Terrorism in Question

Irfan Ahmad is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious & Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany. He is author of Islamism and Democracy in India (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

• 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

This is a paradigmatic book; hardly one comes across such outstanding scholarly work demonstrating rare intellectual depth, sharp arguments, insightful analysis, critical reflections and convincing explanations. Pralay Kanungo, Leiden University