Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic identity : the search for Saladin / Akbar S. Ahmed.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Seeking Saladin -- 1. Understanding Jinnah. Jinnah: a life. The role of Jinnah's family. Imagining Jinnah: why different people see different Jinnahs -- 2. The Struggle for History. Constructing the past. Hierarchy and purity: the clash of civilizations. Muslim awakening -- 3. Jinnah's Conversion. The causes of Jinnah's conversion. The passing of the flame: Iqbal and Jinnah. Crossing the Rubicon -- 4. Jinnah and the Pakistan Movement. Seeing Saladin: what Muslims saw in Jinnah. Gandhi and Ram Raj. The path to Pakistan -- 5. Mountbatten: Last Viceroy and First Paki-Basher. Mountbatten's mission. The clash of the titans. Paki-bashing -- 6. Partition: In the Heat of Passion. Romancing the Vicereine. Shielding the Vicereine. Summer savagery -- 7. Pakistan: Ethnic versus Religious Identity. Jinnah's Pakistan: the rising of the moon. Jinnah's passing growing crisis. Jinnah as metaphor: 'secularist' or 'fundamentalist'? -- 8. Is Jinnah still Relevant?

From crisis to crisis: sidelining Jinnah in Pakistan. From Anandamath to Ayodhya: Muslim fate in India. Bangladesh: the struggle for identity. Epilogue: Preparing for the Next Millennium.

Four men shaped the end of British rule in India: Nehru, Gandhi, Mountbatten and Jinnah. We know a great deal about the first three, but Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, has mostly either been ignored or in the case of Richard Attenborough's hugely successful film, Gandhi, portrayed as a cold megalomaniac, bent on the bloody partition of India.

Akbar Ahmed's major study tells a different story of heroism and tragedy and of backstage manoeuvering among the governing elite of the Raj, and argues for Jinnah's continuing relevance as contemporary Islam debates its future direction.