Terrorism in Question

Irfan Ahmad is Professor of Anthropology-Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Türkiye. He is the author of three monographs and was a Senior Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute, Göttingen, Germany, and taught at UvA and Monash University, Australia. He delivered the 2023 Roy Rappaport distinguished lecture at University of Victoria, Canada.

“Irfan Ahmad’s Terrorism in Question confirms my belief that anthropologists write the best books about terrorism. Starting with the most basic of questions – who needs a terrorist? – and noting that not everything that is real is necessarily true, Ahmad takes the reader on a deeply revealing but also uncomfortable journey through contemporary terrorism discourse. He elaborates an anthropology of terrorism that powerfully deconstructs many certainties considered true about terrorism. Erudite, wide-ranging, endlessly fascinating, genuinely illuminating, and ultimately empowering, this is a book that anyone interested in (counter)terrorism simply must read.” • Richard Jackson, author of Writing the War on Terrorism, University of Otago“Free-spirited political anthropology at its imaginative best: a brilliant and brave anatomy of the global use and abuse of the politically poisonous word terrorism.” • John Keane, author of Demagogues and Despots, University of Sydney“This is a paradigmatic book; hardly one comes across such an outstanding scholarly work.” • Pralay Kanungo, Leiden University“A deeply original account exploring the labyrinth that is the debate on terrorism as a form of intellectual policing as much as the experience of marginalization. In the process, Irfan Ahmad describes the contours of a new way of doing public anthropology beyond national boundaries and concerns. There is nothing else quite like this powerful book.” • Faisal Devji, author of Terrorists in Search of Humanity, University of Oxford“For readers concerned with exorcizing terrorism discourse and mythology, this is an indispensable book. It studies the situation of Muslims in India by examining concrete ethnographic cases on the ground. The work compels the author to rethink the very premises of political anthropology and the requisites of a truthful writing on terrorism. Ahmad's remarkable book is an example of how a truly engaged public intellectual should face the political and moral dilemmas of a much-tabooed topic.” • Joseba Zulaika, author of Terrorism: A Self-fulfilling Prophecy, University of Nevada“Terrorism in Question is in my view brilliant: at once a scrupulous account of the way what our political authorities and our media call ‘terrorism’ is understood, and a powerful argument insisting that anthropologists are morally responsible for describing the world they study in a truthful and courageous manner. The author’s attention to detail and its sophisticated analysis of ‘terrorism’ in India are quite exceptional. This is a mind-widening book about the exercise of power by individuals, the state, and civil society in an extremely important country. If I had to recommend one book that challenges the reader to think critically about ‘terrorism,’ this would be it.” • Talal Asad, author of On Suicide Bombing, City University of New York“A crucial and timely contribution to assessing the political labor effected by the concept of terrorism today. Essential reading!” • Charles Hirschkind, author of The Feeling of History, University of California, Berkeley

• DedicationList of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsNote to ReadersList of AbbreviationsPrefaceChapter 1. The Argument vis-à-vis the DoxaChapter 2. What Might an Anthropology of Terrorism Look Like?Chapter 3. Injustice and the New World Order: An Alternative Perspective on TerrorismChapter 4. Kafka in India: Terrorism, Media, MuslimsChapter 5. Riot, Pogrom, Terror: Another Theory of “Religious” ViolenceChapter 6. Ethnic Democracy: Facing the Terror of Counterterrorism AgenciesChapter 7. Epistemic Whitewash: Ethnography of a UNDP Conference on CounterterrorismChapter 8. The Truth about Terrorism: The True in FictionAnticonclusionAppendix: Doing Public Anthropology in the Era of the Global War on TerrorBibliographyIndex