The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change.(Book Review)

Middle East Quarterly, January, 2004 by Clawson, Patrick

By Muhammad Qasim Zaman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 312 pp. $29.95.

Zaman's book might seem to have little to offer those interested in current Middle East issues. His focus is almost entirely on Pakistan and to a lesser extent India. And despite the title, he writes at length about the period of British role, not more recent times, and deals primarily with one subgroup of ulema. But the great merit of The Ulama in Contemporary Islam is that Zaman happens to focus on the Deobandi, a group which in many ways inspired the Taliban and who run what are usually considered the most extreme, politicized, anti-Western schools (madrasas).

Zaman explores several paradoxes about the Deobandi. For one, their leaders insist simultaneously that...

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