The American Journal of Islamic Social Science Vol. 5, No. 1, 1988 157 

Book Review 

Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History 
and Society 

By Akbar S. Ahmed. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1988. 
p p .  251 

This book, written by Akbar Ahmed, is particularly apt and to the point. 
The book’s title and subtitle seem, to this reviewer at least, an accurate reflection 
of its content: it has an introduction also called “Discovering Islam”, then 
two major sections (each divided into chapters of unequal length; the first 
and longer on ”The Pattern of Muslim History” and the second on 
”Contempomy Muslim Society” (with a conclusion again entitled “Discovering 
Islam”). As Ahmed states at the outset, he writes as a committed participant 
in, as well as an observer of, Islam, and furthermore, he makes no bones 
about his “South Asian” (read ”Pakistani“) perspective and bias with respect 
to Islam as a whole. 

Ahmed has already observed in some of his earlier work, that there is 
only one Islam, not many “islams” (contrary to the views asserted recently 
by a number of non-Muslim students of the subject); and this is so despite 
the wide range and disparity of Muslim societies around the globe. Neither 
of these arguments is original with its present proponents. Ahmed puts forward 
both his view of the Islamic ideal, as well as the way some Muslims order 
their lives with respect to this ideal, with surprising force and vigor. 

He states, “Economic, political and ethnic-social, cultural pressures act 
to compromise notions of the ideal, thereby creating ambiguity around it. 
The demarcation of Muslim societies is therefore not division between white 
ideal and black non-ideal, but an ongoing relationship between the two marked 
by areas of grey. Taken together the arguments will assist us in our search 
for . . . an Islamic world-view of society and history” (p. 5). A further very 
telling quote which reveals the book to be neither an apology for, nor an 
attack on, the West (of which its author is admittedly and justifiably critical), 
but a clear statement: ”While the twentieth century cannot reject Islam-it 
is here to stay as a force; in turn, Islam must accept the twentieth century. 
It will not go away, and rejection is the easy way out. Islam must come to 
terms with the twentieth century; by doing so it will come to terms with 
itself‘ (p. 8). 

In the first section of the book we are taken on a tour of Islamic history. 
It is of necessity selective, but both the wide-angle lens shots, as well as 



158 The American Journal of Islamic Social Science Vol. 5 ,  No. 1, 1988 

the more closely focused ones in greater detail, so to speak, of particular 
periods and time-depths in Islam, are illuminating, gratifying and well chosen. 
Ahmed’s own experience in climbing Mt. &a’ outside Makkah, while he 
recounts that of the Prophet, gets his book off to an excellent start; and after 
a discussion of the Prophet’s life and mission (with a useful genealogy for 
non-anthropologist readers on p. 18), he gives us good looks, in turn, at 
the four ideal caliphs, the early and properly Arab dynasties (the Umawi 
and the Abbiisi, as well as the Umawik offshoot in a1 Andalus), the triad 
of Muslim empires (Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal), Sufis and scholars (with 
special emphasis on al Biruiii and Ibn Khalduii; two of Ahmed‘s most illustrious 
predecessors as Muslim anthropologists), Islam of the periphery (in China 
and the USSR), Islam under European colonialism and - now forming the 
second part of the book-Contemporary Islam. In this context, various themes 
that seem particularly well handled are the gentleness of the Prophet himself 
(in stark contrast to Western misconceptions), Shi’ism as revolution within 
the Revolution, Muhdism and millenarian movements, and in the context of 
Ahmed‘s own home region, the comparison and contrast between the Mughal 
ruler, Awrangzeb , and the late president of Pakistan Zia al-Haq on the one 
hand, and Awrangzeb’s brother Dara Shikoh and Pakistan’s late president Z.A. 
Bhutto on the other (pp. 77-84). In the chapter on the colonial period, which 
also deals largely, although not too exclusively, with IndiaAkistan, Ahmed 
also shows us his not inconsiderable talents as a poet, while managing at 
the same time, to downgrade the overriding colonialist view of the ”savage 
but noble tribesman”, whether Berber, Bedouin or Pukhtun. 

Yet it is in the second section, on Contemporary Muslim Society, where 
Ahmed offers his candid critical analysis of contemporary Saudi Arabia. Also 
his remarks about the fights between local Arabs in the United Arab Emirates 
and immigrant Pukhtun workers from the Pakistan North-West Frontier 
Province, are obviously not fabricated accounts. The pauperization of Muslim 
society in South India is graphically contrasted with Arab’s super-opulence. 
And because Ahmed is a Pakistani, the problem of the Afghan refugees in 
Pakistan is one to which he gives (rightly, in this reviewer’s opinion) preferential 
treatment over that of the Palestinians -while nonetheless noting that 75 % 
of the world’s refugees today are Muslims. For Muslims have traditionally 
met confrontation, assault and attack from outside Islam in one of two ways: 
jihad or hijrah, struggle or flight-to which, in both senses, the Afghans 
have responded magnificently, either with outright jihad or with hijrah, in 
order to take the jihad back home. 

Islamic society (or societies), perhaps more than any other, has a nostalgia 
for the ”golden age” (that of the Prophet, the four caliphs and the two succeeding 
Umawi and Abbiisi dynasties); and thinking Muslims are acutely aware of 
how far from the achievement of this historical state of assumed perfection