Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Irfan Ahmad's book is a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on Islamism. Providing an in-depth look at Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in India, Ahmad argues for viewing Islamism as a movement. Although others (Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007]; Kathleen Collins, "Ideas, Networks and Islamist Movements: Evidence from Central Asia and the Caucus," World Politics 60 [2007], 64-96; Joel Beinin, "Islam, Marxism, and the Shubra al-Khayma Textile Workers: Muslim Brothers and Communists in the Egyptian Trade Union Movement," in Edmund Burke and Ira Lapidus, eds., Islam, Politics and Social Movements [London: I. B. Tauris, 1988]; and Joel Beinin and Joe Stork, Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report [Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997]) have previously made this argument, Ahmad adds substance and depth to the discussion by providing rich ethnographic material. Ahmad's research is structured around the question of change within JI in India: whether and how JI's ideology changed since the partition of India and the departure of Abu Ala Maududi, the movement's founder, to Pakistan. Ahmad finds that JI has moved not only toward accepting democracy and secular political arrangements it had previously denounced but also toward valorizing them. The reasons for this shift are external as well as internal to the movement. Externally, the larger Muslim polity in India rejected JI's insistence on boycotting elections, and the Nehruvian Indian state provided enough space through "inclusionary" politics to allow some Muslims, if not all of them, to believe in the promise of democracy and secularism. Internally, change was aided by "the ability of the Jamaat's leadership to transform its ideology in the midst of complex socio-political and religious forces" (pp. 226-27). It is one of the key strengths of this book that Ahmad is able to provide us a glimpse of the kinds of debates that have been central to life within JI.
Even as the larger JI movement was moving...