Jihad and Dawah

Historically, Islam in the Indian subcontinent was associated with its civilisational achievements, especially during the Mughal period. Unfortunately, today, it is most often framed in terms of unresolved tensions between India and Pakistan, growing discrimination against Muslims within India and violent militancy in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region. This book focuses on the ongoing insurgency in Kashmir by providing a detailed historical analysis of the emergence and evolution of the jihadist Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, “Army of the Good”), a movement that attracted attention in the 1990s for its resistance to Indian administered Kashmir, its attempts to ‘Islamise’ Pakistan and gained notoriety for perpetrating the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The author Samina Yasmeen, a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Western Australia, makes extensive use of primary sources in Urdu to offer a dense study of LeT and gives a longitudinal account of JuD/LeT’s foundational narratives, intending to help readers understand ‘how locally relevant narratives have been employed by jihadi groups in Pakistan to attract supporters’ (p. 3). Yasmin examines the group’s stated goal of liberating Kashmir and its perception of threats to Pakistan and wider Muslim ummah over a period of three decades.