Injustice and The New World Order An Anthropological Perspective On Terrorism in India

Critical Studies on Terrorism
ISSN: 1753-9153 (Print) 1753-9161 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rter20
Injustice and the New World Order: an

anthropological perspective on “terrorism” in India
Irfan Ahmad
To cite this article: Irfan Ahmad (2017) Injustice and the New World Order: an anthropological
perspective on “terrorism” in India, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 10:1, 115-137, DOI:
10.1080/17539153.2016.1219532
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2016.1219532
Published online: 12 Sep 2016.
Submit your article to this journal
Article views: 1824
View related articles
View Crossmark data
Citing articles: 2 View citing articles
Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rter20
CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM, 2017
VOL. 10, NO. 1, 115–137
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2016.1219532
Injustice and the New World Order: an anthropological

perspective on “terrorism” in India
Irfan Ahmad
Institute for Religion, Politics, & Society, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article presents biographies of three activists of the Student Received 11 March 2016
Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Following 9/11, the Indian state Accepted 19 July 2016
banned SIMI for fomenting “terrorism”, “sedition” and “destroying KEYWORDS
Indian nationalism”. Of the three SIMI activists, Qasim Omar had New World Order; terrorism;
spent 30 months in prison and Samin Patel, a US citizen of Indian justice; SIMI; India; Jihad;
origin, 27 months. Both these prominent SIMI leaders were Gandhi
charged with denigrating the photo of India’s flag and making
provocative speeches. I interviewed them after their release. The
third was an ordinary (non-office bearer) activist. Drawing on their
biographies, I argue that Islamist radicalism or “terrorism” should
be construed politically. Contrary to the prevalent politics, the
pivot of which is bare rationality of profit and loss and ruthless
pursuit of national interests, the kind of politics SIMI actors enact is
best understood as a profound act of ethics manifest in the quest
for justice. As such, they are not enemies of freedom, democracy
and human rights; on the contrary, activists such as those in SIMI
strive to rescue freedom and human rights from being monopo-
lised and molested by the mighty few and thereby truly universa-
lise them. Against methodological nationalism, I take the post-
World War II global order as the human condition in which to
situate the radical politics of these young SIMI activists.
We have no right to be “disconnected”. . .

Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
Introduction
The account of the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) presented in this article
revolves around the monumentalised event of 9/11, which has been described variously.
While critics of postmodernism described it as “The End of the Age of Irony”, right-wing
observer George Will noted that it marked the end of America’s “holiday from history”.
Karl-Heinz Stockhausen provocatively stated that the plane destroying the WTC was a
work of art. Evangelist Jerry Falwell termed it as a divine punishment on the US for her
sins of all sorts (all quotes cited in Zizek 2002, 34, 11, 44). The Bollywood film, My Name is
Khan, described 9/11 as a temporal benchmark. In the Western world, BC and AD are
CONTACT Irfan Ahmad Irfan.ahmad@acu.edu.au

