Dhruti Kalapi Topics in Globalization and Post-Colonialism Week 13 Global Terrorism Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, New York:

: Columbia University Press, 2007 Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War, and the Roots of Terror, New York: Doubleday, 2004

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Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007 The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action [Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942] On Suicide Bombing by Asad Talal is an unembellished reflection over what dominated the propagandist discourse following September 11, 2001. With the destruction and massacres that followed as United States and its allies declared war against Islamic terror, his concern was to understand what really made the acts of Terrorism so disturbing and how the large number of civilian deaths were legitimate as casualties of the war against terrorism, and what made the citizens support these as rightful as opposed to the other acts of terror. This book is divided in three main parts, fist that deals with the idea of clash of civilizations where in he explains what implies at the crux of contemporary terrorism. He problematizes the contemporary singular notion of Islamic Jihadism as it comes to be synonymous with what terrorism entails in the public discourse. He also addresses the need for conjecture of a discursive theorization to locate the acts of terrorism with in liberal subjectivities. [Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, pg. 2] War is not, as is widely assumed, primarily an instrument of policy utilized by nations to extend or defend their expressed political values or their economic interests. On the contrary, it is itself the principal basis of organization on which all modern societies are constructed [Marshall McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village, 1968; pg. 113-116] In the following section Talal Asad concerns the readers with the assessments to question the moral to the concept of War juxtaposed against an outstanding perspective of the absolute evil of terrorism. As the ground is set clear for what is suggested as legitimate and acceptable violence of the state, he queries the character that is atypically lost to the agency of the state against that of the violence carried by the non-military cliques. There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. [Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942] In the third part, Talal Asad scales the expression of horror, a mutual reaction towards the acts of terror. It is to him, this very daunting question that required an explanation, in order to understand the uniqueness of such acts as they are stripped off their motives and intentions. He seeks elucidations from the conceptions of killing and dying within the Judeo-Christian traditions. These

concepts by themselves stand out as appalling facts, the overwhelming feeling lies in the disregard of what discourse of liberalism approves/ disapproves of, as violence beyond the frame of law, which has so strangely been dependent on the coercive violence. The Chapters of On Suicide Bombing were compiled as a series of Wellek Library lectures delivered by Professor Asad Talal at the University of California. His attempt was to reconceptualise the adversary, and to gaze critically at the received notions than simply disparage the perpetrators of terrorist attack. Though out this work, his urge has been to re-examine the relationship between USA and the rest of the world, keeping Middle East as the focal point. As for the case of the either, it is not in his view to accuse the outside to be the cause, but examine critically the relationship that each of these regions have had with violence, historically and geographically, and the numerous ways in which violence has been beseeched, rejected at various points, at the notion of cause and its consequence. In the introduction to this book, he is cautious to address a possible misreading of the book as an intended justification for terrorism. Instead, he states his interest underlying in the concept of Just War. In his opinion, War as an act of mobilization should ideally not be moralized, yet the notion of Just War has attained a degree of coherence, in a manner that justifies certain kinds of violence. This violence may not scale to the acts of what terrorists can commit, which in turn may be seen to have no legitimacy as they transgress the law of war. If one were to necessarily bind both these notions that entail violence as subject matter in the course of action, it could make the law of war more ambiguous. For him the demon is that contemplation of terrorism which allows a justification for the action of state, by engaging in an interpretation that simplifies for the state to practice all kinds of violence with moral justification outside and within. He seeks a way to do away with these categories and the binary tagging and tries to extricate the complexity of ones very own development on the ideation of war and violence to allow new insights about the self. His questions, open provoking debates, but exclude an answer with an alternative. He makes no attempt to suggest or explain a better means to initiate a paradigm shift towards what he deconstructs so intensely. Talal Asad (born in 1932) is a distinguished anthropologist, at the City University of New York. He was born in Saudi Arabia. He was very young when his parents moved to India and eventually to Pakistan. His mother a Saudi Arabian was known to behold a very traditional character while his

