The pernicious 'good Muslim, bad Muslim' game

By Omid Safi
3 Feb 2011

One of the lower points in the Park51 Center controversy was the comment by New York Governor David Paterson: “This group who has put this mosque together, they are known as the Sufi Muslims. This is not like the Shiites…They’re almost like a hybrid, almost westernised. They are not really what I would classify in the sort of mainland Muslim practice.”

In a few short sentences, the governor managed to offend Sufis, Shi’i Muslims, as well as westernised Muslims, non-westernised Muslims, and “mainland Muslims” (whoever they are). Paterson overlooked the fact that some Shi’i Muslims are mystically inclined, and that six million American citizens are Muslims, thus there is no question of “westernising” or “almost westernising” for them. There is a more disturbing implication hiding in his assertion: the ongoing way in which the general demonisation of Muslims, of the kind now routine on Fox News, is accompanied by an equally pernicious game of Good Muslim, Bad Muslims.

There are many versions of this game, but the basic contour stays the same: The assertion that the general masses of Muslims are evil, terrorist-supporters, anti-western, patriarchal, misogynist, undemocratic, and anti-Semitic; and that these masses are set off and defined against either the solitary, lone Muslim good woman or man. The 'Good Muslim' is often an individual, or a small circle, because to admit that the larger group of Muslims could be on the right side of the human-rights divide is to have the house of cards of the Muslim demonisation game collapse on itself.

There are endless scenarios of this fictitious bifurcation: Reading Lolita In Tehran is 'Good Muslim', unspoken, nameless, faceless masses of Muslims are patriarchal, bad Muslims. Irshad Manji is an Israel-loving 'good Muslim' who suggests that Muslims could be blamed for the holocaust, while the majority of Muslims are bad Muslims. Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk are 'good' secular or ex-Muslims, defined against the masses of Muslims. It is worth noting how easily and how frequently the 'good Muslim' solitary figure ends up being prominently featured on the op-ed pages of the New York Times.



This type of a presentation was prominent in the discussion about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the visionary American Muslim leader behind Park51. Time and again in the presentation of Imam Feisal and his wife Daisy Khan, we were reminded by the New York Times that they represented Sufi Islam, a gentle kind of Islam, nothing like the scary monster of political Islam: “He [Abdul Rauf] was asked to lead a Sufi mosque.” Daisy Khan is described as “looking for a gentler Islam than the politicised version she rejected after Iran's revolution.” Another New York Times article was even more explicit in marking the couple as worthy “good Muslims”: “They founded a Sufi organisation advocating melding Islamic observance with women's rights and modernity.”

The suggestion that Sufi teachings are somehow immune to politics, that Sufis have been unconcerned with social issues and questions of justice and politics are problematic. Historically speaking, Sufis have been fully engaged in both challenging political powers and alternately legitimising political power throughout their history. The legacy of prominent Sufis like Abu Sa’id Abi ‘l-Khayr has been used in legitimising political powers, and Sufis such as ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani and Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri have spoken truth to power. In both cases, Sufis have not remained aloof from politics.

The Park51 controversy exposes many underlying assumptions about religion in the public space and politics, particularly in the case of Muslims, who are given two options in this superficial bifurcation game: to be politically destructive in the manner of terrorists or 'Islamists', or to be politically quietist, acquiescing in the face of power. In this 'Good Sufi/Bad Muslims' dichotomy, Sufis are asked to line up in the politically quietist camp, so that they can be validated.


And here is where the canard of 'Moderate Muslims' comes to play: Ever since 9/11, we have been asked time and again where the 'moderate Muslims' are, and why they are silent. No matter how often, and how loudly, Muslim organisations and individuals condemn terrorism, the likes of Thomas Friedman can still famously, and inaccurately, state: “The Muslim village has been derelict in condemning the madness of jihadist attacks… To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden.” No presentation of factual data seems to persuade these critics that Muslims did, do, and will continue to speak out loudly and officially against terrorism. The reason their critics do not hear the moderate Muslims is because they are not listening.

Moving beyond the question of Muslims condemning terrorism, there is the larger question of what exactly makes someone a 'moderate' Muslim? In its current usage, the term 'moderate Muslim' is as meaningful as a purple polka dot unicorn. If the term moderate implies a balancing point between two extremes, it is a hopelessly vague term in the post-9/11 landscape. If one of the two extremes away from the 'moderate Muslims' is easy to imagine (terrorism, Bin Laden, etc.), the other extreme is ill-defined. What are moderate Muslims moderating? If one extreme is terrorism, then what is the other extreme?


If our public discourse about religion and politics is to evolve to a more subtle and accurate space, it must get to the point where religious voices that speak from the depths and heights of all spiritual traditions can do more than simply acquiesce in the face of the Empire. They can, and should, speak for the weak, and give voice to the voiceless.





CBS New York, “Paterson: ‘Mosque Developers Hybrid, Almost Westernized’ Muslims,” 26 August 2010.


Michael M. Grynbaum, “Daisy Khan, An Eloquent Face of Islam,” The New York Times, 12 November 2010.

Thomas L. Freedman, “If It’s a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution,” The New York Times, 8 July 2005.


Dozens of Islamic Statements Against Terrorism, compiled by Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina.


(c) Omid Safi is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, USA. He served as the Chair of the Study of Islam Section at the American Academy of Religion from 2002-2009. He is the author of Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (HarperOne, 2009).

