Reviews 689

British (p. 190) does not take sufficient account of the fact that, even if the move was not
exactly a coordinated one, the British were fully aware of Iranian intentions.
These reservations aside, W. Taylor Fain has produced a significant book that will add to the
growing literature on AngloAmerican relations and the end of empire in the Persian Gulf.
His suggestion that the roots of Americas direct, large-scale military involvement in the
Gulf, which began in the late 1970s, lay in its inability to establish viable proxies for British
power in the area (p. 2) clearly has considerable relevance to the contemporary situation in
the region.

AYESHA JALAL, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2008). Pp. 393. $29.95 cloth.

REVIEWED BY ANNA BIGELOW, Department of Philosophy and Religion, North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, N.C.; email: anna bigelow@ncsu.edu
doi:10.1017/S0020743809990225

In the wake of the late-November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, attributed to the Pakistan-
based outfit Lashkar-e Taiba, one could hardly read a more timely and important book than
Ayesha Jalals Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia. Though not an easy read for those
unschooled in South Asian history, Jalals effort to historicize jihad and give nuanced speci-
ficity to a concept too often misconstrued is well worth the challenge. In six chapters, largely
chronologically arranged, Partisans of Allah breaks down the facile characterizations of jihad
that have obscured rather than clarified its meaning and, most crucially, its practice. By elu-
cidating specific campaigns labeled as jihads and engaging the interlocutors who promoted or
critiqued the application of the term, Jalal effectively dispels the idea that jihad in practice is
always a fulfillment of the ethical obligation as set forth in the Qur
an. In addition, rather than
marginalize jihad, as some have sought to do, or define it as solely a spiritual practice, Jalal
places jihad at the center of Islam even as she rejects its use as a justification for violence:
Equating jihad with violence and terror makes a sheer travesty of a concept that, for all
the distortions and misinterpretations, remains the core principle of Islamic ethics (p. 304).
Academics, journalists, apologists, and terrorists have all been guilty of erasing jihads ethical
core, and Jalals effort here goes a long way to restoring the complexity and the integrity of
the concept.
All too often jihad is explained as either a solely spiritual struggle against ones lower nature
or as an unremitting, merciless war against nonbelievers. Thankfully, Jalal is a historian who
abhors such imprecision. She argues, Muslim exegetes, legists, theologians, and historians in
different times and places have distorted the meaning of jihad in the Quran. In response to
such distortions, Jalal contends that jihad is best understood with reference to the historical
evolution of the idea in response to the shifting requirements of the Muslim community,
especially in the South Asian context (p. 14).
Thus it is all the more surprising that Jalal does not always make the primary sources from
which she draws sufficiently available to her readers. Beginning with a thumbnail sketch of
early Islamic history and the concept of jihad, in this section Jalal misses an opportunity to
establish the Qur
anic usage of the term. Instead, she makes a generalized assertion that jihad
in the Qur
an has expansive, spiritual meanings (p. 17) without ever establishing what those
meanings are, how they were construed by the early community, or how Muslim legists in
the Umayyad and Abbasid periods managed to redefine jihad as an ideology to legitimate
the wars of conquest (p. 9). By not providing minimal grounding in the Qur
anic language
690 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 41 (2009)

concerning jihad, Jalals readers are deprived of a rich and helpful resource that would actually
bolster her argument. Many books specifically addressing jihad in this period certainly exist
(Firestone, 1997; Bonney, 2002; Cook, 2005), but if the core argument is that jihad is a
fundamentally ethical concept as articulated in the Qur
an and that the Qur
anic usage is also
the most authentic, then the reader would be helped by exemplary passages, such as 9:20
and 9:24, which enjoin striving hard in Gods way by not placing any material possession
or worldly attachment above the struggle to live in accordance with belief in the unity of
God and the inevitability of Gods judgment. By contrast, Jalals frequent quotations from
influential poets and philosophers such as Mirza Ghalib and Muhammad Iqbal are extremely
useful ways to establish the rich and contested nature of jihad in Muslim thought, making
it all the more curious why she neglects the source of the ethical meaning to which she
refers.
Nonetheless, Partisans of Allah gains momentum as it proceeds. By carefully pulling apart
the strands of thought that emerged from luminaries of the precolonial period, such as Shaikh
Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah, Jalal avoids typecasting them as (proto) Wahhabis or
puritanical, if mystical, guides from whose thought emerged fully blown the modern Muslim
extremists of South Asia. Instead, we see how certain ideas from these formative figures are
drawn out by their spiritual and intellectual heirs, many of whom come to disagree with one
another. Although Chapter 3, The Martyrs of Balakot, concerning the 19th-century campaign
of Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareilly is somewhat convoluted at times (shifting between several
central characters and back and forth in time), this is a particularly rich chapter and will
reward the careful reader, as Sayyid Ahmad is put into conversation with the Indian ulama