father an Austrian Jew, who converted to Islam in his mid-20s identified himself within various intellectual fields of academia. Talal Asads upbringing thus was shaped by a sense of diversity and complexity of the world from his parents. His mothers approach to the religion made him mindful of the idea that religion could have an unreflective approach as opposed to intellectual approach. His fathers knowledge about Middle East and Europe only sharpened his keenness towards a deeper epistemological approach. What added an extra layer to his sensitivity towards diversity was that he was educated amongst Christians where his teachers were British missionaries. But to him, it indeed remained crucial to clutch on to his religious identity. By the age of 14 he revolted and lost faith in his religion and made up in his mind to come to Europe, which for him was a cradle of those amazing things that he could not find in Pakistan. Despite his fathers effort, to change his opinion, his fixation with Europe was realized as he came to England at the age of 18. It was his fathers choice then, for him to be an Architect, with a view to embed him with a chance to be creative. It was not a choice of his heart, yet he grappled his way through at the Architecture Association School of Architecture for two years. His desire remained to be and Anthropologist, and he realised this as he gave up Architecture and joined Edinburgh University to study Anthropology. He then continued his post-graduate studies and completed his DPhil in Anthropology from Oxford. His dissertation then had nothing to do with religion, but on politics and economy of a pastoral nomadic society in the desert of Northern Sudan in 1960s The Six Day War of 1967 was one very important moment in his life, a moment that traumatized him for his inability to grasp the exhalation on the part of Britain to what had happen. He could locate an understanding of why Israelis were pleased with victory but could gather in no way an explanation to the satisfaction of British. He could although make links with the 1956 Suez. This was the pivot that let him to engage deeply with the colonial experience. His contribution to post-colonial, religious and religious studies is deep and profound. His questioning is critical with apt attention drawn towards the positioning. In words of David Scott and Charles Hirschkind Talal Asads approach is described as follows, He doubted not only whether anthropology was as important to colonial rule as its detractors often alleged, but also whether the reactive and defensive moralizing posture of assertion and counter assertion was at all constructive. In interrogating the colonial question in anthropology, he urged, what is important is the conceptual structure of the discipline and the relation of this structure to the conditions of power in which the

discipline realized itself as authoritative knowledge. [David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, Powers of the Secular Modern, Talal Asad and His Interlocutors; pg. 2] Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror

[themetapicture.com] Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1974 and specializes in the study of African history and politics. His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Mamdani was a professor at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania (1973-79), Makerere University in Uganda (1980-1993), and the University of Cape Town (1996-1999). He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including being listed as one of the Top 20 Public Intellectuals by Foreign Policy (US) and Prospect (UK) magazine in 2008. From 1998 to 2002 he served as President of CODESRIA (Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa). He teaches courses on: major debates in the study of Africa; the modern state and the colonial subject; the Cold War and the Third World; the theory, history, and practice of human rights; and civil wars and the state in Africa. [ http://www.columbia.edu/cu/anthropology/fac bios/mamdani/faculty.html]

Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon, not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead. [Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects 2010; pg. 268] Well aware of such a phenomena, Mammadanis Good Muslim Bad Muslim, comes across as an entrancing piece of literature, that seeks to situate the issue of war on terror within and without the catcalling of propaganda relaying sensible features through historical and critical lens. His book like Talal Asad looks in to a new historical narrative of the events seen in the light of September 11, 2011. However on the grounds of certain perspectives, it departs to highlight through the series of clashes within the known historical dialogues that go beyond the likes of colonialism, Cold War, Proxy wars. Mamdani pays attention to every single detail, whereby he sets on to journey through the shocking problems of decolonization in Africa with several US sponsored venal violence. Against a backdrop of very frail picture of democracy he brings to light that which tears apart the hopes in the region of Israel- Palestine.

Within the view of Culture talk his critique on what the authors of the clash of civilization theories come about to problematize the conclusions over the debate of Religion and Terror as they continually try and piece together political behaviour on the basis of essentializing religion, based on easy assumptions . By providing an anti-thesis to the kind of discourse of the idea of good and bad attracted to the bearer of the religion Islam, through a set of political undertones. He ordinarily

situates the origins of terror to the Regan era and its roots lying in Africa and cold war in Vietnam. Mamdanis engagement with the histories carries a very smooth form of narrative, where the significance of the engagement of each event that is brought in becomes a grander perspective towards understanding of the acts of terror. With each chapter the articulation of what makes Terror becomes clearer. There seems to be certain type of congruence between Good Muslim Bad Muslim and On Suicide Bombing. The initial chapters of Modernity and Violence and Culture Talk talk on similar fronts of what Talal Asads confrontation with the idea of Terrorism. A greater historical perspective has been dealt with as the book proceeds to the chapters two three and four. With conclusion, Mamdani seems to be concerned to address the two points; one is that of need of U.S. recognizing a change and addressing it in the main discourse of its view on Political Islam and difference between nationalism and terrorism and the second is that of Geo-political need, for the US to occupy is not by any means a conducive initiative.