Regular marked price: $14.95Discount Price: $10.17
Cost Savings: $4.78 (32%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 320.557
EAN num: 9780385515375
ISBN number: 0385515375
Label: Three Leaves
Manufacturer: Three Leaves
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: June 21, 2005
Publishing house: Three Leaves
Release Date: June 21, 2005
Sale Popularity Level: 212786
Studio: Three Leaves
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
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 very 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 very first chapter was excellent.
After the very first chapter, though, the author flies off topic and never returns. Instead of following the very 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 very 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.
Rated by buyers 
-
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.
Rated by buyers 
-
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_.
Rated by buyers 
-
Labeled Good Muslim Bad Muslim and with an introductory chapter concerning the misconception between fundamental and political Islam in Western discourse, I ASSUMED this book would have something to do with that. Unfortunately, it dissembled as a genealogical history of modern Islamic terrorism which, undeniably, in Mamdani's case, has purely Western, and specifically, American and Israeli roots. In reality this book is nothing more than a indictment of American history, Israeli history, Spanish history, British history, Dutch history, French history, but never Afghani history, Nicaraguan history, Sudanese history. Nothing but diatribe, although, and why I give it three stars - it is incredibly well-written, engaging, beautifully cited, authenticated, and accurate (you know, on that scholarly level which though causes it to be a compact thesis and self-sustaining, doesn't really cover the whole truth).
student,
amherst college
Rated by buyers -
Here is a book that will show you what is important about scholarship: not facts, but how they are interpreted and put in the right context. In explaining the roots of "modern" terrorism, Mamdani's main thesis is an anti-thesis to Huntington "Clash of Civilization" which has dominated Western and especially American scholarship. He develops this by using almost exclusively, secondary sources. The book goes above the journalistic approach of most writers who are influenced by the superficial and ideological (good versus evil) analysis of most in the media.
Throughout the book, Mamdani explains (as he has done it elsewhere as in When Victims Become Killers for example) that students of conflicts must learn how to put an emphasis on "political identities" and move away from the almost non-important cultural side of identities. This is important in understand conflicts and other political processes such as terrorism, but as in When Victims Become Killers, Mamdani fails to connect the political dimension of identity politics discourse to its underlying economic dimension. In essence, he overpoliticizes the events he discusses at the risk of forgetting economics and the global economic context in which those events occur. (May God protect us from the fear of being blanded "Marxists"?) For this failure, which is also prevalent in his When Victims Become Killers, I lower my score. But for his sucess in refuting the anti/a-historical culture and civilization-centered arguments in the discusion of terrorism and for his global perspective in his analysis, I am forgiving and give him a 4. Perhaps I should be a little more generous when I think about the book's scope. But at the same time, I am attempting to cure what I have come to identify as chronic absence in his analysis: economic analysis! The book could have been more important had Mamdani discussed deeper the dangers (or advantages if any) of political Islam. But to this he may answer that it wasn't his point. And I would agree with him because political Islam has been disscussed extensively (under different names) elsewhere.
What an interdisciplinary son Africa has given to the world!His books should be required reading for all students interested in a global perspective of global conflicts. The so-called "Third World" students of "international" politics will find his intellectual ability very inspiring. He shows how American education (Mamdani is a Harvard educated scholar from those early times when American education was serious, but seriously ideological, too--but is it different today?) can be good to Africans, Asians and other "developing" area students.
I recommend two more books from him, namely, Citizen and Subject and When Victims Become Killers (The very first few chapters will be enough if you're not interested in learning about Mamdani's interpretation of the Rwandan history and genocide. It goes without saying that the later is perhaps the most important explanatory work you'll ever read on the Rwandan genocide despite its errors in facts!) for those who want to know where he comes from.
Of course the book and (sadly) the author have been and will continue to be attacked by those who are not ready to move way from the non-sense idea or ideology of "American Exceptionalism" and "The City Upon a Hill" slogans. Perhaps a reading from John Dinges' The Condor Years and Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow will help refute those who are not yet convinced about the ideology behind the so-called goodness of America. Every good American patriot should learn that America cannot be helped by self-denial, self-congratulatory and crooked histories.
Every student who attempts to understand violent human events has always been attacked. It is as if we, human beings, prefer to keep those events obscure and classified among the "irrational" actions that are "demonic" in nature. However, without an endeavor to understand what such violent events mean in the history of humanity, humans are headed towards distinction. Let Mamdani's work be critiqued and criticized, but let's refrain from using "uncivilized" attack toward this intellectual.
I highly recommend this book. It will revolutionize the way you study and more importantly the way you watch the news.
Yours trully from the Greatest City in America,
Student Forever
Find other books like this one:
