Indian Muslim Minorities and the 1857 Rebellion

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