Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia »

Ayesha Jalal is Mary Richardson Professor of History, Tufts University.

The idea of jihad is central to Islamic faith and ethics, and yet its meanings have been highly contested over time. They have ranged from the philosophical 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 Islam and the West. Ayesha Jalal seeks to retrieve the ethical meanings of this core Islamic principle in South Asian history.

Kamila Shamsie - The Guardian

While discussion of Islam tends to focus on the Arab world, Jalal makes a compelling case for paying attention to south Asia, where a Muslim minority has had a long and complex relationship with other communities--each period of history seeing a shift in ideas of jihad...One thing that Partisans of Allah makes clear is that religious discourse within Islam fluctuates widely, and is entwined with geopolitics...An erudite and thought-provoking study of the interplay of religion and politics, with some particularly interesting things to say about the history of south Asian Muslims’ focus on the “outer husk” of religion, often to the detriment of “inner faith.”

List of Maps ix

Preface xi

1 Jihad as Ethics, Jihad as War 1

2 Jihad in Precolonial South Asia 20

3 The Martyrs of Balakot 58

4 Jihad in Colonial India 114

5 Jihad as Anticolonial Nationalism 176

6 Islam Subverted? Jihad as Terrorism 239

Conclusion 302

Glossary 317

Notes 321

Index 357