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
116 I. AHMAD
two key benchmarks dividing history; the protagonist, Rizwan Khan (an Indian Muslim
living in the USA, played by Shah Rukh Khan), observes that 9/11 now marks the third
division (baṭvāra),1 such is its significance. In India too, 9/11 consolidated and inaugu-
rated a new politics embodied, inter alia, in the cognate catalogues of terrorism (read
Islamic) and unprecedented securitisation of life, especially in relation to its Muslim
population. My own fieldwork began in the dreadful shadow of 9/11.
I arrived in early October 2001 for doctoral fieldwork on Jamaat-e-Islami in Aligarh, a
town 125 kilometres southeast of Delhi. On 27 September 2001, the Government of
India had banned SIMI for fomenting “terrorism”, “communal disharmony” and “sedi-
tion” (Ahmad 2009a, 35, 247n3). The government notification banning SIMI (under the
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967) stated that the latter’s activities were
“prejudicial to the security of the country” and accused SIMI of “working for an interna-
tional Islamic order, supporting militancy in Punjab, Kashmir and elsewhere . . . and
engineering communal riots” (Singh 2007, 76, 144).
Within weeks of the ban, like many Western states, India too passed a new
ordinance: the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO). The Home Minister warned
that those opposing POTO “would be wittingly or unwittingly pleasing the terrorists”
(Kalhan et al. 2006, 152). The Parliament passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act
(POTA) in March 2002. The debates in Parliament demonstrated that POTA was
“justified as part of the international effort to fight terrorism”. The Malimath
Committee tasked to include “permanent legal measures against terrorism” identified
“the Arab World” as the locus of terrorism and noted a “Pakistani link with interna-
tional terrorism” (Singh 2007, 59). Under POTA, (forced) confessions to the police
were accepted as evidence and provision of bail was such that detention of the
accused could go for one full year (40–41). Criticised for targeting Muslims in
applying POTA, it was replaced in 2004 with the UAPA and amended in 2008 and
2013 (Human Rights Watch 2010, 6, Roy and Singh 2015, 309). However, the 2004
UAPA retained many provisions of POTA, and in fact, older laws traceable to the
British rule (Kalhan 2006).
The 2008 UAPA defined terrorist acts as those “likely to threaten the unity, integrity,
security or sovereignty of India or with intent to strike terror or likely to strike terror in
the people . . . by any means of whatever nature to cause or likely to cause” death or
injury to persons, damage to property or “the disruption of any supplies or services
essential to the life of the community in or in any foreign country” (Human Rights Watch
2010, 6). The definition was not only sweeping and vague; its jurisdiction was interna-
tional in the way the War on Terror (WOT) was international. Ahmed’s (2013) contention
that all that was previously “tribal”, “ethnic”, “subnational” and “regional” in the periph-
eries was subsumed under terrorism to serve the new counterterrorism system led by
the US is pertinent. It is within this larger context that the banning of SIMI should be
located.
The right-wing Indian government worked hard to impress upon the US that it had
been the victim of “Islamic terrorism” long before America became its target (Ahmad
2009a, 36). The ban on SIMI thus served as a platform to participate in the WOT. Central
to this participation was the discourse that terrorism was intrinsic to Islam as a religion
and that Pakistan was a sponsor of terrorism threatening India’s sovereignty (Ganguly
and Kapur 2010; Gupta 2011; Kamath 2001). In a TV debate soon after 9/11, Mr Narendra
CRITICAL STUDIES ON TERRORISM 117
Modi, general secretary of the ruling party, congratulated the media for speaking truth
when it used the phrase “Islamic terrorism”. He, however, lamented that Indian media
used the phrase only after Western media did. He opined that terrorism was innate to
Islam (less emphatically also to Christianity), for it did not consider other religions to be
true. He went on to say that the “whole world” had witnessed terrorism “for 1400 years”
[since Muhammad’s time]. He saw the post-9/11 era as a battle between “civilisation”
and “terrorism” (YouTube 2013).
That such a stereotypical view about Islam is informed by the conjunction of
Islamophobia between the US and British India over three centuries (Gottschalk and
Greenberg 2013) needs to be stressed. After 9/11, Charles Allen, a popular historian of
South Asia, contributed much to the solidification of Western stereotypes about Islam in
India. He wrote, “The word Wahhabi entered in the popular consciousness at the same
time as ‘9/11’ and is now about as loaded as the word ‘Nazi’” (cited in Ahmad 2015b,
145). Such stereotypes were embraced by much of the super-nationalist Indian media
and politicians because historically “European orientalism and Indian nationalism col-
luded” to create Muslims as “Other” (Wolfe 2002, 374). Given this collusion, such views
were/are shared by former police officer turned author, Baljit Rai (2009), who linked 9/11
straight to the Qur’an, as well as by media and security experts (Sethi 2014, 11–14). The
ban on SIMI and the discourse of terrorism thereby construed Indian Muslims as a
“suspect community” with alleged transnational loyalty (Singh 2007, 58, ff.). According
to an Amnesty International Report, during its three-year existence, 3500 people (includ-
ing minors) were held under POTA. Gujarat had the largest number of detainees, 287, of
which all, except one, were Muslim (Ahmad 2014b, 290).
Formed in 1976, SIMI was an organisation of the young and educated: its member-
ship was open to any Indian student or youth. Its Constitution stipulated that once
members turned thirty, their membership automatically terminated (SIMI 1977). Most
SIMI members were educated either in Western-style colleges or modern madrasa
(seminary). Owing, inter alia, to membership criteria which included compulsory offer-
ing of daily prayer, abstention from “obscene” enjoyment (e.g. Bollywood movies
showing immoral and unlawful violence/murder and “semi-nude” dance), rejection of
dowry and so on, SIMI’s membership was small. In 1977, the number of its core
members, anṣ ār, was a mere 132 and that of its sympathisers, iḳ hvān, 5000. In 1981,
anṣār numbered 461 and iḳ hvān 40,000. In 1996, the number of anṣ ār declined to 413
of which 54 were women. Given the absence of data from 1997 onwards, even an
exaggerated estimate would not put SIMI’s anṣ ār membership beyond 1000 in 2001
when it was banned (Ahmad 2009a, 242–243).
As its full name suggests, SIMI’s audience was primarily students and its activities
largely educational-moral. For instance, it organised awareness campaigns for education
and against the use of drugs and tobacco. It installed booths for assisting new students
as academic years began. It also organised conferences like the “role of Islam in building
a new India”. Amongst its political activities, it opposed Government interference in the
Muslim Personal Law and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. According to its
Constitution, SIMI’s objective was to “secure divine favor by shaping human life in
accordance with the principles indicated by Allah and his messenger the Prophet
Muhammad” (SIMI undated, 5). Ideologically, SIMI was connected with the Jamaat-e-
Islami (hereafter Jamaat) founded by Abul ’Ala Maududi (1903–1979) in 1941. However,
118 I. AHMAD
Jamaat later disowned SIMI and in 1982 formed the Student Islamic Organization of
India (Ahmad 2005, 138–140).2
Following the ban, the Indian state launched a crackdown on SIMI to arrest its
activists throughout India. SIMI’s national library in Aligarh was confiscated. Nearly
every day, the media – TV and print alike – flashed news of the arrest of SIMI “terrorists”.
Abandoning independence, the media reproduced whatever the state propagated (on
such intimacy between British media and the state, see Miller 2006). Given this scenario
and because of my enrolment at the University of Amsterdam at the time, I was under
suspicion as a Western Dutch agent collecting information on Muslims. As an ethno-
grapher, I felt somewhat frustrated (see Ahmad 2009a, ch. 2). I used my time doing
archival work in the library of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). There, I came across an
Urdu magazine containing an article on stratification among Muslims. The article had its
author’s address, a hostel of AMU. I went to see him. The first meeting was brief. As I
took my leave, he suggested meeting again.
Let me call him Mansur.3 I met Mansur frequently. He expressed his desire to learn
English and study at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), my alma mater. Born in a
Bihar village, Mansur’s family was moderately poor. He belonged to the stratum of
vegetable sellers (sabzīfarūsh/rāʿīn) usually looked down upon by those who claim to
be Sayyid, Khan, or Sheikh. He lost his father early on. It was his elder brother who took
care of his education. A madrasa teacher, Mansur’s brother, had moved to Uttar Pradesh
(UP), the neighbouring state. Mansur lived with his family. On finishing 8th grade, he
joined Jāmi’atul Falāḥ , a madrasa in eastern UP. At Falāḥ , he read Maududi, Qutb, Hasan
Al-Banna and others, and came in contact with SIMI. Mansur told me about his involve-
ment with SIMI only a few months before my return to Amsterdam after a year of
fieldwork. In between, I had become his academic advisor. Through him I met Qasim
Omar (in 2004) and Samin Patel (in 2007), two SIMI members jailed as “terrorists”, after
their release. Through biographical trajectories of these three SIMI activists, I critique the
dominant understanding of terrorism manifest, inter alia, in the dramatic oppositional
binaries derived from orientalism, the projection of enemy within and the statist account
of terrorism (Jackson 2007, 399–401, 411, 2009, 179–182, Semmerling 2008; Stohl 2008,
Volpp 2002). I argue that contrary to the prevalent politics central to which is the raw
rationality of national profit and loss, the kind of politics SIMI actors enact is an ethical
politics at the service of justice.
This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, I delineate my argument central
to which is the notion of ethical politics for humanity inspired by Islam, but transcending
the statistical community of Muslims. I situate this politics in the global context,
especially in relation to the post-World War II international order. Informed by, and
indebted to, the insights of Talal Asad (see Ahmad 2015a), Jackson (2011, 2007), Edward
Said (1995[1978]), Zulaika (2009) and others, the reading of the post-World War II world
and the various connections made here is largely my own. My approach to studying
terrorism draws on anthropological works (see, e.g. Ahmad 2014b; Kennan 2006;
Mahmood 2001; Sluka 2009, 1995; Taussig 2008; Zulaika 1995), as well as works
known as Critical Terrorism Studies (De Graaf and De Graaf 2010; Jackson 2012, 2010;
Schmid 2004).
Of the many distinctions of an anthropology of terrorism, three are worth mentioning
here: (1) stressing the “subjectivity and lived experience” of the “suspect” communities
and “terrorists” (Sluka 2009, 141); (2) studying terrorism not as a “neutral reality” but as a
reflection of an asymmetrical order of political domination and resistance thereto that
includes state terror (Mahmood 2001) and (3) connecting terrorism in a given place and
context to the broader configuration of international politics, as Kennan (2006) does in
his study of terrorism in the Sahara.
In the second part, I present biographies of three SIMI activists. My emphasis is on the
ideas and the politics they represent. They broadly use a critical Islamist framework to
make sense of their own condition and the larger world they inhabit. In their narratives,
local, national, global as well as “traditional” and “modern”, coalesce in such a way that it
is difficult to render them apart. By foregrounding their biographies, I aim to read and
analyse their politics which are often elided, or even distorted, by the sensationalist
media and the so-called security experts. In the conclusion, I return to my argument and
make some broad observations on Islamist radicalism.4 My key proposition is that in
enacting one stringent law5 after another to fight “terror”, Indian and Western states
have at best misrecognised, wilfully or otherwise, radical politics such as SIMI’s.
An outline of methodology is in order here. My fieldwork, planned well before 9/11,
was on Jamaat and SIO. It was because of the interest generated by the banning of SIMI
that I became interested in SIMI during the fieldwork. As ethnographic approach entails
long-term participant observation, I did fieldwork in two phases: from October 2001 to
October 2002, and from January 2004 to May 2004. I chose Aligarh as the primary site.
Initial fieldwork, however, persuaded me to adopt a multi-sited ethnographic approach
(Marcus 1995). I observed Jamaat’s activities such as the weekly meeting at its office and
the “people’s awareness campaign” it launched to safeguard secularism and democracy
during the 2002 provincial elections in UP.
As for SIO, I observed its routine activities like weekly Qur’ānic lesson in AMU hostels. I
also observed its non-routine activities like the “students’ solidarity for a better India”
campaign (for more, see Ahmad 2009a, chapters 1 and 4). My fieldwork with SIMI
activists was in the form of interviews alone. Of the three SIMI activists, I met Mansur
and Omar during doctoral fieldwork and Patel during my postdoctoral fieldwork, the
subject of which was immanent critique (see Ahmad 2008, 2011c). During the interviews,
I took notes on a tiny notepad. Immediately after the interviews, I transcribed those
notes. I met Omar in his native village in Azamgarh. The meeting continued for four
hours in the presence of many villagers. My meeting with Patel took place at his
residence in Delhi. I met Mansur frequently on the AMU campus, mostly at tea-stalls.
The argument
I make two interlocking arguments. First, contra the reigning perception, I argue that to
understand Muslim radicalism in a juridical-securitised framework or to treat terrorists as
psychopaths (see Goodin 2006, 32–34, McCauley and Moskalenko 2010; Meer 2012) is
not to understand it at all. That is, I see Islamist radicalism as primarily a political act. This
politics, however, is significantly different from the mainstream ways in which politics
has tended to be conceptualised in the US, for example. My main proposition is that the
putatively dominant understanding of terrorism6 – in both India and the West – is simply
faulty because its depiction of Islam is radically divergent from the ways in which
radicals such as Mansur, Omar and Patel themselves read Islam and politics in general.
120 I. AHMAD
It is important to understand these radicals’ conceptualisation of Islam whose genealogy

is traceable to 19th-century “modernist” Islam.
Furthermore, I argue that Islam became prominent for global-Western politics not
with the gruesome events of 9/11; Islam was equally important during the Cold War, and
during the New World Order (NWO) announced, in 1990, by George Bush Sr. (Ingwerson
1990; Pilger 2005; West and Sanders 2003; Wikisource 1990). Second, against methodo-
logical nationalism (Wimmer and Schiller 2002), I take the post-World War II global order
as the human condition in which to situate the radical politics of young SIMI activists.
Methodologically, I am inspired by Mills’ (1959) call to connect individuals’ biographies
with the larger social-political world they inhabit as integral to the “sociological imagi-
nation”. This part of the article thus elucidates these two arguments, paving the way for
a fuller appreciation of the self-understandings of Islam by the radicals which I present in
the next part.
Ethics and politics

