The Shade of Swords

by M.J. Akbar

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Islam, Politics, Religion, India

364 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 2001

About the author

Mobashar Jawed "M.J." Akbar (born 11 January 1951) is a leading Indian journalist and author. He was the Editorial Director of India Today, India's leading weekly English news magazine published by the Living Media group till his resignation in October 2012. He also had an additional responsibility of overseeing the media conglomerate's English news channel, Headlines Today.
He launched "The Sunday Guardian", a weekly newspaper in 2010, and continues to serve as Editor-in-Chief. He is also the founder and former editor-in-chief and managing director of The Asian Age, a daily multi-edition Indian newspaper with a global perspective.
He has written several non-fiction books, including Byline (New Delhi: Chronicle Books, 2003), a biography of Jawaharlal Nehru titled Nehru: The Making of India, a book on Kashmir titled Kashmir: Behind the Vale, Riot After Riot and India: The Siege Within. He also authored The Shade of Swords, a cohesive history of jihad. Akbar's recent published book is Blood Brothers, a skillfully crafted family saga covering three generations and packed with information of events in India and the world, particularly the changing Hindu-Muslim relations.
His book Blood Brothers has been translated into Italian as Fratelli di Sangue. It was released in Rome at the headquarters of Adnkronos on 15 January 2008.
He published his latest book "Tinderbox: The past and future of Pakistan" in January 2012 discussing the themes of identity crisis and class struggles in Pakistan.
Akbar was also the editor-in-chief of The Deccan Chronicle, a Hyderabad-based news daily.

Reviews

[S.Ach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Q: What happens when, in 300 or so pages, you try to squeeze in the story of every time a Muslim cries 'foul' and takes up the sword (or a gun and grenade lately), from the time of Muhammad to Bin Laden?
A: It becomes a jumbled mess of names and dates making it unreadable and uninteresting.

That is exactly the problem with this book by MJ Akbar. With his journalistic pen MJ tries to do justice to the eternal conflict between Islam and Christianity by putting in every small incident in history and going into the history of that small incident, in such a manner that I discovered 2 new names every page and I forgot them in the next.

The initial chapters where we read about the evolution of Islam are really informative and interestingly written. After that, I saw only names and dates.
May be, this book can act as reference material, if you are writing a paper on Islamic conflict in history. Nothing more.

[Anil Swarup · Rating 4 out of 5]

You cannot get a more balanced view. Akbar is at his best. The conflict between Islam and Christianity has been narrated pretty objectively.

[Avijit Goel · Rating 3 out of 5]

MJ Akbar has his trademark narrative traversing thorough the book. A seemingly unbiased account of what ails the Islamic world and the 'why' of it.

[Hariharan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good content, struggled to finish the book. So many names and events and it is very difficult to keep track. There is sooo much detail in every page and paragraph, that i found myself turning back pages several times just to understand the context and the background of the events. Must commend MJ Akbar for the research and the detail, but the same content is given in the dry language of a school text book.

[E.T. · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5 MJ Akbar is the most stylish and knowledgeable political commentator I know. I consider his "Nehru" the best biography I have read and also the best book on our freedom struggle. This was my 5th book by the author.
Unfortunately, in this book he has overdone it, just as a good actor sometimes overacts. In telling a history of Jihad and crusades, he has thrown too much information, too many names n events at d reader like a school textbook.
Secondly, in addition to information overload, he keeps jumping back and forth in time, making it very hard to understand d flow of events.
Thirdly, the style of his language seems artifical and irritating. In combination with d above 2 factors, style destroys lucidity n comprehensibility.
However, because of my earlier reading of Indian history and world current affairs, was able to understand d sections dealing with these. Infact understood the background of a couple of historical events (Third War of Panipat) and figures (Syed Barelvi) very well for d first time. But these insights were few. To the author's credit, he was fair and balanced.
Lastly, i bought both d hard copy n Kindle edition for this book. Earlier it had been out of print. Wish it had not come back !

[Vipin Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise history of jihad from birth of islam till today.

[Aseem Juneja · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written. Thoroughly researched..

[Vikrant Rana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Coming from a prominent Indian journalist, the reader has a right to expect an authoritative rendition of the Muslim history. The breadth of Mr. Akbar's objective is justified particularly when it comes from an important Muslim voice of a nation with 2nd largest Muslim population in the world (India). But sadly so, the execution falls flat on its face. Though the retelling of history can never be linear, there has to be some semblance of continuity in the narrative, which is lacking in this book. For instance, suddenly without warning the reader is thrust from the origins of Congress party in India, with reader expecting the interesting showdown between Mr. Jinnah and Gandhi, to what's happening in the middle eastern part of the world. It happens in a space of few sentences which is confusing from a reader's point of view, more so when such jumps happen rather frequently. Secondly, the fact that author is an Indian has ensured that the focus is mainly India and not sufficient justice being done to Muslim history of other parts of the world. Lastly and most importantly, as a non-muslim I got the feeling that the tone panders to the 'holier than thou' attitude. This is pretty evident if the reader has some knowledge of the facts being twisted in a very peculiar manner to support the notion of a Muslim conquerer later replaced by the Muslim victim. This is true not just for the Indian history but also for the world history that the author writes about. This last failing of this book is the biggest disappointment since you expect an objective presentation of facts from a seasoned journalist. My two stars are for the objective which Mr. Akbar had set out to achieve at the onset of this book, and for the lucid use of the language.

[Rama · Rating 3 out of 5]

MJ tries to explain away the resentment of Muslims towards the West through a series of history lessons. Although a bit confusing for the history-uninclined, there is a yearly chronicle at the end that helps piece events together to provide a contextual whole to one another.

Mutually antagonistic sources such as Bernard Lewis and Edward Said are cited to emphasize certain perspectives. However, MJ does not solely rely on intellectual sources to bring out his views on it all. With regard to India, on which MJ is probably better equipped to comment, MJ seems to respect Nehruvian secularism (dismissed these days as idealism and pseudo-secularism with hindsight bias), which has created a "democratic" framework in which the personal religious space and the political space are separated. [In his view] Muslims taste "democracy" more in India, despite all its problems, than elsewhere in the [Muslim] world. Jinnah also wished for something similar in Pakistan after all his political games involved in winning Pakistan for Muslims alone. Things turned out otherwise.

A fine read.

[Harmeet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goes through the history and culture behind the jihad philosophy. Decent read, but not that many solutions.

[Mahesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

it s an excellent description of the conflict going on between the islam and christainity. I like it really very much

[Gouthami · Rating 4 out of 5]

A clear and often unheard perspective. Worth a second reading to understand the chaos in today's world.