Making of "Good" and "Bad" Muslims

Speaking of multiple players and their competition for dominating the public discourse in Pakistan (see my previous post), the below example points to yet another player and its contribution to the current political conditions.

From "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror" (2005) by Mahmood Mamdani. Mahmood Mamdani quotes the below from Pervez Hoodbhoy.

"... children's textbooks designed ... by the University of Nebraska under a $50 million USAID grant that ran from September 1986 through June 1994. A third-grade mathematics textbook asks: "One group of maujahidin attack 50 Russian soldiers. In that attack 20 Russians are killed. How many Russians fled?" A fourth-grade textbook ups the ante: "The speed of a Kalashnikov [the ubiquitous Soviet-made semiautomatic machine gun] bullet is 800 meters per second. If a Russian is at a distance of 3200 meters from a mujahid, and that mujahid aims at the Russian's head, calculate how many seconds it will take for the bullet to strike the Russian in the forehead." The program ended in 1994, but the books continued to circulate: "US-sponsored textbooks, which exhort Afghan children to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs, are still available in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some in their original form" (pg. 137).

These books will become extinct within a few years but their effects will probably last for at least a generation.

Today the US propagates and supports the discourse of "enlightened moderation" in Pakistan. This discourse has a resonance with the predominantly liberal media, an example of which was given in the previous post (Umrao Jan Ada's Pakistan). I feel that we are already experiencing the polarizing effect of this discourse as it seeks to reduce a whole population into "Good" and "Bad" Muslims. In this discourse, Good Muslims are supposed to be moderate, peaceful, enlightened, with a progressive outlook. Bad Muslims are fundamentalist, violent, extremists, with dreams of taking history back to the 7th century!

This discourse seeks to control people's thoughts and actions. Think about the negative connotations now attached to the word "fundamentalist". "Are you a fundamentalist?" Well, if being fundamentalist means to believe in certain fundamentals of Islam, then all Muslims are fundamentalists! One needs to question the underlying assumptions and politics of this discourse. One should not let their political options restricted by the "either/or" logic. "Are you with us or with them?" Well, neither with you, nor with them!