The Lies of 9/11 & The War on Terror EXPOSED | Prof. Irfan Ahmad

## Securitization and the enemy The conversation exposes how the term "terrorism" has been transformed from a criminal, often police-handled problem into a political rationale for military campaigns and broad international interventions. That transformation—securitization in political-science terms—was not accidental. It emerged within a set of intellectual and institutional moves that required a sharpened enemy: a singular target around which liberal democracies could cohere and justify extraordinary measures. The speakers trace this genealogy back through the end of the Cold War, when the disappearance of communism as an organizing adversary left a deficit in the identity politics of the West. With communism gone or weakened, a replacement was needed; "terrorism," reframed as a largely Islamic phenomenon, filled that void. Prof. Irfan Ahmad challenges mainstream accounts by stressing that this process was not a spontaneous reaction to new kinds of violence but a political choice with deep historical resonances. The language around "new terrorism" after 9/11—religious, irrational, apocalyptic—worked to cast political violence as an existential, non-negotiable threat that could only be met by force. That framing closed off political engagement, treating grievances as irrelevant because the enemy was understood as fanatic or pathological rather than as an actor with interests or claims. Once terrorism was securitized in this way, responses moved from courts and social policy into the domains of intelligence, covert operations, and full-scale warfare. The result has been a quarter-century of global military intervention, with catastrophic human and state-level consequences across the Global South. Seen as a strategic invention rather than a neutral descriptor, "terrorism" plays the role assigned to an enemy in classical theory: it clarifies who is outside the political community. Yet that clarity is deceptive. The conversation illuminates how the purported newness of Islamic terrorism obscured long continuities—older labels such as "fanaticism" and colonial narratives of irrationality had already racialized and dehumanized Muslim subjects. Securitization thus built on existing tropes and amplified them into policy, law, and public consciousness. The consequence was not merely an increase in state violence but also a narrowing of imagination: if the adversary is not a political actor but an eternalized religious pathology, meaningful remedies and political remedies are foreclosed. ## Good Muslims, bad Muslims One of the most powerful analytical threads in the talk is the political utility of binary moral categories within Western statecraft. The "good Muslim/bad Muslim" distinction, as articulated by Mahmood Mamdani and reiterated in the conversation, operates as a tool for managing alliances and legitimizing interventions. During the Cold War, anti-Soviet mujahideen were "good Muslims"; later, when their interests diverged from Western strategy, they were recast as "bad Muslims"—terrorists needing suppression. These shifting valuations demonstrate that the moral label is not grounded in ideology or principle but in instrumental politics. The discussion complicates Mamdani’s distinction by suggesting its current iteration has evolved: being a "good Muslim" increasingly means being an anti-Muslim in practice—an ally who publicly repudiates or weakens Muslim solidarities and politics that might challenge Western policy. The paradox is stark: the very figures once celebrated for resisting occupation or communism have been alternately abandoned, prosecuted, or rehabilitated depending on geopolitical convenience. Recent diplomatic reopenings and welcome mat changes—states moving from denunciation to engagement with groups previously branded terrorist—highlight the contingency and hypocrisy of moral categorization. This political calculus also fuels Islamophobia at the popular level. The conversation details how sensationalist depictions—false or exaggerated stories alleging monstrous sexual crimes, grotesque religio-cultural practices—are weaponized to mark Muslims as outside civilized norms. The "good/bad" framework permits selective recognition of Muslim voices while excluding entire populations from the protections of political dialogue. When the "good" Muslim is simply the one who testifies against their community or adopts norms palatable to the West, the result is a fragmented, controlled, and deeply disingenuous public discourse about pluralism and rights. ## The Global War on Terror The Global War on Terror (GWOT) is portrayed not as an unambiguous reaction to an unprecedented assault but as the operational manifestation of securitization and neocolonial policy. After 9/11, the rhetoric of existential threat provided a legal and moral cover for a range of actions: invasions, occupations, drone wars, mass surveillance, and extraordinary