In 1943, anthropologist Foot Whyte (1943, 697) advised political scientists “to leave
ethics to the philosophers and concern themselves primarily with a description . . .
of political behavior”. Readily embraced by political scientists, their preoccupation
with political behaviour generated mammoth statistics on techniques and proce-
dures of politics (Hallowell 1944). Ethics, it seems, was sent on an eternal holiday.7
The pivot of such politics in the West was the conjunction of bare material pursuit,
calculable rationality and ruthless aggrandisement of national interests (Ahmad
2011a). Nearly a century ago, Sulaiman Nadvi, an Indian intellectual who visited
Britain, remarked: “Having reflected on the condition here I came to know that
everything is commerce. Politics too is commerce (tejārat). Whosoever showers
money on newspapers and columnists will also control people” (Haq 2012, 55).
Recently, Bellah (2007, 59) wrote how many Americans held that “almost by
definition politics is unethical”. Thus, in 2010, when Pastor Terry Jones of Florida
declared that he would burn the Qur’an to “make a statement to honor those
murdered on that day [9/11]” (The Telegraph 2010), the White House Spokesman
commented that “any . . . activity . . . that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a
concern . . .” (BBC 2010). The logic of the NATO Chief and US commander in
Afghanistan was similar: burning the Qur’an in itself was not unethical, but could
put US troops at risk.
In contrast, the politics of SIMI activists is best understood as a profound act of ethics
manifest in the quest for justice which emanates from a given tradition – Islamic – but
which seeks to encompass humanity in its entirety. Such a recasting of Islam is traceable,
among others, to Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98), the Indian “modernist” who founded
Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College. Responding to the Orientalist charges that Islam
made no contribution to the cause of all humanity, Khan concluded his Life of
Mohammad (2002 [1870], 405, 429, 443) with his observation on “Whether Islam has
been beneficial or injurious to human society in general” (italics mine). In so interpreting
Islam, Khan’s audience was primarily European/Christian and his approach that of
comparative theology. Acknowledging that the practice of slavery among Muslims was
injurious to humanity, he held that the greatest benefit from Islam to humanity had
been “the spirit of resistance” to papal power and the intellectual freedom this produced
(Luther, according to Khan, borrowed the idea of Reformation from Islam).
Islam thus cannot be adequately understood in a conventional way – a religion
simply inherited by a pre-defined ethno-religious community. Islam is not simply the
religion of Muslims but of humanity at large – Muslims merely representing that
humanity. In Tafsīral-Manār, Rashid Rida (b. 1865) likewise sought to rescue true Islam
from “conventional Islam trapped in imitation and in ethno-sociological communities”
(cited in Ahmad 2010, 494). Abulkalam Azad (1888–1958), the anti-colonial philosopher-
theologian who became India’s first education minister, exemplified such an under-
standing. Jihad, Azad held, was not exclusive to Muslims. It included “every effort made
in favor of the Truth and to wipe out human slavery and oppression. Today those
[Hindus] who are fighting for the welfare and freedom of the country [India], believe
me, they are also . . . engaged in a jihad . . .” (Azad 1912, 11). Azad 1914, 1) called Gandhi
a “captain of freedom (raīsulaḥrār).”
This quest for ethics and justice for humanity, Azad held, entails sacrifice (qurbānī)
and martyrdom (shahādat). In 1914, Snehlata Devi, a Hindu, immolated herself
because of her parents’ inability to pay a heavy dowry. As the editor of Al-Hilāl,
Azad observed that throughout history many made sacrifices for the love of humanity
and truth. Socrates drank the goblet of poison. In Azad’s view, the soul of Snehleta
from beneath the scarf of flames sang a requiem for the callousness of all humanity.
Her self-immolation was indeed jihad in the path of Allah (jihad fī sabīl Allāh).
Snehlata, Azad concluded, was a martyr, shahīd. Gandhi held a similar view of politics
at the centre of which was the notion of shahādat, an Arabic-Urdu term also meaning
sacrifice, which Gandhi frequently used. Like jihad and shahādat, caliphate too
became a cosmopolitan realm of ethicality winning Gandhi’s endorsement (Devji
2008). The politics of SIMI activists broadly pertains to and enacts this tradition, a
tradition about which both media and most academics currently do not speak, and
on which this article dwells.
What Azad described as sacrifice became integral to modern politics in the West.
Hannah Arendt noted the crystallisation of a common humanity which the threat of the
atom bomb unleashed: “every man feels the shock of events which take place at the
other side of the globe” (cited in Ahmad 2010, 495). This threat also created a suicidal
humanity. For the first time, humans realised that humanity itself can commit suicide,
hence the necessity for sacrifice. That nuclear annihilation could occur, Karl Jaspers held,
offered the option of sacrificing humanity for politics, or politics for humanity.
Whichever the option, sacrifice became the logic of politics to the extent that Jaspers
believed that “without sacrifice we are not truly human” (cited in Ahmad 2010, 496). This
idiom of sacrifice is as important to radicals as it is to pacifists, green activists and
humanitarians.
If theorised along the lines of Devji (2008, 2005) and as I develop here, Muslim
radicalism is not simply enmeshed in humanity; it is humanity’s emblem. If radicals
speak against Western states, it is not because they are the enemy of freedom, democ-
racy and human rights. Muslim radicals rather strive to rescue freedom and human
rights from being monopolised and pulverised by the mighty few and thereby truly
universalise them. In radicals’ narratives, the sufferings of the indigenous population of
South Africa became fused with those of Muslims in Bosnia and in Palestine to form the
122 I. AHMAD
Figure 1. SIMI’s pamphlet “Human Rights Campaign, 1993”14.
cry of one humanity. In 1993, SIMI organised a “Human Rights Campaign”. One key
English pamphlet distributed during this campaign noted (Figure 1):
Much of the human suffering, bloodshed, agony spring from the callous disregard for the
dignity of man and ruthless denial of the fundamental rights. The incredible insensitivity
of the European community toward barbarous onslaught on the innocent people of
Bosnia, the colonial suppression of the native people of South Africa and Palestine,
heinous crimes and aggression perpetrated against various communities. . . of the world
today, all these unfold nothing but the hypocrisy and hollowness of the universal
declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, the so-called
humanism of the Western civilization. . . and high-sounding lip-services paid by the
leaders and heads of the government including those of our country [India]. . . . The
Qur’an and Sunnah make repeated references to these fundamental rights of all human
beings which, in the current political parlance are known as human rights. . . . Islam
rejects all distinctions of birth, class, race, color and language. Inspired by Prophet
Muhammad’s historic address . . . on his last Hajj pilgrimage, SIM[I] of India is launching
a week-long Human Rights campaign . . .8
This long quote underscores the contention that by invoking the sufferings of people
beyond the divide of religion and ethnicity, radicals like SIMI’s signal their inseparable
commonality with humanity. Evidently, they sometimes speak of and for Muslims. This,
however, is not solely because they themselves are Muslim. Rather, humanity manifests
itself in the utter sufferings and deaths of Muslims transnationally and internationally.
That more than two-thirds of people killed by the US military assaults since the Vietnam
war have been Muslims (Lazar and Lazar 2004, 234), while Western sanctions implemen-
ted following the Gulf War led to the death of half a million innocent civilians, including
children, in Iraq (Steinhoff 2007, 124), has come to symbolise the suffering of and loss to
humanity itself.
Humanity and the onset of the NWO

The humanity of which radicals speak, however, is split into territorialised nation-states
regarded as a norm after World War II. The standard narrative reads as follows.9 After the
War, the world was divided into two “secular” blocks: the capitalist West and socialist
USSR. With the end of the Cold War, the divide turned religious; enter Huntington’s
(1996) clash of civilisations, especially between Islam and the West with its Judeo-
Christian heritage. 9/11 and the subsequent conflicts fall in this post-Cold War era. In
some readings, Islam was identified as a new enemy because the USSR’s dissolution left
the US with no adversary; Colin Powell said, “I am running out of demons. I am running
out of enemies” (Waltz 2000, 2). In Zulaika’s (2009, 143) reading, it was just before the
end of the Cold War, during which Communism and terrorism were already rendered
cognates, and under the presidency of Ronald Regan that “terrorism” became the new
enemy of the US foreign policy. “If with Reagan and Clinton terrorism had been
‘naturalized’ into a constant risk . . .” writes Zulakia, “with Bush [Jr.] it became the
prime raison d’état . . .” Keane (1993, 15) made a similar reading: “the global demise of
communism is producing a new bogey, the demon of Islam, against which there are
growing calls for a new political crusade”.
While useful, this standard narrative needs to be somewhat refined. The term “cold
war” itself is linked to Islam. Spanish in origin, Don Juan Manuel (d. 1348), nephew of
Ferdinand II, used guerrafria (cold war) to describe the relationship between Islam and
Christendom as neither of war nor of peace (Trumpbour 2003, 107). Moreover, the 20th-
century Cold War was not purely secular. It was religious too: “Christian democracy
versus Godless communism”. To the West, communism was not just a threat to the
capitalist economic order, it was equally “to Christian society as expressed in Western
bloc democratic nations” (Bouma 2007, 190). Politicians, generals, media and various
agencies of the US held that “communism . . . had to be fought if Christianity was to
prevail” (Zulaika 2009, 145). If religion was not absent in the Cold War, was Islam absent?
The standard narrative verily says “yes”. As I show in the following, this narrative skirts
out how Islam was present in the West’s self-identification during the Cold War too.
Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” phrase was used as far back as 1964 by Bernard
Lewis who along with Huntington was influential in US power circles.10 In 1964, Lewis
wrote, “The crisis in the Middle East . . . arises . . . from a clash between civilizations” (cited
in Trumpbour 2003, 93). Already in 1953, Lewis had identified Cold War with Islam, as
Russell (1920, 27) had done earlier, likening Bolsheviks with the “successors of Mahomet
124 I. AHMAD
[sic]”: “The traditional Islamic division of the world into the House of Islam and the House
of War . . . also has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs” (cited in
Trumpbour 2003, 100–101).
The year 1953 was also important for the US–UK joint coup against the elected Prime
Minister of Iran (Ahmad 2011a). The Iran coup became a model for regime change, a
feature of US policy during the Cold War. In 1954, as New York Times (2000) noted, the
CIA staged a successful coup in Guatemala. Three years later, in 1956, when Gamal
Abdul Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, the Western press screamed that Nasser was a
new Hitler (Ahmad 2011d). The whole-hearted support for the creation and consolida-
tion of Israel as a confessional Jewish state by the West was another feature of the Cold
War (Saikal 2000). Islam and Middle East were not absent during the Cold War; they were
important as much to the West’s identity as to her interests. To cite Keddie (1992, 151),
the Middle East was “the first theatre of the Cold War”.
With the USSR’s demise, on 11 September 1990, George W. Bush Sr. announced the
“New World Order”, the theatre of which was again the Middle East. “The crisis in the
Persian Gulf”, he said, offered an opportunity for “a historic period”: the emergence of a
“new world order”, a “new era – free from terror” (Wikisource, 1990). Laced with echoes
of Carl Schmitt’s politics, Bush’s speech paved the way for the proliferation of titles on
“The American Century” (Cox 2005, 141–42). Iraq also became the site for the confirma-
tion of NWO. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Nye (2003) of Harvard University wrote,
“The military victory in Iraq seems to have confirmed a new world order. Not since Rome
has one nation loomed so large above the others.” Nowhere did Nye mention how
hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Iraq to “confirm a new world order”, nor
did he question the ethicality of the twin invasions of Iraq leading to the brutalisation of
humanity.
The NWO generated a renewed assertion of Islam as the West’s ultimate Other.
While celebrating the triumph of liberal democracy and free market, Fukuyama por-
trayed Islam as a key impediment in the “universalization of Western liberal democracy
as the final form of human government”. A decade later, he went on to say that “the
Islamic world is at the juncture today where Christian Europe stood . . . in the 17th
century” and Muslims will have to decide if they wanted “to make peace with
modernity”, otherwise “Islamo-fascism” will thwart the march to the paradise of liberal
democracy (Fukuyama 1992, 2002).
Such hegemonic views subverted Muslims’ self-perception of what Islam is. As I
showed, from the nineteenth century onwards, Muslims began to cast Islam devotedly
as a religion for humanity at large to the extent that for jihad to qualify as jihad it was no
longer necessary that its performer had to be Muslim, as long as it was earnestly
pursued to wipe out slavery, oppression and foreign domination. Non-Muslims such as
Gandhi fighting the British subjugation were, from Abulkalam Azad’s perspective, as
engaged in the pious act of jihad as was Snehlata, the Hindu girl who martyred herself
to save her parents from the burden of having to marry her off.
Following Arendt’s (1994) and Jackson’s (2009) notion of what it means to under-
stand, an understanding of the politics of young radicals such as SIMI’s is better situated
in relation to two divergent thoughts: the West’s particularisation/ethnification of Islam
coupled with its pretension to universalism (Mazrui 2001), and Muslims’ enactment of
Islam as an emblem of humanity confronted with gross injustice and humiliation. With
this macro-framework, let us turn to the micro-world of SIMI activists and how they view
themselves and the world at large.
Humanity of the “terrorists”: three biographies

