Frontier of Faith: A History of Religious Mobilisation in the Pakistan Tribal Areas c. 1890-1950

Sana Haroon

ISBN 10: 0199060258 / ISBN 13: 9780199060252

Published by Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2011

About this Item

Minor shelf wear. Ink notation on rear fly leaf. Otherwise a square, tight, unmarked book. Index. xviii, 239 pp.

Seller Inventory # 053485

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Frontier of Faith: A History of Religious Mobilisation in the Pakistan Tribal Areas c. 1890-1950
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199060258
• ISBN 13: 9780199060252
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good+
• Seller catalogs:
  • Political Science

About this title

Synopsis

"Frontier of Faith" examines the history of Islam-especially that of local "mullahs," or Muslim clerics-in the North-West Frontier. A largely autonomous zone straddling the boundary of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Tribal Areas was established as a strategic buffer zone for British India, and the resulting autonomy allowed local mullahs to assume roles of tremendous power. After Partition in 1947, the Tribal Areas maintained its status as an autonomous region, and for the next fifty years the "mullahs" supported armed mobilizations in exchange for protection of their vested interests in regional freedom. Consequently the Frontier has become the hinterland of successive, contradictory "jihads" in support of Pashtun ethnicism, anti-colonial nationalism, Pakistani territorialism, religious revivalism, Afghan anti-Soviet resistance, and anti-Americanism. Considering this territory is said to be the current hiding place of Osama bin Laden, there couldn't be a better time for a sourcebook detailing the intricacies of the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands today and the function of the "mullahs" and their allies.