This is an ambitious book on a topic that could not be more timely. South Asia is particularly important to the subject of jihad, not only because of the movements that are currently active within the region, but also because of the area's rich history of Islamic thought in relation to jihad, including, since the colonial period, the most significant schools of both modernist and Islamist thought anywhere. Numbers matter as well, as no area of the world holds more Muslims than this one.
In this volume, Ayesha Jalal demonstrates the qualities evident in her many earlier publications on the modern political and intellectual history of South Asian Muslims. She takes on challenging topics, draws on a wide range of secondary and primary sources in both Urdu and English, and writes in what is often a lively style. In this book, five chronological chapters deal successively with thought and action...