Returning to Mansur, as I wrote a draft of this essay in 2011, I came across some dusty
files containing my field notes on Mansur. The file also included 18 pages of email
conversation in which Mansur had written about social stratification among Muslims
(references in Arabic and Urdu), the demise of his mother and his admission to the
Master’s programme at JNU. In one email, Mansur wrote that he found the JNU “culture”
against his “nature”. Two months later, he had joined a leftist student organisation. He
liked JNU’s intellectual ambiance. During the second phase of my fieldwork in 2004, I
met him a number of times. He had won some recognition as a young writer in the Urdu
public sphere. In 2006, he took up a job as a schoolteacher in the Gulf which, he felt, had
no meaningful intellectual ethos. In 2009, I learnt that he had returned to India to take
up a teaching position. We have neither met nor kept in touch since then.
In the following I present my account of Mansur (as I do with others) as far as it is
possible in his own words. At Falāḥ , Mansur studied for four years and stayed in its
hostel. One event changed him. Once while playing football, there was a quarrel
between an SIMI sympathiser (an outsider to the village where Falāḥ is located) and a
local boy who was not a student of Falāḥ . Having mobilised his friends in the
neighbourhood, the local boy came to the playground and beat the SIMI sympathiser.
In Mansur’s narrative, the beating was z̤ ulm (injustice). According to the Falāḥ rules,
local boys were not allowed to play on the campus. Following the beating, SIMI
unsuccessfully campaigned to pressure the Falāḥ administration to take action. To
Mansur, rather than siding with the person who was wronged the administration
encouraged injustice. It was the gesture of speaking truth (ḥ aq) by SIMI which
attracted him to the organisation. Unlike the administration which buckled under
the pressure of what he called “local nationalism”, SIMI articulated ḥ aq. To Mansur,
what mattered was the propriety of the act itself, not its actor, local or outsider. The
practice of the administration, Mansur held, was an instance of ʿilāqāī tʿṣṣub (region-
based prejudice) which Islam condemns.
Most SIMI members excelled in exams, debating, essay writing and other co-curricular
activities. Mansur began to attend SIMI’s programmes. A year or so before the ban, he
became SIMI’s core member, anṣār. He regarded the demolition of the Babri mosque in
1992 by “Hindu forces” (he substituted that term with “Brahmanism”) as the greatest
injustice done to Muslims. Prior to and after its destruction, thousands of Muslims were
killed and the government took no action. In his view, SIMI was the only organisation
which openly named z̤ ālim as z̤ ālim and asked Muslims to defend themselves. SIMI
spoke for jihad to defend Muslims and secure justice.
When I asked Masur if he believed in taking up arms, he told me that jihad did
include that. But it was a much wider term incorporating jihad by word and pen.
However, SIMI did not advocate taking up arms. SIMI was simply reviving the notion
of jihad as Muslims had not even used this term for a long time. Referring to the 2002
anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, he opined that if Muslims did not defend themselves,
who would defend them? He asked me, “Didn’t you read newspapers that it was the
126 I. AHMAD
police and the state11 functionaries (sarkārī amle) who killed Muslims? If Muslims didn’t
defend themselves through jihad, will angels descend . . .to protect them?”.
In Mansur’s view, the Indian media controlled by the forces of Brahmanism
denounced the sacred term “jihad” because they wanted to terrorise Muslims so that
they gave up resistance and become Hindu or like-Hindus. It was these Brahmanical
forces which spread casteism (caste-based practices) among Muslims. In his view, many
ulema fell into this trap and justified it by misinterpreting the notion of kofū (compat-
ibility). As Mansur saw it, SIMI also spoke of jihad against casteism and anti-human
hierarchy. “I told you jihad is a much, much wider term”. According to Mansur, SIMI
practiced real Islam. In its organisation, there was no hierarchy based on birth, caste or
region. SIMI also spoke for jihad against dowry. Mansur recounted that SIMI had
organised campaigns against dowry. He knew of a SIMI member expelled because he
had secretly taken dowry. Another member was rusticated for using derogatory words
against a fellow member from the (Figure 2) stratum of vegetable sellers. Have you ever
read or seen in the media, he asked me, about SIMI’s jihad against such evil practices? In
league with America and the West, the Brahminical forces were engaged, he believed, in
smearing Islam’s image as a religion of peace.
Following the ban on SIMI, Mansur resigned his membership. His brother and his
sister-in-law asked him to shun politics and start a family. Also, the local intelligence
officer had interrogated his brother about Mansur. This terrorised his brother’s family.
When I asked Mansur if he regarded his ties with SIMI as an error, he replied in the
negative. He believed that SIMI spoke ḥaq and its philosophy was in line with what
Mansur regarded as authentic Islam. There was one major error, however. In his reading,
some SIMI people became jazbātī (emotional) and missed the vital teachings of Islam:
revāadārī (moderation) and dānishmandī (wisdom)
Figure 2. SIMI’s 1994 stickers (in Hindi) against the caste system (right) and showing the oneness of
humanity (left).
Mansur and other SIMI activists had often told me about SIMI leader, Qasim Omar. I
was curious to meet him, but it was impossible given his imprisonment. Only hours after
the Government had banned SIMI, Omar was arrested from the SIMI headquarters in
Delhi. During my second fieldtrip in 2004, SIMI activists joyfully told me that Omar had
been released.
Through Mansur I contacted Omar who welcomed me in his native village, 10 kilo-
metres from Falāḥ . In Omar’s village, Muslims constituted around 20% of the population
of a little over 3000. Due to media reports, Hindus believed that Omar was a terrorist.
After his release from jail, many Hindus, especially elders, came to meet Omar. After
speaking with him, they agreed with Muslim villagers that Omar was innocent. Omar
was born in 1971. His mother had died while he was still a child and his father had
remarried. His maternal uncle, an Urdu poet, played a key role in his upbringing. For his
secondary education, Omar joined Falāḥ where he became active in SIMI. Subsequently,
he joined AMU and was admitted into the Bachelor programme in Unani Medicine and
Surgery. From Aligarh he moved to Delhi where he was arrested.
He asked me which district of Bihar I came from. As SIMI’s national leader, he had
toured India, including Bihar. He expressed his shock at the sorry state of road and
transportation in Bihar. He said that the conditions of the transportation were equally
bad in Madhya Pradesh (MP). Referring to the defeat of the then incumbent Chief
Minister of MP, he opined that he lost elections because he did not provide the public
with adequate transport facilities. That Bihar, MP and indeed India at large, lacked
transport facilities was, to Omar, natural. A bāt̤ il niz̤ ām, unjust system, never took care
of its people’s (reʿāyā) comfort. Recalling his journey, he said that in many parts of MP
the government did not provide toilet facilities for women. To him, this was z̤ ulm. He
held that only a ruler with firm belief in Allah (imān) could do it.
In his view, Jamaat had deviated from the founder’s vision because of the disease of
rampant materialism gripping its leadership which began to visit “America, London and
the West”. He said that Jamaat had long deviated from Maududi’s line and its shunning
of jihad was “the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century.” He criticised ulema who, in
his view, had not only given up jihad but presented it as a “condemned word.” I asked
him why he stressed jihad:
This is a strange question. Do you not see what the RSS12 and other militant Hindu
organizations have done to Muslims in the last fifty years since [India’s] Independence? . . .
Don’t you know what happened to the Babri mosque? How many Muslims were killed in
Bombay, Surat, and elsewhere?
By now Omar had become fairly emotional. I asked him whether his call for jihad would
make Muslims more vulnerable to attacks.
Muslims would become more prone to attack? . . . They [the RSS] are already killing Muslims
on a daily basis. They rape our sisters, and we remain a mute spectator. What did we get in
the [past] fifty years? Anti-Muslim riots! They visit tyranny upon Muslims, rape our sisters,
and the government remains a spectator. If we do not take up swords and wage jihad, what
will we do? Will we regain the lost chastity of our sisters? . . . It is our religious duty to
protect their chastity and stop the genocide of Muslims. If we are killed in the course of
jihad, we will become martyrs. This death is a thousand times better than the death of
humiliation. In Gujarat [referring to the anti-Muslim pogrom of early 2002] we were
slaughtered like carrots.
128 I. AHMAD
Omar compared the RSS to the Jamaat, pointing out that whereas the RSS had pro-
gressed from a tiny organisation to become India’s rulers because it gave armed training
to Hindus in its shākhās (camps), the Jamaat had only declined because it abandoned
jihad and deviated from the true path of the Prophet Muhammad. To douse the fire of
jihad against the colonial regime, Omar held, the British bribed many ulema to write that
jihad was not a part of Islam.
SIMI activists would talk to me about Omar and Samin Patel in the same breath. For
them, both were spokespersons of ḥ aq. When I met Patel, he asked why I wanted to
meet him. I told him that as my postdoctoral research was about the critique of
Maududi, I wanted to know his views. I had hardly finished my response when he
quizzed: does the critique of Maulana Maududi mean the irrelevance of his thought and
won’t this benefit “our enemy”?
Irfan: What do you mean?

