Maulana Maududi’s Writings
The nature of the fundamental mistake in Maulana Maududi’s interpretation of Islam is not the same as sidelining an aspect of the deen (as for instance, denying the practice or sunnat of the Prophet) or adding a new aspect to the deen (such as a new claimant to prophethood). Rather, the Maulana’s real error is that he had transformed the philosophy of the religion of Islam. This is the root of all the other errors that resulted from his interpretation.
If someone believes that the fundamental purpose of life is to earn money, he will not deny the salience of other basic human needs and related matters. He will continue to recognize the importance of everything else that human life requires, including religion, morals and social relations. But the way he relates to these will be entirely different. He will relate to them as mere means to accomplish what he sees as the purpose of his life—to make as much money as he can. He will establish relations with others, and even with himself, simply on the basis of how far this can help him earn more money. He may donate money in charity, but here, too, his motive will be to help him increase his earnings.
Maulana Maududi’s interpretative mistake is somewhat of the same order. His particular bent of mind made him bestow on politics the central place in his interpretation of the deen. Accordingly, for him, to establish the dominance of the deen was tantamount to establishing its political domination. He saw this as the very purpose or goal that God wants his servants to strive to work for. Naturally, then, in his understanding of Islam, the rest of the deen came to be subordinated to politics. Politics assumed the central place through which every aspect of the deen could be understood and its importance ascertained. In this way, in his understanding of Islam, every aspect of it acquired a political hue. This naturally resulted in a major deviation.
This point is so very clear and prominent in the various writings of Maulana Maududi that nobody can deny it. I would like to cite some examples to illustrate this point.
Explanation of Life and the Universe
An exaggerated importance given to the issue of the economy led, in the form of Marxism, to an explanation of life in which economic issues were given the greatest importance. Similarly, a political understanding of religion led to a new concept about life and the universe in which politics had a pre-eminent place.
Thus, for instance, Maulana Maududi noted that God has placed those aspects of human life that are ‘animalistic’ and ‘natural’ under the sway of natural laws. As regards these, Man is, like all other creatures, totally surrendered to God. But as regards the uniquely human aspects of Man, wherein Man can use his intelligence and powers of discrimination and act according to his own choice, God has bestowed freedom on Man. This free-will is actually a test. The right thing to do is that in this sphere, too, human beings should surrender themselves totally to their Creator, in just the same way as they do in those matters of human life over which they have no control. This is because God alone is the legitimate ruler. Obedience is due to Him alone. However, God does not compel people to obey Him in these matters, having left them free to decide things for themselves.
The Maulana then went on to write that in the sphere in which human beings have to use God-given free will, the law that ought to be followed is the divinely-revealed shariah, which was conveyed through God’s messengers. This law covers a wide range of issues, including beliefs, morals, society, civilization, politics, and so on. It is not enough, the Maulana wrote, to regard God as the Creator and Lord of the Earth and the Skies. In addition, he said, ‘It is necessary to accept Him as the Emperor and Ruler and Law-Maker.’ One must also obey ‘the principles, moral rules, limits and laws set by Him’. If someone simply accepts God and believes Him to have no partners but, at the same time, claims to be fully independent in the sphere in which humans have free-will, he ‘actually revolts against God’. The same is true, the Maulana added, if someone were to claim to establish his dominion over a bit of the earth and announce, ‘Here I shall rule according to my will, and in any way I like.’ This, the Maulana commented, is precisely what monarchs, dictators, priests and even citizens in democracies claim. This, too, is what every person who ‘does not accept obedience to God’ claims with regard to his personal life. According to the Maulana, all such people, who regard someone other than God as the ruler, rebel against God. ‘The task of the true believer is to wipe out this rebellion from the world and to put an end to the divinity of everything other than God,’ the Maulana wrote. The true believer’s mission in life, he added, is to ensure that just as God’s natural laws are followed throughout the universe, His shariah laws, too, must be enforced in the human world. ‘The goal of all the efforts of the true believer is to take out God’s servants from servitude to everyone other than God and to make them servants of God alone,’ he maintained. This task is to be done essentially through guidance, instruction, exhortation, preaching and so on, he said. But, he added, ‘those who have illegally become the rulers of God’s domain and have made the servants of God’s their own servants’ generally do not give up their positions simply as a result of preaching. Nor can such people generally tolerate that knowledge of the Truth spread among the public. They regard this as threatening to destroy their lordship. ‘That is why’, he contended, ‘the true believer is compelled to take to war so that he can remove the hurdles in the path of establishing Divine Government’.