and tribal leaders of the period. It is also a fascinating window into the political and social
turmoil as the realities of the weakening Mughal Empire and the double threat of British
colonialism and the Sikh kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh became increasingly apparent
to Indian Muslims. Jalal manages to demonstrate the idealism and ethical underpinnings of
Sayyid Ahmad and his associates, even as they were often dismayed by the pragmatic alliances
and concessions they were forced to make. Jalal situates Sayyid Ahmad and his jihad, now
idealized by some contemporary Muslims, into context.
In subsequent chapters on jihad in colonial times and as resistance to colonialism, Jalal
continues to illuminate the variations in the practice of jihad and its interpretations in specific
historic instances. For example, she documents the variety of opinions taken by South Asian
ulama
on the 1857 rebellion against the expanding British East India Company. In addition
to the well-known opposition to the rebellion by figures like Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Jalal
carefully parses the attitude of other key figures such as Nana Sahib, Fazl-i-Haq Khairabadi,
and Maulana Nautawi of Dar-ul-ulum Deoband. These latter three all opposed the British in
the conflict but with varying motives, rationales, and actual actions undertaken. In another
example, the poet Ghalib was critical of the British, but suspicious of labeling the resistance
jihad. Such particular cases of Muslims grappling with an ethical teaching in a trying
situation provide object lessons in the contested nature of jihad and the ethical, political, and
spiritual contexts in which its definition takes shape.
In the chapter Jihad as Anti-colonial Nationalism, Jalal sheds important light on a little-
discussed period in the life of one of the most influential thinkers in the revival of modern
Islam, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. By juxtaposing al-Afghani and Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who took
opposing attitudes toward British sovereignty but similar attitudes toward the importance of
reconciling modernity and Islam, al-Afghanis pragmatism and tendency toward dissimulation
are cast into sharp relief.
Maulana Maududi (d. 1979), one of the most influential thinkers of the contemporary
period, also appears in a new light in Partisans of Allah. In a fascinating journey into his
thought and influence, Jalal reminds us not only of Maududis famous opposition to the
 Reviews 691

establishment of a separate state of Pakistan but also of his less well-known opposition to
labeling the Kashmiri conflict with India as a jihad. Probably a surprise to many of his
present-day admirers, Maududi did not sanction Pakistans support of a jihad in Kashmir as
long as the state maintained diplomatic ties with India, arguing that to do so would violate
sharia. In this final chapter, Jihad as Terrorism, Jalal focuses on the phases of Pakistans
development as a state and the shifting relations between religious actors, the state, and the
military. It is here that the history of jihad and the histories of colonialism, militarism, and
nationalism converge. Lashkar-e-Taiba is but one of the many groups that emerge from this
vortex putting forward an ideology of resistance and of purification through the language
of jihad. By placing such organizations into this broader framework, Jalal simultaneously
demystifies them and undermines their misuse of jihad. Neither the Pakistani nor the U.S.
government is let off the hook regarding these groups, and Jalal skillfully points out the
conundrum of the vast majority of Pakistanis whose ability to restore the ethical core of jihad
runs the risk of being labeled both antinational and un-Islamic! (p. 301).
Partisans of Allah is a welcome addition to the growing body of subtle and nuanced work
on jihada concept both overexposed and little understood. Appropriate for any reader with
a strong grounding in South Asian history and Islamic studies, this book demonstrates that
methodological rigor in scholarly praxis may also double as sound ethical praxis in combating
the misappropriation of jihad. Ayesha Jalals close and critical analysis of jihad past and
present is an excellent resource in the struggle to restore [jihads] essential meaning as an
ethical struggle to be human and thereby more effectively combat the forces of disequilibrium
that plague the contemporary world (p. 19).

BRUCE MADDY-WEITZMAN AND DANIEL ZISENWINE, EDS., The Maghrib in the New Century
(Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 2007). Pp. 279. $60.00 cloth.

REVIEWED BY FRANCESCO CAVATORTA, School of Law and Government, Dublin City Uni-
versity, Dublin, Ireland, and Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies, University of
Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark; e-mail: francesco.cavatorta@dcu.ie
doi:10.1017/S0020743809990237

The book is a most welcome contribution on the state of the Maghrib at the start of the
new century. The starting point of the volume is that expectations for democratic political
development in the region have not materialized. Quite the opposite in fact is true, despite
the attempts of the various regimes in the Maghrib to give the impression that they are
on the way to democracy. The changeover from Hassan II to Mohammed VI did not lead
to a restraining of the executive powers of the king, who remains the ultimate unelected
and unaccountable decision maker. The same applies to Algeria, where the introduction of
formal political pluralism following the black decade of the 1990s did not coincide with
substantive democratic changes, because significant power remained in the hands of a behind
the scenes Pouvoir. Finally, the analysis of Tunisia correctly claims that Bin Ali was able
to strengthen his hold on the country following his medical coup and that the presence of a
political opposition together with an emerging middle class does not threaten the survival of
his oppressive regime.
A superficial reading of the previous contribution would lead one to conclude that not much
has therefore changed in the politics and government of the three Maghribian states. Such a
conclusion, however, would be highly misleading, and one of the strengths of this book is
to highlight precisely that much has indeed changed in the Maghrib. All the chapters in this