Peace gap on the perceptual map

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America, not to mention subsequent Al Qaida-sponsored bomb blasts in London, Madrid and elsewhere in the world, has deepened the tension between political Islam and the modern West ""inexorably, some might add. The widely-held notion that Muslims are a violent people nurturing a deep hatred against the West is now held as fact by a large number of Westerners. Unquestioningly so.

Yet, some questions must be asked. Why and how has Islam become anti-West? Why does the Islamic world consider the West worthy of little other than violent confrontation? Is the West alone to be blamed for the crises of the Islamic world? Does Islam bear a causal link with terror""or does it find non-violent expression?

This collection of essays, edited by Asim Roy, tries to address some of these concerns. A majority of the contributions in this book were part of a conference organised in Australia, and had appeared in an Australian academic journal, South Asia. What has, however, motivated the editor to reproduce some of these papers in the form of a book is the ambition to present South Asian Islam's tradition of tolerance and accommodation as a paradigmatic example to the West.

The editor has sustained an academic interest in Islam""specifically its interaction with Bengali life""ever since the early days of his research career. His own essays in this volume bear testimony to that fact. They contain rich insights into Islamic politics, derived largely from his continual engagement with the project. A large number of chapters are focused on India: only three of them address issues pertaining to Pakistan/Bangladesh, and these are attempts to widen the canvas to all of South Asia, a comprehensive understanding of which is deemed necessary by most scholars.

The chapters on Pakistan and Bangladesh argue that the diversity in Islam seen in South Asia is largely an outcome of variation in the politics of the region's religious and political elites, the sort of politics that baffles lay believers about the real place of Islam in their lives.

In the section that deals largely with India, Francis Robinson's chapter explores various factors that contribute to the changing idea of selfhood among Muslims. It contends that different religious as well as reformist movements have fostered a distinct change in attitude ""strangely not recognised in the larger debate on South Asian Islam, and sometimes even reduced to crude pop analysis by links drawn on maps of medieval highways. Movements like Nadwat Ul Ulama and Tablighi Jammat-i-Islami in the 20th century, and others like Mujahiddin, Faraizi, Deoband, Al-i-Hadiths and Aligarh in the 19th, have had a profound influence""leading, for example, to a new contextualisation of the ethical self within a private faith in the Muslim mind.

Another scholar, Javed Alam, explores the way historiography has challenged the understanding of India's composite culture. The rejuvenation of Hindu militancy, according to him, has given India's syncretic tradition an uncertainty that has pushed various emancipatory concerns to the backstage.

Asim Roy's own essays examine the significance of Islam in Bengal. Despite volumes of work on this subject, the impact of the revivalist/reformist instinct here has suffered benign intellectual neglect, and Roy addresses this lacuna to a remarkable extent. In the larger discourse on Muslim identity and Islamic politics, Roy argues that diverse definitions of these crucial terms are the key to the prevailing confusion. Roy has tried to take a big picture approach. But considering the legitimacy displayed by the modern academia's normative framework, could a lack of consensus on definitions effectively be the key?

This book has some contributions that do not appear to be directly related to the central theme. The Muslim response to the fall of Srirangapattana, for example, and the discussion on plague. The inclusion of some of these disparate themes can perhaps be explained as an attempt to offer a positive portrait of Islam.

In gestalt, however, this book serves as a worthy participant in an academic process of interfaith understanding. Unlike the writings of Bernard Lewis or Irshad Manji, it does not emphasise just the shortcomings in the practice of Islam to explain the hiatus between Islam and the West. In doing so, it clears misgivings about militant Islam and challenges the perception that Islam and peace are incompatible in multi-ethnic societies.

ISLAM IN HISTORY AND POLITICS
PERSPECTIVES FROM SOUTH ASIA

Edited by Asim Roy
Oxford University Press
Price: Rs 595; Pages: xiv + 385