Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion Religion, Rebels, and Jihad By Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. 228 pages.)

Abstract

Ilyse R. Morgenstein Fuerst’s book, Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857
Rebellion: Religion, Rebels, and Jihad, is a masterful exploration of how an
imperial discourse of religion in the nineteenth-century defined Islam,
Muslims, and jihad. Specifically, Fuerst calls attention to the significance
of the 1857 Rebellion by Indians against the British East India Company,
and argues that British official histories of the Rebellion fundamentally altered
how colonial officials, European scholars, and Indians thought and
wrote about religion. Thus she builds on the work of previous scholars of
religion such as Tomoko Masuzawa, who has argued that the concept of
universal religion is a constructed category, and David Chiddester, who has
shown how colonialism constructed both religions and races. Additionally,
Fuerst’s book draws on historians such as Thomas Metacalf, who have
explored the various ways the 1857 Rebellion transformed the business of
empire. However, Fuerst’s unique contribution lies in revealing the ways an
official British discourse about Muslims and their supposed propensity for
violence, and the Indian Muslim engagement with this discourse, racialized
and minoritized Muslims. This discourse presented as fact that all Muslims
were essentially homogenous and dangerous to imperial interests ...