Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin

Four men shaped the end of British rule in India: Nehru, Ghandi, Mountbatten and Jinnah. We know a great deal about the first three, but Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan has mostly either ignored or, in the case of David Attenborough’s hugely successful film about Ghandi, portrayed as a cold megalomaniac, bent on the bloody partition of India. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of Pakistan, Akbar Ahmed’s major study redresses the balance. Drawing on history, semiotics and cultural anthropology as well as more conventional biographical techniques, he presents a rounded picture of the man and shows his relevance as contemporary Islam alternative forms of political leadership in a world dominated (at least in the Western media) by figures like Colonel Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein.