Us Versus Them The United States, Radical Islam, and the Rise of the Green Threat By Douglas Little (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. xiii+328 pages.)

Abstract

The intersection of Islamophobia and US foreign policy has attracted considerable
scholarly attention since 9/11. Landmark books exploring this
connection include Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim:
America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terrorism, and Deepa Kumar’s Islamophobia
and the Politics of Empire. 

Douglas Little’s Us Versus Them: The United States, Radical Islam, and
the Rise of the Green Threat is not as ambitious as these studies. It does not
forge new theoretical ground in our understanding of how Islamophobia
is instrumentalized to bolster US foreign policy objectives. But this is not
necessarily a criticism. Little’s purpose is more modest, though his project
no less difficult. He seeks to provide a lively, accessible introduction to US
engagement with Muslim extremists since the end of the Cold War and the
problematic paradigms that have shaped this policy. In this task, he succeeds
admirably ...