Partisans of Allah English 2024

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.