Book review: "God's Terrorists" by Charles Allen

It was the subtitle of this book that made me buy it - "The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of the Modern Jihad". I've been trying to understand more about modern Saudi political history, and how the official Wahhabi form of Islam in Saudi Arabia has produced both a very politically conservative form that is absolutely supportive of the Saudi monarchy and the Salafi-Jihadis who want the violent overthrow of the same royal family, and thought the book might have something to say on the background of this. I was to be disappointed.

"God's Terrorists" isn't a bad book, it's just 90% a different book to the one suggested by the cover. See the camels in the picture? And the head scarves? Doesn't that sort of suggest Arabia? But oddly this is a book about Imperial India. Allen is a respected historian of the Raj, and perhaps that should have been a clue, but I would say both the front cover and back cover blurb deliberately set out to suggest this is book about the roots of modern jihadi terrorism and not about Empire-era India. What the meat of the book is about is Muslim radicalism within British-India, generally known at the time as the "Hindustani Fanatics". This is a fascinating story in itself: the origins of this group were Indian Muslims who in the early 19th century had gone to Saudi Arabia and had been inspired by Wahhabi puritanicalism and brought their zeal back with them. They were somewhat involved in the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, but this was not a Muslim thing in particular with Hindu regiments mutinying as well. They fled India to hide out in the mountains of the North West frontier, bringing British and Indian-native forces into various skirmishes and minor wars with Pashtun tribes of the India/Afghanistan border regions. The Pashtuns didn't think much of the British invading their lands, but they didn't think much of the Wahhabis either, with the Imperial forces sometimes doing deals with them to drive the fanatics out - much like the current Pakistani government at times tries to do, co-opting the tribes against various foreign al-Qaeda groups.

This is all very interesting but really didn't have much to do with what was happening in Saudi Arabia at the time. In fact Allen notes that the Deobandi school of Islam, the specifically South Asian school that began in India in 1866, was set up in opposition to the Wahhabi inspired Hindustani fanatics (p.206-7). The Deobandi school has an important role to play in the development of Pakistani Islamism, and more globally because of the influence of Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, who along with Sayyid Qutb, was central to the development of modern Islamism. The Taliban are also described as Deobandi, although some say the claim is problematic.

There are some chapters that deal with Saudi Arabia, both the beginnings of the Wahhabi sect in 18th century and its more modern history, but they aren't anything I haven't read elsewhere and feel like a basic review of the known history, rather than an a fresh delve into primary sources - diaries, reports, statistical data - that Allen clearly has mastery of in the case of Raj-era India. Perfunctory would be the word. His descriptions of minor battles and skirmishes between the British and Indian Armies and the Pashtun tribesmen at the fag-end of the 19th century are well written military history. This is obviously Allen's 'thing', not Saudi Arabia. I'm pretty certain Allen had a book pretty much written just on Muslim radicalism during the Raj, but then his publishers suggested that if he gets the words al-Qaeda and Taliban in there a few times, and they put the word "terrorist" in the title, it would sell 20 times the amount that a military history of British Army skirmishes in the Hindu Kush a century ago. I bought it, so they were probably right. More fool me.

You will learn lots of things if you read this book. Just not what you expected.