Jihad and Islam in World War I

"The book is much more than the sum of its chapters. Bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field, Erik Jan Zürcher’s volume provides the first comprehensive account of the jihad declaration of the First World War and its consequences. It reveals the remarkable impact the war had on Muslims around the world and, more generally, sheds new light on the geopolitics of Islam in the modern age. It will become a standard work on the subject."

In January 1915, the leading Dutch Orientalist, Christiaan Snouk Hurgronje, published a stinging critique of Turco-German efforts to provoke a pan-Islamic uprising against the Entente powers...One century later another Leiden professor, Erik-Jan Zu¨rcher, one of the leading historians of Turkey, assembled a group of international scholars to revisit Snouk Hurgronje’s work and the Turco–German jihad effort in the First World War. Taken together, these essays not only demonstrate the folly of jihad-politics in WWI but the errors of modern advocates of religious war today...In all, the collection of essays in this book cohere remarkably well around the central theme launched by Snouck Hurgronje’s wartime critique of Islam politics. A welcome contribution on the role of jihad in WWI, the lessons of one century ago remain tragically relevant in the present day.