Jonah Blank is an American author, journalist and foreign policy expert, specializing in the culture, history and affairs of the Indian subcontinent.
[1] Blank studied history at Yale University, and worked as the financial editor of the largest English language newspaper of Japan, where he first immersed in an Asian culture.
He later completed graduate studies in anthropology at Harvard (where he won the David L. Boren Fellowship, which provided funds for research outside the United States), and wrote his first book, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana through India in the same period.
In Jonah Blank's important, myth-shattering book, the West gets its first look at the Daudi Bohras, a unique Muslim denomination who have found the core of their religious beliefs largely compatible with modern ideology.
Combining orthodox Muslim prayer, dress, and practice with secular education, relative gender equality, and Internet use, this community serves as a surprising reminder that the central values of "modernity" are hardly limited to the west.