In this brilliant look at the rise of political Islam, the distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani dispels the notion of 'good' (secular and westernized) Muslims as against 'bad' (pre-modern, fanatic) Muslims. Mamdani shows how political Islam emerged from a modern encounter with western power, and how the terrorist movement within it arose out of the USA's post-Vietnam Proxy Wars. It culminates by looking in ...
Citizen and Subject: Decentralized Despotism and the Legacy of Late Colonialism
This book analyses the legacy of late colonialism and the obstacles to democratization in post-colonial societies. Professor Mamdani examines contemporary Africa to argue that the legacy created a bifurcated world inhabited by subjects on the one hand and citizens on the other, their lives regulated simulateneously by customary and modern law, their beliefs dismissed as pagan but bearing the status of religion, in sum, the world of the 'savage' barricaded ...
