BELIEVER AS CHRONICLER: Akbar doesn't obey the Bush dictum and declare whether he is on the side of the Cowboys or the Indians

In an age of despair the need for a hero who can inspire pan-Islamic victories becomes acute. The situation today is akin to a thousand years ago, when Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and Christians established powerful states in the heart of Palestine ... Saladin lifted Muslims from a morass then. There is no such hero on the horizon now. Despair can become a breeding ground for mavericks who believe in themselves and their version of the faith," says M.J. Akbar in the last chapter of his history of the concept of jehad. Having reached the end of the book, one realises that MJ is not going to obey the Bush dictum and declare whether he is on the side of the Cowboys or the Indians.

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Throughout this efficient, rapid, dramatically engaging history of the embattlements of Islam, MJ seems to adopt the stance of the Indian. The story is told from the point of view of the believer, and yet there are ironic asides, as at the end of the quote above, to indicate that the Cowboy consciousness is in charge. The toe which touches the ground as he sits on the fence is on the side of the Bush ranch. Does MJ really believe that a Mahdi or a Saladin is needed to unite Islam? Unite it for what? Under the banner of a democratic, secular, modernised, reformed, Renascent and finally heretical New Islam? And if it is a call for unity, then that last sentence is surely saying that Osama is not the one?

MJ tells the story of the birth of Islam and its immediate success in conquests. An alternative view of the history and destiny of Islam might say that for 600 years after its birth, Islam spread itself to Persia, Byzantium, Spain, southern Europe, North Africa and India and in this period the Arab tribes that militarily promulgated the religion annexed and adopted the great knowledge and civilisational skills of the people they conquered. They subsequently protected and nurtured the spread and development of these and passed them off as the achievements of Islam.

THE SHADE OF SWORDS: JIHAD AND THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY By M.J. Akbar Roli Books Price: Rs 395 Pages: 352

During this period and after, despite all the arguments within Islam, the religion didn't evolve as its finally unconquered enemy Christianity did, through a Reformation and through the Renaissance. Now that the world is emerging out of abject poverty and barbarism in all its continents to education, humanist values, aspirations towards democracy and socially ensured human rights, the last thing it needs is the revival of a singular adherence to an eschatology of the Middle Ages, however reformed.

But this is not MJ's argument-indeed the book is careful not to have such an argument. It adopts an "objective" stance: this is the history, this is the state of mind of the believer.

MJ doesn't intrude. Like Wordsworth in Daffodils he makes only one brief appearance, telling us that he journeyed on the lesser pilgrimage to the holy cities and then, placing himself in the position of the devout Muslim, telling us that "there is no emotion for a Muslim to equal the first sight of the Kaaba; and no feeling close to the sense of complete submission that overtakes him when his forehead touches the ground as he prays to Allah."

As a reader (and-to declare an interest-as a contributor to a daily newspaper that MJ Akbar edits) one wants to know if this is MJ speaking on his own behalf or whether the infusion of feeling is what he imagines and observes in other Muslims.

His history, which gathers together facts and sequences which will be fresh and illuminating for all but the most dedicated scholars of Islam, is not accompanied by a dimension explaining and exposing the dilemmas of a personal commitment or ironical doubt. One may have thought it was coming when MJ appears, but having introduced us to Medina, the observer disappears again for good.

There are in this account great historical ironies. The early enmity of Christianity towards Islam was characterised by its accusation that the last Prophet and his followers and adherents were sexual profligates. Calling the prophet "Mahound" and commenting on his sexual exploits was central to the Christian condemnation of Islam as an immoral, barbaric belief. The irony is that the followers of the Taliban and Al Qaida now characterise the greatest failing of the Great Satan and of modern secular or Christian civilisation as sexual licentiousness and profligacy. Yesterday's accused is, with all indignation, today's judge.

The larger historical ironies which have bred the paradoxes of today's world are not dwelt upon but implicit in the story MJ tells. Iraq, governed by a secular party founded by a Christian nationalist has become for the US government the biggest imagined thorn in its flesh; the Saudis, the fount of Wahhabi fanaticism, are the allies and mates of the powers which have sworn to eliminate terrorists and those who encourage terrorists. And then there is the paradox of Pakistan whose founder declares it a secular state in his first presidential speech and which is now trapped by the realisation that discouraging jehad is difficult and self-destructive and fomenting it is suicide.

The only stance that MJ adopts is that of his conclusion-knowing Muslims the world over, jehad, not in its first meaning, as the struggle to know God, but in its second, that of fighting the unbeliever, is not yet done.