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Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islam. By ASMA AFSARUDDIN. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013. Pp. x + 370. $65.
Asma Afsaruddin's Striving in the Path of God is a signal contribution to the burgeoning literature on jihad. While jihad is the central concept explored in this book, Afsaruddin links it with two other concepts integrally related to the Islamic ideal of righteous "striving" or "struggling": martyrdom (shahäda) and patient forbearance (sabr). The result is a much more contextualized and nuanced treatment of the idea of jihad in Islam and a much more holistic understanding of what "striving in the path of God" requires than is presented in the vast majority of studies.
Afsaruddin's thesis is that influential Muslim interpreters imbued jihad and martyrdom with primarily military significances in the Umayyad and later periods whereas earlier these concepts held a range of meanings. Even in the later period, as the concepts increasingly assumed a martial cast, they remained contested terms, with notable efforts to prevent their complete appropriation for military ends. To support this thesis, she plumbs four genres in early Islamic literature: Quranic exegesis (tafsir), Prophetic tradition (hadith), treatises on the "merits of jihad" (fadäHl al-jihäd), and treatises devoted to the virtues of patience and forbearance (fadäHl al-sabr). The first seven chapters are devoted to a diachronic analysis of these genres to trace how attitudes to jihad, martyrdom, and patient forbearance evolved up to roughly the fourteenth century C.E. Afsaruddin deliberately avoids veering into the jurisprudential (fiqh) literature. In the final two chapters she jumps to the early twentieth century to survey how these three concepts have figured in "modem and contemporary discourses."
The heart of this book is Afsaruddin's careful and systematic scrutiny of the premodem sources. In the tafsir literature, she examines both celebrated commentaries, including those of al-Tabari, al-Wahid!, al-Zamakhshari, al-Razi, and al-Qurtubi, as well as some lesser-known works, such as those of Abd al-Razzaq al-Sairam, Hûd b. Muhakkam al-Huwwârï, and three Shici writers: al-Qummi, al-Ayyäshi, and Furat b. Ibrahim. Afsaruddin presents chronologically what these exegetes had to say on key Quranic verses dealing with jihad, martyrdom, and patient forbearance, allowing her to trace changing perceptions of each term individually and all three collectively.
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