When Mahmood Mamdani wrote his seminal book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim in the aftermath of 9/11, he had no idea that the political binaries he critiqued would one day inhabit his own family. Two decades later, his son Zohran Mamdani’ s landslide electoral victory in New York seems to have reshaped the meaning of “good” Muslims.

For the senior Mamdani, being a “good Muslim” never meant being morally upright. Power was at the centre of his enquiry. It was about “culture talk,” a term he came up with to illustrate how Muslims are divided into categories of loyalty and threat by the West itself. The “good” were those who adhered to the logic and rationality framework of the West, seemingly compromising on many grounds. Those who resisted or refused to be domesticated were considered “bad.” How

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