Partisans of Allah

The idea of jihad is central to Islamic faith and ethics, yet its meanings have been highly contested over time. They have ranged from the philosoph-ical struggle to live an ethical life to the political injunction to wage war against enemies of Islam. Today more than ever, jihad signifies the political opposition between the Islamic world and the West. As the line between Muslims and non-Muslims becomes more sharply drawn, Ayesha Jalal seeks to retrieve the ethical meanings of this core Islamic principle in South Asian history.

Drawing on historical, legal, and literary sources, Jalal traces the intellectual itinerary of jihad through several centuries and across the ter-ritory connecting the Middle East with South Asia. She reveals how key innovations in modern Islamic thought resulted from historical impera-tives. The social and political scene in India be-fore, during, and after British colonial rule forms the main backdrop. We experience jihad as armed warfare waged by Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly between 1826 and 1831, the calls to jihad in the great rebellion of 1857, the fusion of jihad with a strand of anticolonial nationalism in the early twentieth century, and the contemporary politics of self-styled jihadis in Pakistan, waging war to lib-erate co-religionists in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Partisans of Allah surveys this rich and tumul-tuous history of South Asian Muslims and its crit-ical contribution to the intellectual development of the key concept of jihad. Analyzing the com-plex interplay of ethics and politics in Muslim his-tory, the author effectively demonstrates the preeminent role of jihad in the Muslim faith today.