Patel: You are doing your research from the West. A Dutch Christian leader [Geert Wilders]
has said that the Qur’an is a fanatic book and like Hitler’s Mein Kampf it should be banned.
Irfan: Yes, I read about it on my arrival here. But university is autonomous and not the same
as the Dutch politicians.
Patel: That is false. I am an American citizen.13 I have lived in the US and know the West
well. There is no autonomy . . .
I clearly felt discomfort at his non-friendly stance to my query quite early during the
interview. I countered his assertion as follows:
Irfan: Holland and the US are democracies. As such, university is autonomous. You have
academic like Noam Chomsky who critique West’s policies.
Patel: I am familiar with Chomsky . . . But how many Chomskys are there? Yes, democracy
allows selected debate on oppression but it never ends oppression. It is not democracy that
runs America; it is the capitalists who run it. The book They Dared to Speak Out by the
American senator shows how it is the Jewish lobby which runs America. Have you read it?
Irfan: No.
Patel: . . . You people read all the books written as critiques of Islam . . . But you don’t read
books which critique democracy. Go, read it . . .. I have lived in the US, the greatest
champion of democracy. What is happening in Guantanamo Bay? Have the American public
approved it by voting for the inhuman. . . treatment meted out to those imprisoned there? Is
not democracy defined in terms of people making the decisions? . . . I was booked under
POTA [so was Omar]. I spent precious 27 months of my life in. . . Tihar jail . . . Is there any law
here? I was charged with national treason. The allegation against me was that, after 9/11, I
had stuck a poster on the wall of Jamia Millia Islamia which showed the Indian flag in
tatters. The truth is that the poster had no flag of India. It showed the flags of five
permanent Security Council members and how they conspired together to attack
Afghanistan. The Court couldn’t prove the charge. They released me . . . Apparently I am
free. But I am not . . . The Court has asked me not to leave Delhi. Nor can I address a public
meeting . . . the Intelligence Bureau people like munkarnakīr [angels who question the dead
in her grave), follow every movement of mine . . . They also know you have come to
meet me.
Is this democracy and freedom (āzādī)? . . . What is the rationale for banning SIMI? Hindu
militants kill Muslims but they roam free. None of their organizations is banned. You know
that in Gujarat it was also the police which killed Muslims. Can the Indian democracy ban
the police? But SIMI still stands banned. It is so because SIMI is against this fraud of
democracy which . . . perpetuates the oppression of humans against humans. SIMI stood
for inṣāf (justice) and spoke against how the alliance of Indian and American kufr [literally, to
conceal] is enslaving Muslims and other people across the world.
To contest Patel’s self-righteousness and his attempt to paint all Indian Hindus with a
single stroke of the brush, I asked,
Irfan: You mean every Hindu is against Muslims? There are many Hindu figures who have
also spoken against anti-Muslim violence. Teesta Setalvad is one such figure . . .
Patel: I don’t deny that. There are a few such individuals. But their voice does not affect the
foundation of the false system of kufr. Kufr is the root of all problems. We have to base our
system on true belief (imān) . . . People like Teesta speak glowingly of Indian democracy and
secularism. What are they? Indian secularism is fraud. If India is secular and democratic, why
do we have non-stop anti-Muslim riots. . .? Do you know about the recent judgment of
Bombay High Court? Those involved in the Bombay Blasts of 1993 have been punished but
the culprits of the 1992–93 anti-Muslim riots in retaliation of which the Blast occurred have
been let free. In the blast 300 people were killed; in the anti-Muslim riots 3,000 people were
killed. Democracy is simply fraud (dẖ akōslā) . . . Only an alternative system based on true
imān can sustain itself and bring peace to the world.
Irfan: How do you see such a system coming into being?
Patel: Islam is not for Muslims alone. It is meant for the entire humanity. People confuse
Islam with Muslims . . . Islam is the voice of justice against the rampant injustice in India and
the world. The injustice of the US and the capitalist system is not directed against Muslims
alone. Other people are also its victims. Look at Africa. The injustice in Africa does not even
get discussed in the media. The Christian West, and its puppet, the United Nations, are the
source of injustice worldwide. Muslims are discussed in the media because they resist. Non-
Muslims too are oppressed. We talk about everyone.
Irfan: What is the methodology to bring about such a change?
Patel: . . . How did the French Revolution occur? First, we have to tell the people to refuse
the oppressive system. The rest only time will tell.
Irfan: You may have thoughts on how to do it.
Patel: Shall I give you in writing? I told you that first people needed to be mobilized against
the oppressive system and its demerits.
Meanwhile, Patel rose to offer the ʿaṣr prayer. I walked with him to the mosque. On the
way, I asked him about his study. He had his early education in India and subsequently
went to the US where his parents lived. He studied in a Chicago college. He returned to
India to study at Falāḥ where he became active in SIMI. After the prayer, he said: “I will
take your leave now”.
Irfan: I would like to continue the conversation.

