The Orientalisation of Islam

America's 'war on terror', a euphemism for a war against an ever increasing number of Muslim countries and groups, is premised on the notion of a distinction between the 'good' Muslim and the 'bad' Muslim. The former are Muslims who support Bush's imperialist misadventures; the latter those who refuse to toe the American line. The 'war on terror' is, at the same time, also constructed as a struggle for discursive hegemony between rival definitions of Islam — one version identified with the 'good' Muslims and their American backers. Consequently, the 'war on terror' comes to be framed, as this fascinating book tells us, in essentially cultural, as opposed to political, terms. It is as if the war is all about Islam, or, as the 'good' Muslims would have it, about the 'false' version of Islam championed by their unpleasant Muslim rivals. This, Mamdani dismisses as crude Orientalism, based on the facile assumption that Muslims exist in a historical vacuum and that all of their actions can be explained simply by a reading of certain Islamic texts.

Western neo-conservative and pro-Zionist ideologues insist that the 'war on terror' is a justified response to 'Islamic terror'. Mamdani pleads for a nuanced understanding of contemporary American neo-conservative discourse about Islam, pointing out the subtle differences between ideologues. While some like Samuel Huntington see Islam in monolithic terms, as inherently opposed to the West, there are others who distinguish between those Muslim groups that are not overtly hostile to the hegemonic project of the West, and the 'fundamentalist' others that are so. This, in turn, has crucial implications for America's policies vis-à-vis the 'Muslim world'. The former position calls for an unrelenting war against Islam and Muslims, while the latter, building on the difference it constructs between 'good' and 'bad' Muslims, appeals for a strategy of building close alliances between the West and 'good' Muslims in a war against 'bad' Muslims.