The Carnegie Corporation of New York has named history professor Ayesha Jalal one of its Carnegie Scholars for the 2005-2006 year.
The program offers up to $100,000 to as many as 20 academic fellows per year to conduct independent and original projects relating to Islam as a religion and Muslim society.
Recipients of the grants are nominated by the institutions at which they teach.
Jalal was nominated by University provost Jamshed Bharucha for this prestigious award and selected from the largest pool of nominees to date. She will be using the time to write her planned book, "Partisans of Allah: Meanings of Jihad in South Asia," which will explore the development of jihad from the early origins of Islam to the present.
The book will draw on what Jalal considers to be some of the best research that has been done in the South Asian field.
"It's a study on ethics," Jalal said. "What interests me is why [in some cases] the outward signs of being 'Muslim' are so much more important than the equally important themes of belonging to the human [community]."
It is Jalal's hope that her book will help clarify the inherent complexities in concept of jihad, as well as advance the discourse with new intellectual insights. "The role of religion is often a demarcator, vis-? -vis 'the other,'" she said. "[But] jihad is central in the study of the religion as faith."
Jihad is "one of the core ethical concepts of Islam," she said, lamenting the fact that the word is often distilled to imply only "the waging war" meaning in modern Western discourse.
"[I am] not denying that the Holy War idea is sound," she said. But Jalal said that the discussion in the media have eclipsed another, more fundamental meaning of jihad.
"There is greater Jihad and lesser Jihad," she said, distinguishing between the internal struggle to realize one's faith and the definition that encompasses holy war.
Jalal said she stresses the importance of studying jihad in the context of South Asian Islamic societies as well as the Arab world, as one of every three Muslims live in South Asia.
Jalal, a professor in the history department and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, has taught many courses on South Asia and the political and religious dimensions of Islam.
She said her preliminary work on the project is already infiltrating some of her teaching. This year, she taught classes on Islam and the west at the Fletcher School, and an undergraduate research seminar on religion and secularity.
Jamshed Bharucha and representatives from the Carnegie Corporation were unavailable for comment at press time.
