As sectarian violence spirals alarmingly in Pakistan the need for a rigorous history of its Shia population is met by Rieck's definitive account.

In this gripping narrative history, Lesley Hazleton tells the tragic story at the heart of the ongoing rivalry between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam, a rift that dominates the news now more than ever. Even as Muhammad lay dying, the battle over who would take control of the new Islamic nation had begun, beginning a succession crisis marked by power grabs, assassination, political intrigue, and passionate faith. Soon Islam was embroiled in civil war, pitting its founder's controversial wife Aisha against his son-in-law Ali, and shattering Muhammad’s ideal of unity. Combining meticulous research with compelling storytelling, After the Prophet explores the volatile intersection of religion and politics, psychology and culture, and history and current events. It is an indispensable guide to the depth and power of the Shia–Sunni split.

Shiite Islam is one of the world's major religions with millions of followers throughout the Middle East and South Asia. However it is often mistakenly seen by the West as a political movement. This book describes what Shiism actually means to those who practise it and outlines Shiite history.

The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will remain covered with dense clouds as long as there is Krishna in Braj. These lines were composed by Mohsin Kakorvi, a Muslim poet, to celebrate not Lord Krishna's birthday but that of the Prophet Muhammad. Awadh, the author's birthplace, was steeped in this sort of syncretism in which Islam and Hinduism complemented and celebrated each other and Urdu culture merged with Awadhi and Brajbhasha. Sadly, this glorious culture has been systematically destroyed over the past century. In many ways, Awadh stood for everything that independent India could have become, a land in which people of different faiths co-existed peacefully and created a culture that drew upon the best that each community had to offer. Instead, what we have today is a pale shadow of the harmony that once existed. Everywhere there are incidents of sectarian murder, communal propaganda and divisive politics. And there seems to be no stopping the forces that are destroying the country. In this remarkable book, which is partly a memoir and partly an exploration of the various deliberate and inadvertent acts that have contributed to the othering of the 180 million Muslims in India, Saeed Naqvi looks at how the divisions between Muslims and Hindus began in the modern era. The British were the first to exploit these divisions between the communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the run-up to Independence, and its immediate aftermath, some of India's greatest leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, and others only served to drive the communities further apart. Successive governments

This book explores various Shi'i communities in the subcontinent as well as South Asian Shi'i diasporas in East Africa.