In the post-Cold War era, the world has seen the ascendancy of what Mamdani calls Culture Talk, a discourse that treats culture not as dynamic or historical but as static—rooted in the supposedly timeless, essential characteristics of a people. Unlike the Cold War’s focus on political ideologies like capitalism and communism, the global discourse after 9/11 explains political phenomena—and particularly terrorism—through cultural identities, especially Islam. Culture is no longer social and lived, but politicized and generalized, delivered in “large geo-packages” (17).

Culture Talk explains politics by assuming that each culture possesses a distinct and unchanging essence. In the aftermath of 9/11, this thinking labeled terrorism as intrinsically “Islamic” (17), obscuring political causes and instead attributing violence to Islamic culture. The narrative shifted from capitalism versus communism to modernity versus premodernity. The modern West became the maker of culture, while Muslim societies were portrayed as static relics of a founding moment, incapable of evolution, existing in the “lifeless custom of an antique people” (18). Mamdani identifies two versions of Culture Talk: one views non-modern societies as lagging behind modernity, inspiring philanthropic or humanitarian engagement; the other sees them as anti-modern, requiring containment or military suppression. Islam, particularly after 9/11, is portrayed in the latter way: as a civilizational threat. This thinking builds on earlier colonial discourses that explained violence in Africa or other parts of the Global South in cultural rather than political terms.

The intellectual foundations of this post-Cold War Culture Talk can be traced to Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington. Lewis’s 1990 article The Roots of Muslim Rage introduced the idea of a civilizational conflict between the Islamic world and the West. Huntington expanded it into his 1993 article The Clash of Civilizations? which claimed that future global conflicts would be cultural rather than ideological. Huntington designated Islam as the most dangerous “enemy civilization” (21). In this framework, Muslims were not just foreign but alien in a civilizational sense, potentially hostile, and resistant to secular modernity. Critics such as Edward Said counter that these models ignore history and internal diversity within civilizations. Said argued that real conflict happens “inside civilizations” (22) not merely between them. Lewis, more nuanced than Huntington, acknowledged internal Muslim debates but still essentialized Islam as prone to violence in moments of crisis. He viewed Islam as a static culture, incompatible with freedom and secularism, two pillars of Western modernity.

The idea of distinguishing “good Muslims” from “bad Muslims” took root in American foreign policy, with figures like President Bush and Prime Minister Blair cautioning against blaming all Muslims while simultaneously promoting a war within Islam to purify it. This division constructs Muslim identity as a political category and promotes intervention under the guise of helping “good” Muslims overcome “bad” ones. Islam becomes quarantined, marked for internal cleansing. While thinkers such as Marshall Hodgson, Cheikh Anta Diop, and Martin Bernal had successfully challenged Eurocentric views of history by the late 20th century, Orientalist frameworks were revived in post-9/11 discourse. These frameworks continue to map the world in ways that exaggerate Western centrality. This mapping occurs both figuratively and literally: The Mercator projection, the most common way of representing the globe in two dimensions, distorts geographic scale to privilege Europe and the US while pushing the Orient to the “periphery” (28).

Culture Talk assumes history to be the story of self-contained civilizations marching through time. Yet historical examples reveal complex cultural exchanges. Mamdani shows how Jewish culture in medieval Spain was more “Arab-Jewish” than “Judeo-Christian,” disrupting narratives of fixed civilizational blocs. Even the term “Judeo-Christian” is a post-Holocaust invention designed as an “antidote to anti-Semitism” (36). Likewise, “Arab” and “Berber” became politically charged identities in colonial North Africa through legal and administrative distinctions imposed by the French. These observations underscore Mamdani’s main argument: cultural identities are often politically constructed. For example, in Sudan’s civil war, the conflict was framed as “Arab” North versus “African” South, though intellectuals later emphasized the integrative, Afro-Arab nature of Sudanese culture. The aftermath of civil conflict demands new histories, but those are often unavailable due to entrenched political interests.

Even when fundamentalist movements claim to recover a “true” or “original” culture, they are inherently political and historical, not essential or timeless. Mamdani distinguishes between religious fundamentalism, political religion (such as political Islam or Christianity), and terrorism. Christian fundamentalism in the US, he notes, arose as a modern reaction to secularism, not as a throwback to a premodern era. Similarly, political Islam is a product of modern political conflicts and interactions with Western power, not simply a return to ancient texts. Mamdani draws attention to key figures in political Islam. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, for instance, defended Islam’s rational capacity for science against Western claims of cultural stagnation. Later thinkers like Muhammad Iqbal and Mohammed Ali Jinnah envisioned Islam as a cultural, not necessarily theocratic, identity. The turn toward radicalism came with figures like Sayyid Qutb and Abul A’la Mawdudi. Mawdudi, in particular, “radically reformulated” (50) the term jihad as a political struggle for state power, equating Islam with ideologies like Communism. Qutb, influenced by Marxism-Leninism, focused more on society and saw jihad as both spiritual and political, rooted in opposition to unjust rule.

Throughout Islamic history, jihad has often been invoked during crises, but not as a permanent doctrine of violence. It has had both defensive and reformist interpretations. Mamdani stresses that political Islam is diverse: some movements seek reform within existing political systems, while others aim to seize state power. Only the latter have been associated with political terror. Mamdani argues that terrorism is not a cultural residue but a political outcome—a response to historical events, particularly the Cold War. The radicalization of political Islam and its embrace of violence stem from political conditions, not from Islam’s doctrinal core. By reducing terrorism to culture, the West avoids responsibility for its own role in shaping these political encounters. To move forward, society must abandon Culture Talk and engage with the historical and political roots of violence.