Abstract:

The outcome of the Sawr Revolution of April 1978 and the Soviet invasion that
it triggered marked the onset of Afghanistan’s ongoing decades of war. During the jihad years, Islamist ideologues came increasingly to prominence as the authentic and indigenous alternative to godless foreign invaders, whether of Soviet or, subsequently, NATO provenance. The role of the U.S., Pakistani, and British secret services in channeling weapons and funds to the mujahidin is well documented and well known. What has received remarkably little attention is the ideological content of Islamist thought as revealed in the multilingual publications that circulated among Afghans in exile and eventually inside the country itself. Using previously unstudied transnational pamphlets in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, the chapter maps the shifting and divergent conceptions of Islam that were promoted through the jihad of the 1980s and early 1990s. Seeking an overview of this Islamist flood of ideas, Fuchs examines the multilingual magazines, pamphlets, and monographs that were produced by the Sufis, Salafis, and Deobandis of Afghan, Arab, and Pakistani origin who competed for control of the jihad. Rather than subsume their variegated Islamic visions under the catchall rubric of a generic holy war, Fuchs’s chapter reveals the increasing religious fragmentation that continues to tear Afghanistan apart today.