rendition. These actions had strategic aims beyond countering immediate threats: they reshaped regional balances, secured economic and geopolitical interests, and reinforced Western dominance in global governance institutions. Prof. Ahmad points out that the GWOT functioned as a metanarrative that could be transplanted across contexts. National tragedies—London, Mumbai, and others—were assimilated into a single frame where "terrorism" served as the universal explanation and justification for security exceptionalism. That synthetic narrative allowed a broad coalition of actors—governments, intelligence agencies, think tanks, media—to normalize indefinite states of emergency and redraw the rules of international conduct. Importantly, the conversation suggests that the GWOT was not only an outward-facing project. It remade domestic politics in Western countries: immigration policy tightened, civil liberties contracted, and minority communities—especially Muslims—faced heightened scrutiny and exclusion. The toll has been enormous. Entire societies in West Asia and beyond endured devastation; millions were displaced or killed; fragile institutions collapsed. Yet these human costs often remain peripheral in high-level debates where strategic victory is measured in regime change or "decapitation" of militant networks. The conversation insists on a reframing: the GWOT should be studied not only for its counterterrorism outcomes but as a historical episode of global ordering—one that consolidated certain hegemonic forms under the guise of universal defense. ## Terrorism as ideology and theology A crucial analytic move in the conversation is distinguishing between terrorism as a political strategy and the imputation of an ideological or theological essence to Islam. Once violence was framed as inherently Islamic—or as an outgrowth of religious fanaticism—the door was shut on treating it as a tactic rooted in material and political contexts. The idea that terrorism flows from theology rather than politics simplifies complex histories: grievances, state repression, foreign intervention, radicalization pathways, and geopolitical rivalries all matter. The speakers critique a reductionist narrative that treats terrorism as an expression of immutable theological properties. This tendency sanitizes political decision-making by locating causality in culture or faith rather than in policy choices. Viewing terrorism primarily through a theological lens also enables epistemic whitewashing: inconvenient histories of Western intervention are sidelined while religious justifications are foregrounded, often in caricatured forms. The conversation calls for reorienting the inquiry toward human-scale explanations: who benefits from violence, how tactical choices are made, and what political projects violence serves. Anthropology—when not subsumed by securitized frameworks—has a particular contribution here. Ethnographic work can reveal the lived realities that produce violence: social networks, patronage, sectarian hierarchies, p

The Lies of 9/11 & The War on Terror EXPOSED | Prof. Irfan Ahmad 25 years after the 9/11 incident in the USA, many are beginning to catch up with what those events really kicked off: The global war on the non-West and the multipolar world. Watch professor Irfan Ahmad in this talk deconstruct the narrative the transatlantic club has built to justify a quarter of a century of violence against the Global South. Professor Irfan Ahmad, Professor of Anthropology- Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, discusses his book Terrorism in Question: Decolonizing Anthropology and the Study of Islam. The conversation examines the neocolonial construction of terrorism, Islamophobia, enemy-making, the Global War on Terror, epistemic whitewashing, and the need to understand political violence through a more humane and decolonized anthropology. Links: Irfan Ahmad: https://fs.ihu.edu.tr/cv/academicians/69c5956fcdb15-irfan-ahmad-cv-f-21jan2026-3- pdf.pdf Terrorism in Question: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/AhmadTerrorism Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Terrorism in Question 00:03: 07 Decolonizing the terrorism question 00:06:40 Securitization and the enemy 00:08:25 From communism to Islamic terrorism 00:15:27 Good Muslims, bad Muslims 00:21:17 Manichaean thinking and Islamophobia 00:27:38 The Global War on Terror 00:31:28 Epistemic whitewashing 00:40:55 Terrorism as ideology and theology 00:49:59 War, neoliberalism and academia 00:51:35 The anti- conclusion and rehumanizing terrorism 00:57:04 Final thoughts and book recommendation #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies, today for the second time with Professor Irfan Ahmad, a professor of anthropology and sociology at the Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul. Irfan, welcome back. Thank you, Pascal, for having me a second time. And thank you very much for coming online, because we want