Patel: Conversation without an aim is meaningless.
Irfan: But I consider it very useful to my research.
Patel: No. You are not an advocate of the truth (ḥ aq keʿalambardār).
Irfan: That is your supposition.
Patel: It is not my fancy thought. I know what happens in the Western universities and what
kind of research is done there. On your return to Holland, you will write that Samin said so
and so. You will never write that this is the teaching of Islam. We firmly believe that what we
do is derived from the Qur’an and the Prophet’s sayings.
Irfan: I will write what you say. Let us continue the conversation.
Patel: I won’t waste my time. No conversation.
130 I. AHMAD
The conversation with Patel was one of the most awkward I had during my fieldwork.
Before some readers (possibly non-anthropologists) might misunderstand detailed
quotes from SIMI activists as amounting to uncritical endorsement, let me reiterate
that this is not my goal. My aim instead is to understand their worldview in their own
words and compare it with the dominant understandings of Islamist radicalism so as to
unsettle what anthropologists Ochs and Capps (1996) call “narrative asymmetries”.
Critiquing narrative asymmetries is an important step toward a “non-state-centric eman-
cipatory politics” (Herring 2008, 199).
Conclusion
In the film My Name is Khan (Johar 2010), 9/11 is described as the beginning of a new
benchmark to divide history (cf. Clini 2015). Does this beginning have an end, however?
In 2011, University of Sydney organised a symposium with Peter Cosgrove, ex Chief of
Australian Defense Force, Douglas Feith, ex US Under-Secretary for Defense, and Paul
McGeough, an Australian journalist. A US academic asked, “Is this war of perpetuity, this
war on terror?”. Feith fumbled to say,
Ultimately the goal for the war was formulated as defeating terrorism as a threat to our way
of life as a free and open society . . . President Bush said we are concerned about preserving
our way of life . . . What I would say in answer to the question . . . is if we get to the point
where we are comfortable that the nature of our society as a free and open place is not
endangered by a terrorist threat then that is victory. (ABC 2011; italics added)
McGeough intervened: “We don’t know how long it will continue for”. Cosgrove obedi-
ently agreed. Later, Feith added that the first of the three aims of the war is “to protect
the homeland which every country in the coalition would have responsibility for”.
If the Sydney symposium represents the West’s standpoint, it is clear that there is no
end to “the war on terrorism”. In India too, the dominant discourse is largely similar.
After assuming Prime Ministerial Office, Mr Modi stated that terrorism was not a
temporary thing, for “we are now living in an era when non-state military actors are a
major factor” (NDTV 2015, italics added). Addressing the Australian Parliament in 2014,
Modi (Indian Express 2014) resolved to fight terrorism the “era” of which has a beginning
but no end, at least not yet.
Neither the participants in the Sydney symposium nor the Indian media or politicians
ever mentioned, even by mistake, the millions of deaths unleashed by the WOT. The
divergence between the West’s and India’s depiction of Islam and Muslim radicals’ own
understanding of Islam cannot be starker. While the West is primarily concerned, as Feith
clearly articulated, with “protecting [Western nation-states’] homeland”, and “our
society”, Muslim radicals’ goal is to speak for and protect the entirety of humanity
dispersed across nation-states. For the West and India alike, jihad and Islam symbolises
all that is atavistic, grotesque, anti-modern and so on; for Muslim radicals, Islam,
especially since the NWO, symbolises humanity at its bare minimum confronted as it
is with injustice, tyranny and routine violence. That jihad also means fighting against the
Indian caste system, dowry, bigotry based on region, province, nation (recall Mansur);
that the government’s non-provision of toilet facilities for women is z̤ ulm (recall Omar)
seldom has any resonance with the West’s rendition of what jihad is. Likewise, that Islam
is the voice of justice against the rampant injustice everywhere and that “the injustice of
the US and the capitalist system is not directed against Muslims alone . . . Look at Africa”
(Patel) barely finds any place in the dominant portrayals of Islam by the West as well as
India.
Thus seen, far from being the bête noire of freedom, democracy and human rights, in
the absence of truly global institutions addressing the concerns of humanity (as
opposed to humans contained within nation-states), Muslim radicals simply strive to
rescue freedom and human rights from being molested and monopolised by the
powerful few so as to universalise them. Instead of meeting this institutional and
conceptual challenge, Western and Indian states have passed a series of draconian
laws to tame “terrorism”. The Kafkaesque legal landscape of terrorism in India can be
gleaned from the following: against a single “terrorist” 54 cases were filed in six cities;
the police charge sheets in 35 cases in two cities comprised 60,000 pages and 12,000
pages in eight cases in one city (Ahmad 2014b, 290). The legal documents of Mufti
Qayyum (2015, 172) – sentenced to death by POTA court for his alleged involvement in
the 2002 terrorist attack on Akshardham temple but set free by the Supreme court in
2014 on the grounds that the investigators’ narrative implicating him was “sinister and
fake” and that “fiction must make sense” (DNA 2015) – comprised eight thick volumes.
Given the post-9/11 processes of identification of specific humans as terrorists and
their simultaneous dis-identification as citizens (Volpp 2002), all that one longs for is
beauty and justice; however, all that one is given is recurring warnings and a plethora of
apparently new laws the pure incomprehensibility of which can be matched only by
their sheer inaccessibility.
Notes
1. In transliterating Arabic/Hindi/Urdu/Farsi words, I follow the Annual of Urdu Studies
Guidelines, available online.
2. On the history of Jamaat and Maududi, see Ahmad (2009a, 2009b); on SIMI’s history, see
Ahmad (2005). To compete with Marxist student organisations in 1970s, the Jamaat floated
SIMI. Only a few years later, however, the Jamaat disowned SIMI because the latter refused
to work under its sarparastī (tutelage). Until the 1980s, seldom did the non-Urdu press
report SIMI’s activities. It was during the 1990s that SIMI’s image as “terrorist” began to
appear in the media. During this decade, SIMI, whose activities were previously largely
educational-moral, began to get radical in response to the large-scale killings of Muslims
ignited by Hindu nationalists who illegally demolished the Babri mosque in 1992 (see
Ahmad 2009c). The Government of India is yet to legally establish its rationale for banning
SIMI (Ahmad 2011b).
3. To ensure anonymity, I have changed the names of SIMI activists.
4. I use “radical” and “radicalism” not in the ways currently used by governments, security
experts, policy analysts, media pundits and scholars of mainstream terrorism studies for a
set ideological aims and agenda. For a critical overview of these terms, see Sedgwick
(2010). My usage is closer to that of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (2002): “. . .
someone who demands substantial or extreme changes in the existing system”. I broadly
use it in the sense in which “radical politics” (Hage 2012) and “radical democracy” (Mouffe
1992) are deployed. In my usage, radical excludes the use of violence. By Islamist, I mean
one who views Islam more than a set of rituals to relate it to society and politics.
132 I. AHMAD
5. After 9/11, like over 20 countries (most of them “democracies”), India passed a series of
anti-terror laws (Sethi 2014; Singh 2007, 22–27). Australia tops the list; before 9/11 it had
no anti-terror law; by 2008, it had passed 45 (Manne 2009, 252).
6. For a critique of the mainstream works on “Islamic terrorism” by “experts” such as Rohan
Gunaratna, Bruce Hoffman, Peter Neumann, Amritha Venkatraman and others, see Ahmad
(2010, 2012a, 2012b). For a critical account of orthodox works on terrorism in general, see
the references to the critical studies on terrorism literature and anthropology of terrorism
literature mentioned in the penultimate paragraph of the previous section.
7. My approach to international politics differs from that of the Realist or Neo-realist, arguably
the dominant framework (see Agnew 1994, Ashley 1984). Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large of
Time magazine and “one of the top 100 global thinkers” as named by Foreign Policy is an
important figure of (neo-) realism (Dunne and Schmidt 2005). For a critique of Zakaria’s
approach, see Ahmad (2011d).
8. This long quote “mixes” religion and politics and might not be accepted as “secular”. The
poverty of the religious-secular binary, however, has been critiqued in the past decade
(Asad 2006). The West claims to be secular and in the same breath insists that “secular”
ideas like capitalism, democracy, individualism, human rights are all derived from
Christianity (Anidjar 2015; Bruce 2004; Dumont 1982; Weber 2001). In itself important,
the scope of this article does not allow further exploration of this subject.
9. Until 9/11, religion was not considered an important factor in international relations.
According to Morgenthau (1985, 412), one of its key theoreticians, “religions have been
made obsolete by the ability of humans to rely on themselves rather than on divine inter-
vention”. On recent interests in and connections between IR and religion, see Snyder (2011).
10. On the influence of Lewis and Huntington in shaping the US policy towards the Islamic
world, see Trumpbour (2003). In an interview which described him as “the scholar who
provided the intellectual ammunition for the Iraq War”, Lewis said that he nursed friendly
relations with President Bush Jr. who had read his What Went Wrong given by Condoleezza
Rice (Berman 2011).
11. On the anthropology of the state, see Ahmad (2009b). Much literature on the Indian state and
discourses on it in the media are statist and considerably majoritarian (see Ahmad 2009a,
2013; Murphy 2010). Minorities view the state differently. For instance, it is known that the
state authorities and politicians have actively participated in numerous instances of anti-
minorities violence. In a study examining four cases of mass communal violence (one against
Sikhs and three against Muslims) – Nellie (1983), Delhi (1984), Bhagalpur (1989) and Gujarat
2002 – Chopra and Jha (2014) note that the biased role of the authorities and the denial of
justice are systemic, not episodic. The 2006 Sachar committee recorded extreme margin-
alisation of Muslims in education, the economy, government services and so on (except in
