of the West; the ones who cheer the genocide in Gaza. NO. What he says is that the solution is shifting from a military approach to a political one; acknowledging our history in the region; engaging in the grievances; and supporting the stable economy of all the countries that have been interfered and intervened in.
To quote him: ‘As long as the West continues to explain its violence as a strategic necessity, and Muslim violence as cultural methodology, the cycle of misunderstanding will persist. If terrorism is a modern response to modern forms of power and inequality, then our response should also be modern and not medieval’.
More important than extremism, what we need is a balance. What we need is for the religious pendulum to move to the middle. And that can happen when self made clergies are replaced by scholars.
I sincerely hope the attention to Zohran leads more and more people to his father’s literary gift. I hope more people read the book which not only documents the historically created spin to justify self-serving political needs, but also highlights how might and power use fear to divide people, justify violence, and silence criticism. I
It's a book that debunks many lies. It’s a book that makes you uncomfortable in all the right ways. It’s a book that pushes you to think beyond headlines.
Nargis Natarajan is a writer and commentator based in Bhubaneshwar. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.