to discuss a new book of yours, which you entitled very brilliantly, Terrorism in Question: Decolonizing Anthropology and the Study of Islam. So tell us something about it. Tell us in what way, shape, or form you are decolonizing the terrorism question. #Irfan Ahmad Right. So as you know, this term decolonization is quite in circulation, you know, these days. And people from all fields of inquiry—there is decolonization of everything. But my point was, to what extent are all these calls for decolonization truly decolonization? Because many of the things which are happening in the name of decolonization today are actually, in my view—not all of them, but some—actually attempts of recolonization or neocolonization. So we have to be very careful that certain things in the name of decolonization are happening, but actually these are attempts for -- 1 of 16 -- recolonization or neocolonization. So I'm somebody who is trained in the discipline of anthropology, and before that in sociology. And as you know, at least since 9/11, terrorism is, in one way, the pivot of global politics. And then anthropologists have very little to say about terrorism, both historically and contemporaneously. So my question was that something which has so importantly shaped, okay, not simply politics, but also culture, the ways we look at things, our own subjectivities, the idea of the enemy, you know, the threat, and so on and so forth. Okay, it also has repercussions, for example, in academia. So how to understand this pivotal moment of the 21st century, which is not, by the way, far from over; it is still continuing, right? And how anthropologists can give a better understanding of this whole phenomenon from a decolonial perspective, because one of the major arguments of the book is that the way the Western world, the political elites, the so-called terrorism experts, the security experts, the dominant explanation that we get from them is actually neocolonial. #Pascal Can you flesh that out? In what sense is the terrorism narrative that we have at the moment, and that came into being certainly with 9/11 25 years ago, how is that colonial or neocolonial? #Irfan Ahmad Yeah, so there are some people who came up with this idea that 9/11 actually marks a new moment in the history of terrorism because they thought that there is something called new terrorism, okay? And they wanted to differentiate this new terrorism from old terrorism. And there were many elements of this so-called new terrorism, but one core element of this newness was that we have something called new terrorism because it is primarily religious slash Islamic terrorism. From there, the assumption was that terrorism in the past, before 9/11, or before the rise of so-called Islamic terrorism, was secular, or it was not religious. Now, if you look at the history in the 19th century, in the 18th century, both in British colonialism as well as French colonialism, they didn't use the term terrorism at that time. They were shifting terms. But one recurring term is fanaticism. Okay. Muslims have been described as fanatics. And the meaning of fanatic is somebody who is not using reason, who is somebody intoxicated with psychological defects. Okay, so what happens after 9/11? One of the features of this so-called new terrorism, it was described as religious slash Islamic. And therefore, in policy circles, in political elite circles, you see that there is no serious attempt to engage with them or listen to their grievances. Okay, because if we begin with the assumption that, if terrorism is social and political, humanly produced, then the question would be how to talk or address. Okay, so rather than engaging with it, it was thought that it is so irrational. The only way left is to combat it rather than engage in some kind of dialogue or discourse. Right. So what you see, the trope of fanaticism, or Islam as an irrational religion, as an obscurantist religion, -- 2 of 16 -- that idea resurfaces after 9/11. And unlike the self-view of many Muslims, rather than being seen as a social-historical product, it is eternalized because once you say that it is religious, then in some extremist discourse from the government side, it is something which cannot be engaged with. Okay. And that actually goes against the, you know, at least Habermasian idea of deliberative democracy. If there are problems, then we can talk, we can have discussion, and we can, you know, come around a table and address it. So in that sense, it is neocolonial or recolonial. Okay. #Pascal You know, the term has been around before. And in my field of, you know, political science and especially security studies, one of the things that we've been calling out now for 25 years is how the term terrorism moved from something that Western states largely addressed with police measures, as in, you know, we need a civilian force to make sure that we're safe from terrorism, to the military, basically, which is a process we call