Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin

August 1997 marked the 50th anniversary of India and Pakistan's independence from Great Britain. That hard-won independence, however, came with a high price: a bloody partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and the Muslim state of Pakistan. Almost as soon as Jawaharlal Nehru pronounced India a new nation, the butchery began--a bloodbath in which millions perished and for which there are still no exact figures. What Mohandas K. Gandhi was to India, Mohammed Ali Jinnah was to Pakistan--the architect of its statehood. In Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, Akbar S. Ahmed shines the spotlight on a man whose character, he feels, has been distorted by the official Pakistani line. Though Jinnah was clearly interested in ensuring a homeland for Muslims, Ahmed's book makes clear that this London-trained lawyer was no Islamic fundamentalist. The author's take on Indian-Pakistani history, his account of Jinnah's involvement, and his ideas about the future of Pakistan and the Islamic world are both thought-provoking and important.