prisons where they were disproportionately over-represented). Proponents of Hindutva
denounced the Sachar committee as “caring for terrorists” (Hansen 2007, 51). Academic
accounts of the state ignore these realities in their theorisations (Hasan 2000).
12. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is the ideological fountainhead of anti-Muslim militant
Hindutva, Hindu nationalism. In 2014, Mr Narendra Modi, an RSS member under whose
chief ministership over 3000 Muslims were killed in Gujarat in 2002, won elections (through
a violent mobilisation against Muslims) to become India’s Prime Minister (Ahmad 2014a).
13. From the American side, there was hardly any mention in the press or on television of Patel
American nationality. Citizenship in itself thus does not necessarily suffice for intervention
by the state whose citizen one is. Legally, there may not be any hierarchy or gradation of
citizens; in practice, it exists along multiple lines (see Isin and Turner 2002; Smith 1988). A
similar case is the terrifying tale of Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen of Egyptian
origin, imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay but later released. See the biography of Habib
(2008). For an excellent analysis of dualism based on orientalist trope woven into an
American national identity of citizen versus terrorist, see Volpp (2002).
14. Address and names wilfully made invisible through yellow sticker to ensure anonymity.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank four anonymous reviewers of this manuscript for their thoughtful and critical
comments. I am also thankful to Benjamin Soares (Leiden University) and Adeline Masquelier
(Tulane University) for commenting on an earlier version of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Irfan Ahmad is Associate Professor of Political Anthropology, Institute for Religion, Politics, &
Society, Australian Catholic University. Having completed Religion As Critique: Islam, Reason,
Tradition, he is currently working on another book manuscript titled Terrorism in Question:
Media, Terror, India. He is recipient of Rubicon fellowship from The Netherlands Organisation for
Scientific Research and earlier taught at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University
before moving to Monash University. His first book Islamism and Democracy in India: The
Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami (Princeton University Press) was short-listed for the
International Convention of Asia Scholars (2011) Book Prize for the best study in Social Sciences.
He is founding co-editor (with Bryan Turner) of Journal of Religious and Political Practice.
References
ABC. 2011. “The War(s) on Terrorism”. The United States Study Centre, University of Sydney. http://
www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/browse/video_popup.htm?vidURL=/tv/bigideas/stories/2011/07/
30/3277562-mediarss-full.xml&vidTitle=.
Agnew, J. 1994. “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations
Theory.” Review of International Political Economy 1 (1): 53–80. doi:10.1080/09692299408434268.
Ahmad, I. 2005. “From Islamism to Post-Islamism: The Transformation of the Jamaat-e-Islami in
North India.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam.
Ahmad, I. 2008. “Cracks in the ‘Mightiest Fortress’: Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing Discourse on
Women.” Modern Asian Studies 42 (2–3): 549–575. doi:10.1017/S0026749X07003101.
Ahmad, I. 2009a. Islamism and Democracy in India. The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Ahmad, I. 2009b. “Genealogy of the Islamic State: Reflections on Maududi’s Political Thought and
Islamism.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (1): S145–S162. doi:10.1111/
jrai.2009.15.issue-s1.
Ahmad, I. 2009c. “The Secular State and the Geography of Radicalism.” Economic and Political
Weekly 44 (23): 33–38.
Ahmad, I. 2010. “Is There an Ethics of Terrorism? Islam, Globalisation, Militancy.” South Asia: Journal
of South Asian Studies 33 (3): 487–498. doi:10.1080/00856401.2010.521123.
Ahmad, I. 2011a. “Democracy and Islam.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 37 (4): 459–470. doi:10.1177/
0191453711400996.
Ahmad, I. 2011b. “The (In)Visible in Indian Terrorism”. Al-Jazeera (English), September 16.
Ahmad, I. 2011c. “Immanent Critique and Islam: Anthropological Reflections.” Anthropological
Theory 11 (1): 107–132. doi:10.1177/1463499611398188.
Ahmad, I. 2011d. “The Categorical Revolution: Democratic Uprising in the Middle East.” Economic
and Political Weekly 46 (45): 30–35.
Ahmad, I. 2012a. “How the War on Terror Is a War of Terror”. Al-Jazeera (English), September 11.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201294115140782135.html
134 I. AHMAD
Ahmad, I. 2012b. “Legitimising the Killings in the Name of ‘’Just War’”. Al-Jazeera (English),
September 15. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/09/201294134429721361.html
Ahmad, I. 2013. “Modi as India’s PM? Development, Camps and the ‘Muslim Vote’”.
OpenDemocracy 30 (November). Accessed December 6 2013. https://www.opendemocracy.
net/openindia/irfan-ahmad/modi-as-future-indian-pm-development-camps-%E2%80%98mus
lim-vote%E2%80%99.
Ahmad, I. 2014a. “Welcome to Pseudo-democracy: Unpacking the BJP Victory.” May 25. Kafila.
http://kafila.org/2014/05/25/welcome-to-pseudo-democracy-unpacking-the-bjp-victory-irfan-
ahmad/
Ahmad, I. 2014b. “Kafka in India: Terrorism, Media, Muslims.” In Being Muslims in South Asia, edited
by R. Jeffrey and R. Sen, 289–329. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Ahmad, I. 2015a. “Talal Asad Interviewed by Irfan Ahmad.” Public Culture 27 (2): 259–279.
doi:10.1215/08992363-2841856.
Ahmad, I. 2015b. “Islamic Reform.” In Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia, edited by B. Turner
and O. Salemink, 144–157. New York, NY: Routledge.
Ahmed, A. 2013. The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on
Tribal Islam. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
Anijdar, G. 2015. “Christianity, Christianities, Christian.” Journal of Religious and Political Practice 1
(1): 39–46.
Arendt, H. 1994. Essays in Understanding, 1930–1945. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace.
Asad, T. 2006. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Ashley, R. 1984. “The Poverty of Neorealism.” International Organization 38 (2): 225–286.
doi:10.1017/S0020818300026709.
Azad, A. 1912. “Al-Jihad, Al-Jihad: Al-Jihad fi Sabilil Hurriyat.” Al-Hilāl 18 (December): 5–11.
Azad, A. 1914. “Martyr of Custom, the Resolute Snehlata Devi.” Al-Hilāl 4 (11): 9–10.
BBC. 2010. “Petraeus: Koran Burning Plan Will Endanger US Troops.” Accessed November 9 2010.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11209738.
Bellah, R. 2007. “Ethical Politics: Reality or Illusion?” Daedalus 136 (4): 59–69. doi:10.1162/
daed.2007.136.4.59.
Berman, D. 2011. “E”. Moment: Independent Journalism from a Jewish Perspective, September-
October. http://www.momentmag.com/moment/issues/2011/10/lewis.html
Bouma, G. 2007. “Religious Resurgence, Conflict and the Transformation of Boundaries.” In
Religion, Globalization and Culture, edited by P. Beyer and L. Beaman, 187–202. Leiden: Brill.
Bruce, S. 2004. “Did Protestantism Create Democracy?” Democratization 11 (4): 3–20. doi:10.1080/
1351034042000234503.
Chopra, S., and P. Jha, eds. 2014. On Their Watch: Mass Violence and State Apathy in India. Gurgaon:
Three Essays Collective.
Clini, C. 2015. “International Terrorism? Indian Popular Cinema and the Politics of Terror.” Critical
Studies on Terrorism 8 (3): 337–357. doi:10.1080/17539153.2015.1070531.
Cox, M. 2005. “From the Cold War to the War on Terror.” In The Globalization of World Politics: An
Introduction to International Theory, edited by J. Baylis and S. Smith, 131–158. 3rd ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
De Graaf, B., and B. Graaff. 2010. “Bringing Politics Back In: The Introduction of the ‘Performative
Power’ of Counterterrorism.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 3 (2): 261–275. doi:10.1080/
17539153.2010.491337.
Devji, F. 2005. Landscapes of Jihad. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Devji, F. 2008. The Terrorist in Search of Humanity. Delhi: Foundation Books.
DNA. 2015. “Framing Innocents”. 13 May. http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-framing-inno
cents-2085321
Dumont, L. 1982. “A Modified View of Our Origins: The Christian Beginnings of Modern
Individualism.” Religion 12 (1): 1–27. doi:10.1016/0048-721X(82)90013-6.
Dunne, T., and B. Schmidt. 2005. “Realism.” In The Globalization of World Politics, edited by J. Baylis
and S. Smith, 161–183. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fukuyama, F. 1992. The End of History and the Last Man. New York, NY: Avon.
Fukuyama, F. 2002. “Their Target: The Modern World”. Newsweek, December 17.
Ganguly, S., and P. Kapur. 2010. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Islamist Militancy in South Asia.” The
Washington Quarterly 33 (1): 47–59.
Goodin, R. 2006. What Is Wrong with Terrorism? Cambridge: Polity.
Gottschalk, P., and G. Greenberg. 2013. “Common Heritage, Uncommon Fear: Islamophobia in the
United States and British India, 1684–1947.” In Islamophobia in America, edited by C. Ernst, 21–
51. New York: Palgrave.
Gupta, S. 2011. Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within. Gurgaon: Hachette India.
Habib, M. (with J. Collingwood). 2008. My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t. Melbourne:
Scribe Publications.
Hage, G. 2012. “Critical Anthropological Thought and the Radical Political Imaginary Today.”
Critique of Anthropology 32 (3): 285–308. doi:10.1177/0308275X12449105.
Hallowell, J. 1944. “Politics and Ethics.” The American Political Science Review 38 (4): 639–655.
doi:10.2307/1950475.
Hansen, T. B. 2007. “The India That Does Not Shine.” ISIM Review 17: 50–51.
Haq, M. 2012. Maʿāṣir Shaḳ hṣīyāt. Delhi: Maktaba Jamia.
Hasan, Z., ed. 2000. Politics and the State in India. Delhi: Sage.
Herring, E. 2008. “Critical Terrorism Studies: An Activist Scholar Perspective.” Critical Studies on
Terrorism 1 (2): 197–211. doi:10.1080/17539150802187507.
Hirsch, E. D., J. Kett, and J. Trefil, edited by. 2002. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Boston,
MA: Houghton Mifflin. http://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/hmndcl/radical/0.
Human Rights Watch. 2010. Back to the Future: India’s 2008 Counterterrorism Laws. New York, NY:
Human Rights Watch.
Huntington, S. 1996. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York, NY:
Simon & Schuster.
Indian Express. 2014. “PM Narendra Modi’s Address to the Australian Parliament”. November 18.
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/full-text-prime-minister-narendra-modis-
address-to-the-australian-parliament/
Ingwerson, M. 1990. “Bush Speech Calls for New World Order”. Christian Science Monitor,