securitization, right? You securitize the issue and you make it an issue of the military. And we've seen, I mean, millions of people have died in this U.S. struggle against terrorism. And the countries in West Asia have been completely burned to the ground. The entire war against Afghanistan in Central Asia was done under that thinking. Of course, the war against Iran was—sorry, war against Israel—Iraq, Iraq, sorry, too many I's in the West. The war against Iraq was justified with this idea that we need to prevent nuclear terrorism from happening because he's about to have weapons of mass destruction. I mean, this terrorism term was thrown around as a reason for most of the aggressive wars of the last 25 years. How does that one fit into this colonial framework that you're saying that the study of anthropology, to a good part, still uses? Hey, just a very quick note. The best way to support this channel is by signing up for my free Substack. You can also help with a paid subscription there, or you can get some of our new merch on neutralitystudies.com. Links below. See you there. #Irfan Ahmad Yeah, so one of the things which I do is also—this book is also a critique of the discipline of anthropology. So I'm somebody who is trained in anthropology, but I'm also critical of it. So the critique is on two levels. One is that I think that actually the way anthropologists have looked at the question of terrorism or political violence more generally, it is not sufficiently anthropological. Okay, so anthropology actually can play a more important role in understanding it, but the contemporary generation of anthropologists are not doing it. Now, what I mean by this is the following: that the idea or the notion of the enemy has been at the heart of modern politics. So, of course, you know, I'm mentioning Carl Schmitt, not normatively, but descriptively, which is to say that I'm not endorsing his politics. But in his theorization, politics is all about differentiating the friend from the foe or the enemy. And that idea of politics has been at the heart of politics more generally, but also and equally, I would say, to those who designate themselves as democracies. Now, in the Cold War, of course, the -- 3 of 16 -- enemy was communism. And one of the arguments that I make is that since liberal democracies lack a positive identity to rally around, therefore they need an enemy to bring so-called like-minded people together. So what happens, one of the genealogies of terrorism is this: that at the end of the Cold War, so this is the Reagan era, once you have this communism as enemy weakening, and finally it leads to the collapse of communism, then you need to have another enemy. And Colin Powell is on record to say that I'm running out of enemies. #Pascal Hmm. #Irfan Ahmad Okay, so you need to have this enemy. Now, what happens here is that then Islam or Islamic terrorism is manufactured as the enemy. But here we need to slightly make a modification, because it is not like during the Cold War, Islam was absent and suddenly after the Cold War, Islam is invented as a new enemy. You have overlaps also. And one major thing which very few people talk about is actually, and this is something which is crucial to bear in mind, is that intellectually speaking, the idea of Islam as an enemy is floated already in 1986. And this is important because the current prime minister of Israel, he co-edited a book in 1986. It is called Terrorism: How the West Can Win. And it is an edited volume. And at that time, he was Israeli ambassador to the UN. Okay. And the institute which had organized that conference from which the book was eventually published, okay, that institute was named after his brother, okay, Jonathan Netanyahu, okay? Okay. And that book put at the center that, look, terrorism is the enemy of the West, and therefore the subtitle is How the West Can Win. Now, it has 40 contributions, and Edward Said actually wrote a critique of that book. And in his reading, the message that that book wanted to say was, is that the Arabs are the terrorists, and Arabs alone are the terrorists. Okay? So you already see the idea being floated in 1986. Anyway, now the formal end of the Cold War is somewhere in '89 or '90, you know? So what I want to say is that it is not straightforward that, okay, communism was the enemy until the end of the Cold War, and then Islam was invented as a new enemy, right? There are also overlaps, okay? Now, I think in contemporary times, you see that idea of the Arabs slash Muslims. That is what has appeared on the global scene in the Middle East, but also outside of the Middle East. Western states also mobilize their discourse in terms of Muslims living in the West. And then 9/11 becomes the metaphor through which this whole idea of Islamic terrorism. Sometimes they also use this word called jihadism, you know. So that becomes the galvanizing point. Now, I think I would like to also add something. Once you make