The Shade of Swords - Softcover

Akbar, M. J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415328144 ISBN 13: 9780415328142

Publisher: Routledge, 2003

Synopsis

The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this paperback edition, updated to show how and why Saddam Hussein repositioned himself as a Jihadi against America, M.J. Akbar explains the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Placing recent events in a historical context, he tackles the tricky question of what now for Jihad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.

With British and American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and once again in Iraq, the potential for Jihadi recruitment is ever increasing. Explaining how Jihad thrives on complex and shifting notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice, and illustrating how Muslims themselves have historically tried both to direct and control the phenomenon of Jihad, Akbar shows how Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam, revealing its strength and significance.

To know the future, one needs to understand the past. M.J. Akbar's The Shade of Swords holds the key.

About this title

About the Author:

M J Akbar is an Indian Muslim and journalist, best-selling author, the founder and editor-in-chief of the Asian Age newspaper and former government advisor and official spokesman to Rajiv Ghandi. He is a respected expert on Indian and Middle Eastern politics.

From Publishers Weekly:

Akbar, an Indian journalist and author of five books about India, offers an enthralling, though uneven, history of Muslims at war. Focusing on the jihads inspired by the attacks of Christian Crusaders, Akbar downplays what Muhammad labeled the more important, "Greater Jihad" the inner struggle against temptation to sin. He also hints at the role of Muhammad's "Lesser Jihad" the duty of Muslims to protest corrupt Muslim leadership and how it yielded another category of jihad targeted at countries like the U.S. for propping up and installing such leadership. Akbar's analysis is lacking, and he generalizes too often about the Muslim community. He dangles the charged term jihad ominously, but without concrete explanation of whether it is a valid religious motivator or simply a convenient borrowing of Islamic vocabulary for military-political purposes. As a result, the promise made by the book's subtitle is never fulfilled. As a historian, however, Akbar, fares better, his rhythmic writing bringing Islamic heroes like Saladin to life. Akbar effectively shows that most encounters between the Islamic world and Christians have resulted in violence, often instigated or spurred on by the Western-Christian actors, which led to the massive discontent exposed by September 11. His accounts of the detached cruelty of Western colonial powers and American oil companies in balkanizing the Islamic world for their own benefit are a gloomy reminder of what happens to those who fail to learn from history.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0415328144
• ISBN 13: 9780415328142
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 364