September 13. http://www.csmonitor.com/1990/0913/aspeak.html
Isin, E., and B. Turner, eds. 2002. Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage.
Jackson, M. 2009. “Where Thought Belongs: An Anthropological Critique of the Project of
Philosophy.” Anthropological Theory 9 (3): 235–251. doi:10.1177/1463499609346984.
Jackson, R. 2007. “Constructing Enemies: ‘Islamic Terrorism’ in Political and Academic Discourse.”
Government and Opposition 42 (3): 394–426. doi:10.1111/goop.2007.42.issue-3.
Jackson, R. 2010. “Conclusion: Contemporary State Terrorism -Towards a New Research Agenda.”
In Contemporary State Terrorism: Theory and Practice, edited by R. Jackson, E. Murphy, and S.
Poynting, 228–239. London: Routledge.
Jackson, R. 2011. “Culture, Identity and Hegemony: Continuity and (the Lack of) Change in US
Counterterrorism Policy from Bush to Obama.” International Politics 48 (2–3): 390–411.
doi:10.1057/ip.2011.5.
Jackson, R. 2012. “Critical Accounts of Terrorism.” In Ashgate Research Companion to Political
Violence, edited by M. Breen-Smyth, 47–62. Abingdon: Ashgate.
Johar, K. (Director). 2010. My Name Is Khan. 165 min. DVD.
Kalhan, A. E. A. 2006. “Colonial Continuities: Human Rights, Terrorism, and Security Laws in India.”
Columbia Journal of Asian Law 20: 95–234.
Kamath, P. M. 2001. “Terrorism in India: Impact on National Security.” Strategic Analysis 25 (9):
1081–1987. doi:10.1080/09700160108459024.
Keane, J. 1993. “Power-Sharing Islam?” In Power-sharing Islam? edited by A. Tamimi, 15–31.
London: Liberty for Muslim World Publications.
Keddie, N. 1992. “The End of the Cold War and the Middle East.” In The End of the Cold War: Its
Meanings and Implications, edited by M. Hogan, 151–160. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
136 I. AHMAD
Keenan, J. 2006. “The Making of Terrorists: Anthropology and the Alternative Truth of America’s
‘War on Terror’ in the Sahara.” Focaal: European Journal of Anthropology 48: 144–151.
Khan, S. A. 2002 [1870]. Life of Muhammad. Delhi: Cosmos.
Lazar, A., and M. Lazar. 2004. “The Discourse of the New World Order: ‘Out-Casting’ the Double
Face of Threat.” Discourse & Society 15 (2): 223–242. doi:10.1177/0957926504041018.
Mahmood, C. 2001. “Terrorism, Myth and the Power of Ethnographic Praxis.” Journal of
Contemporary Ethnography 30 (5): 520–545. doi:10.1177/089124101129024259.
Manne, R. 2009. “From Tampa to 9/11: Seventeen Days that Changed Australia.” In Turning Points
in Australian History, edited by M. Crotty and A. Roberts, 239–254. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Marcus, G. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-sited
Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117. doi:10.1146/annurev.
an.24.100195.000523.
Mazrui, A. 2001. “Pretender to Universalism: Western Culture in a Globalizing Age.” Journal of
Muslim Minority Affairs 21 (1): 11–24. doi:10.1080/13602000120050523.
McCauley, C., and S. Moskalenko. 2010. “Do Suicide Terrorists Have Personality Problems?”
Terrorism and Political Violence 23 (1): 108–111. doi:10.1080/09546553.2011.533074.
Meer, N. 2012. “Complicating ‘Radicalism’: Counter-Terrorism and Muslim Identity in Britain.”
Arches Quarterly 5 (9): 10–18.
Miller, D. 2006. “Propaganda and the ‘Terror Threat’ in the UK.” In Muslims and the News Media,
edited by E. Poole and J. Richardson, 45–52. London: IB Tauris.
Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
Morgenthau, H. 1985. Politics Among Nations. New York, NY: Knopf.
Mouffe, C., ed. 1992. Dimensions of Radical Democracy. London: Verso.
Murphy, E. 2010. “We Have No Order to Save You: State Terrorism, Politics and Communal Violence
in the Indian State of Gujarat, 2002.” In Contemporary State Terrorism: Theory and Practice, edited
by R. Jackson, E. Murphy, and S. Poynting, 86–103. London: Routledge.
NDTV. 2015. “Zero Tolerance Against Terrorism, PM Mod’s Appeal to UN”. 18 September. http://
www.ndtv.com/india-news/zero-tolerance-against-terrorism-pm-modis-appeal-to-un-1219085
Nye, J. 2003. “Ill-Suited for Empire.” The Washington Post, May 25. http://www.washingtonpost.
com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33453-2003May23?language=printer
Ochs, E., and L. Capps. 1996. “Narrating the Self.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 19–43.
doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.25.1.19.
Pilger, J., ed. 2005. Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World. New York, NY:
Avalon.
Qayyum, M. 2015. 11 Sāl Salāḳ hōñ Kē Pīchē [11 Years Behind the Bar]. Ahmedabad:
Jamīʿatulʿulemā.
Rai, B. 2009. “Jehadi Terrorism in India.” In Combating Terrorism: The Indian Experience, edited by A.
Malik, 40–48. Chandigarh: Abhishekh.
Risen, J. 2000. “Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran -A special Report; How a Plot Convulsed Iran in
‘53 (and in ‘79)”. New York Times, April 16. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/16/world/secrets-
history-cia-iran-special-report-plot-convulsed-iran-53-79.html?scp=1&sq=SECRETS+OF+HISTORY
%3A+The+C.I.A.+in+Iran&st=cse&pagewanted=print
Roy, A., and U. Singh. 2015. “The Masculinist Security State and Anti-terror Law Regimes in India.”
Asian Studies Review 39 (2): 305–323. doi:10.1080/10357823.2015.1022710.
Russell, B. 1920. Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. New York, NY: Cosimo.
Said, E. 1995[1978]. Orientalism. 2nd ed. London: Penguin.
Saikal, A., and J. O’Hagan. 2000. “Islam and the West?.” In Contending Images of World Politics,
edited by G. Fry and J. O’Hagan, 164–180. London: Macmillan.
Schmid, A. 2004. “Frameworks for Conceptualizing Terrorism.” Terrorism and Political Violence 16
(2): 197–221. doi:10.1080/09546550490483134.
Sedgwick, M. 2010. “The Concept of Radicalization as a Source of Confusion.” Terrorism and
Political Violence 22 (4): 479–494. doi:10.1080/09546553.2010.491009.
Semmerling, T. 2008. “Those ‘Evil’ Muslims! Orientalist Fears in the Narratives of the War on Terror.”
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 28 (2): 207–223. doi:10.1080/13602000802303144.
Sethi, M. 2014. Kafkaland: Prejudice, Law and Counterterrorism in India. Gurgaon: Three Essays
Collective.
SIMI. (modified in March 1993; originally 1977). 1977. Dastūr. Delhi: SIMI headquarters.
Singh, U. K. 2007. The State, Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India. Delhi: Sage.
Sluka, J. 1995. “Domination, Resistance and Political Culture in Northern Ireland’s Catholic-
Nationalist Ghettos.” Critique of Anthropology 15 (1): 71–102. doi:10.1177/
0308275X9501500103.
Sluka, J. 2009. “The Contribution of Anthropology to the Critical Terrorism Studies.” In Critical
Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda, edited by R. Jackson, M. B. Smyth, and J. Gunning,
138–155. London: Routledge.
Smith, R. 1988. “The ‘American Creed’ and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in
the United States.” The Western Political Quarterly 41 (2): 225–251. doi:10.2307/448536.
Snyder, J., ed. 2011. Religion and International Relations Theory. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Steinhoff, U. 2007. On the Ethics of War and Terrorism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stohl, M. 2008. “Old Myths, New Fantasies and the Enduring Realities of Terrorism.” Critical Studies
on Terrorism 1 (1): 5–16. doi:10.1080/17539150701846443.
Taussig, M. 2008. “Zoology, Magic, and Surrealism in the War on Terror.” Critical Inquiry 34 (S2):
S98–S116. doi:10.1086/529091.
Trumpbour, J. 2003. “The Clash of Civilizations: Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis, and the
Remaking of the Post-Cold War World Order.” In The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim
Enemy, edited by E. Qureshi and M. Sells, 89–130. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Volpp, L. 2002. “The Citizen and the Terrorist.” UCLA Law Review 49: 561–586.
Waltz, K. 2000. “Intimations of Multipolarity.” In The New World Order: Contrasting Theories, edited
by B. Hansen and B. Hansen, 1–17. London: Macmillan.
Weber, M. 2001. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons, with
an introduction by Anthony Giddens. London: Routledge.
West, H., and T. Sanders. 2003. “Power Revealed and Concealed in the New World Order.” In
Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order, edited by H.
West and T. Sanders, 1–37. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Whyte, W. F. 1943. “Instruction and Research: A Challenge to Political Scientists.” The American
Political Science Review 37 (4): 692–697. doi:10.2307/1950010.
Wikisource. 1990. “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the
Federal Budget Deficit (1990)” http://en.wikisource.org./wiki/Toward_a_New_World_Order
Wimmer, A., and N. Schiller. 2002. “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-State Building,
Migration and the Social Sciences.” Global Networks 2 (4): 301–334. doi:10.1111/glob.2002.2.
issue-4.
Wolfe, P. 2002. “Can the Muslim Speak? An Indebted Critique -Review of Spivak’s A Critique of
Postcolonial Reason.” History and Theory 41 (3): 367–380. doi:10.1111/hith.2002.41.issue-3.
YouTube. 2013. “Narendra Modi on Islamic Terrorism on Big Fight after 9/11 Attacks”. https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=fas-jaaZWWM
Zizek, S. 2002. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. London: Verso.
Zulaika, J. 1995. “The Anthropologist as Terrorist.” In Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary Studies of
Violence and Survival, edited by C. Nordstrom and A. Robben, 206–222. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Zulaika, J. 2009. Terrorism: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.

Injustice and The New World Order An Anthropological Perspective On Terrorism in India

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Injustice and The New World Order An Anthropological Perspective On Terrorism in India

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Critical Studies on Terrorism

ISSN: 1753-9153 (Print) 1753-9161 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rter20

Injustice and the New World Order: an

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17539153.2016.1219532

Published online: 12 Sep 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1824

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

Injustice and the New World Order: an anthropological

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

We have no right to be “disconnected”. . .

CONTACT Irfan Ahmad Irfan.ahmad@acu.edu.au

It is important to understand these radicals’ conceptualisation of Islam whose genealogy

Ethics and politics

Figure 1. SIMI’s pamphlet “Human Rights Campaign, 1993”14.

Humanity and the onset of the NWO

Humanity of the “terrorists”: three biographies

Irfan: What do you mean?

Irfan: I would like to continue the conversation.

You might also like