WAS Maulana Abul Aa‘laMaududi a popular public figure? The answer, in the conventional sense of mass popularity, is probably no. Yet a question remains: why, half a century after his death, is Maududi still the subject of debate? One possible answer is that he founded the Jamaat-e-Islami, which became part of a global Islamic Movement whose influence extended beyond national borders. That is certainly part of the answer. But there was something else that distinguished Maududi from the thinkers and reformers who came before him, from his contemporaries and from those who came after him. What was it?
In my view, the Jamaat-e-Islami was the second identity of Maududi. His first was his pen. Maududi wrote on an extraordinary range of subjects. Religion, economics, politics, history—there was hardly a major subject on which he did not write and often with such force and conviction that he appeared to leave his mark on the subject itself. His writings remain his first and most enduring identity. Does the Jamaat-e-Islami come next? I believe we would be too quick to answer that question without first examining some fundamental aspects of Maududi’s intellectual journey.
His writings can broadly be divided into two categories. The first consists of his early works. These included biographies, such as his work on Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya and a history of the Seljuks, the Turkish ruling dynasty. Anyone blessed with the gift of writing tends to produce a great deal in the enthusiasm of youth. Some of it acquires lasting significance; some inevitably becomes less important with time. A portion of Maududi’s early writings belongs to this category. The second category consists of works of a more scholarly and research-oriented character. One of the most important examples is Al-Jihad fi al-Islam, which he began writing after being inspired by a speech by Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar. Nearly a century later, it remains a significant work in the literature on jihad. Maududi also produced a substantial body of research on religious subjects.
His intellectual legacy has attracted both admiration and criticism. Many scholars have acknowledged the breadth of his contribution, while others have critically examined his scholarship and his method of interpretation. He was a Qur’anic exegete and a writer on the life of the Prophet. He also wrote extensively on economic and political systems. But Maududi was not the first Muslim thinker to address these questions. Among his predecessors were such major figures as Abul Kalam Azad, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi and Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi. His contemporaries, too, included many distinguished scholars who wrote on religion, politics and society. The quality and influence of their respective works can certainly be debated. But it cannot be claimed that Maududi alone addressed these subjects. So what, then, was his distinctive contribution?
Maududi wrote that in his youth he went through a period of indiscriminate reading that had disturbing consequences. He came close to atheism. It was at this critical stage of his life that he began to study in a disciplined and systematic way. As he went deeper into the world of learning, the purpose of life gradually became clearer to him. He came to believe that faith and personal devotion were not enough. Human beings, in his understanding, had also been entrusted with a larger responsibility as God’s vicegerents on earth. The question then was: what does that responsibility entail?
For Maududi, it meant seeking the pleasure of Allah—and seeking it not merely through individual piety but through the ordering of human life in accordance with divine guidance. Hence his conviction that God’s system should be established on God’s earth. Many individuals and movements in the Muslim world, the Indian subcontinent and later Pakistan worked for the revival of Islam and for the establishment of an Islamic order. Up to this point, there was little to distinguish Maududi from them. So where did the difference lie? This, I believe, is the central question in understanding Maududi. And it is here that the Jamaat-e-Islami enters the story—not simply as an organization, but as the practical expression of a particular intellectual method.
— To be continued
—This writer is former advisor to President, author & mass media theorist.
(farooq.adilbhuta@gmail,com)
