The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this new 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.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203402103

The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this new 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.

In Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan, acclaimed author and journalist M. J. Akbar traces the search for a "Muslim space" that began in the eighteenth century, and the events, people, circumstances, and mind-set that culminated in a fractured India in 1947. But why is Pakistan in danger of becoming a "jelly state," a country that constantly quivers on the edge of instability? Akbar investigates contradictions in the nation's modern leadership, from Jinnah's secular ideals to the theocrats' clear stance on creating a "sanctuary of Islam." He also offers an intimate appraisal of the young nation's future--including the global implications of nuclear armament and the harboring of terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

Tinderbox, a riveting and expansive biography of a nation, fills a crucial void in our understanding--even as the region's conflicts grow to affect the entire world.

Pakistan was the culmination of a search for what might be called Muslim space that began during the decline of the Mughal Empire. Mohammad Ali Jinnah wanted a secular nation with a Muslim majority, just as India was a secular nation with a Hindu majority. The father of Pakistan did not realize that there was another claimant to the nation he had delivered: Maulana Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the godfather of Pakistan. In Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan, M.J. Akbar embarks on a historical whodunnit to trace the journey of an idea, and the events, people, circumstances and mindset that divided India. He brings an impressive array of research, perception and analysis to solve this puzzle with a fluent, engaging narrative style, making a difficult subject deceptively accessible. There could be no better guide to the subcontinent s past, and a glimpse into its future.

"Blood Brothers" is M.J. Akbar's amazing story of three generations of a Muslim family - based on his own - and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. Telinipara, a small jute mill town some 30 miles north of Kolkata along the Hooghly, is a complex Rubik's Cube of migrant Bihari workers, Hindus and Muslims; Bengalis, poor and 'bhadralok'; and Sahibs who live in the safe, 'foreign' world of Victoria Jute Mill. Into this scattered inhabitation, enters a child on the verge of starvation, Prayaag, who is saved and adopted by a Muslim family, converts to Islam and takes on the name of Rahmatullah. As Rahmatullah knits Telinipara into a community, friendship, love, trust and faith are continually tested by the cancer of riots. Incidents - conversion, circumcision, the arrival of plague or electricity - and a fascinating array of characters - the ultimate Brahmin, Rahmatullah's friend Girija Maharaj, the workers' leader, Bauna Sardar, the storyteller, Talat Mian, the poet-teacher, Syed Ashfaque, the smiling mendicant, Burha Deewana, the sincere Sahib, Simon Hogg, and then the questioning, demanding third generation of the author and his friend Kamala - interlink into a narrative of social history as well as a powerful memoir. "Blood Brothers" is a chronicle of its age, its canvas as enchanting as its narrative, a personal journey through change as tensions build, stretching the bonds of a lifetime to breaking point and demanding, in the end, the greatest sacrifice. Its last chapters, written in a bare-bones, unemotional style, are the most moving as the author searches for hope amid raw wounds with a surgeon's scalpel.

Kashmir lies at the edge of India's borders and at the heart of India's consciousness. It is not geography that is the issue; Kashmir also guards the frontiers of ideology. If there was a glow of hope in the deepening shadows of a bitter Partition, then it was Kashmir, whose people consciously rejected the false patriotism of fundamentalism and made common cause with secular India instead of theocratic Pakistan. Kashmir was, as Sheikh Abdullah said and Jawaharlal Nehru believed, a stabilising force for India. Why has that harmony disintegrated? Why has the promise been stained by the blood of rebellion? Placing the mistakes and triumphs of those early, formative years in the perspective of history, the author goes on to explain how the 1980's have opened the way for Kashmir's hitherto marginalised secessionists. Both victory and defeat have their lessons: to forget either is to destabilise the future. Kashmir and the mother country are inextricably linked. India cannot afford to be defeated in her Kashmir.