The Concept of the Goal of Life
A natural result of the political interpretation of Islam was that the goal towards which a believer had to strive came to be understood in essentially political terms. In this understanding of the goal of a believer, acquiring political power became of fundamental importance.
Thus, in his book Tehrik-e Islami ki Akhlaqi Bunyaden (‘The Ethical Foundations of the Islamic Movement’), Maulana Maududi contended, ‘The ultimate aim of our struggle is bringing about change in political leadership’. ‘This is to say’, he explained, ‘that the final stage that we want to attain in this world is the end of the rule of godlessness and immorality and the establishment of the system based on a pious leadership. We regard this struggle as a means to acquire the pleasure of God, in this world and in the Hereafter.’ ‘It is this,’ he wrote, ‘that we have made our goal.’ He bemoaned the fact that many Muslims failed to appreciate ‘the importance of this issue in the deen.’ The ‘final basis’ for progress as well as decline in human affairs, he contended, was the question of who wielded political power. Without this sort of power, he believed, it was impossible to attain the fundamental purpose of the deen. And so, he opined, the establishment of a ‘pious leadership’ (imamat-e saleh) and the ‘Divine System’ (nizam-e haq) was of paramount importance. ‘If there is any negligence in this matter,’ he argued, ‘there is nothing one can do to earn God’s pleasure.’ ‘Establishing and maintaining a pious leadership and the Divine System is the real aim of the deen’, he continued. ‘According to Islam, the establishment of a pious leadership is of central and basic importance,’ he wrote, adding, ‘This, according to me, is the demand of the Book of God. This is what the practice (sunnat) of the prophets was. And I cannot change my stand on this matter unless someone proves to me from the Book of God and the practice of the Prophet (peace and blessings of God be upon him) that this is not demanded by the deen.’
In the same vein, the Constitution of the Jamaat-e-Islami declares:
The objective of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the aim of all its efforts is the establishment of Divine Government in this world and the winning of God’s pleasure in the Hereafter.
Understanding of the Deen of Islam
The political nature of Maulana Maududi’s interpretation of the deen is evident from the following passage, taken from his book Musalman Aur Maujuda Siyasi Kashmakash (‘Muslims and the Present-Day Political Struggle’):
The word deen is almost identical in its meaning to how the word ‘state’ is understood in present times. People accepting a superior power and obeying it—this is the ‘state’. This is also the understanding of the term deen. And the true deen (deen-e haq) is that human beings abandon slaving for, and obedience to, other people, their own egos and all created beings, and accept the superior-most power of God alone and become His servants and obey Him.
Maulana Maududi wrote that the Prophet had ‘brought with him from his Sender’ a state system that had no room whatsoever for people’s independent authority and for allowing some people to rule over others. Rather, he added, ‘ruler-ship and the superior-most power are entirely God’s.’
Prophethood
The political interpretation of the deen presents God’s sending of the prophets to the world in a particular political light. Thus, discussing the nature of the mission of the prophets in his book Tajdeed-o-Ihya-e Deen (‘The Renewal and Revival of the Deen’) Maulana Maududi wrote:
The highest goal of the mission of the prophets (on whom be peace) in this world has been to establish the Divine Government and enforce the system of life that they had brought from God. They were willing to give the people who followed Ignorance (ahl-e jahiliyat) the right to remain established in their ignorant (jahili) beliefs and to allow them to continue to follow their ignorant ways to the extent that the impact of their actions remained restricted to them alone. But they were not willing to give them the right—and, quite naturally, they could not give them this right—that the reigns of power could be in their hands and that they could run human affairs according to the laws of Ignorance (jahiliyat). This is why all the prophets made efforts to set off a political revolution (siyasi inqilab). In the case of some, their efforts were only to the extent of preparing the ground—for instance, the Prophet Abraham. Some of them launched revolutionary movements in actual practice, but their work ended before establishing Divine Government—for instance, the Messiah [Jesus]. And some took this movement to the stage of success—for instance, the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
This opinion about the prophets is not proper—that when they acquired power, they permitted people to continue in their wrong ways.
The Islamic Party
When Islam is made out to be a political ideology, then, quite naturally, the Islamic community is made out to be a political party. This is what Maulana Maududi suggested, as for instance in the following excerpt from the chapter titled Jihad fi Sabilillah (‘Jihad in the Path of God’) of his book Tafhimat:
Those people who embrace Islam become members of the Islamic party, and in this way the international revolutionary party comes into being which the Quran terms as hizbullah (‘party of God’). As soon as this party comes into being, it launches jihad in order to attain its goal. Its existence demands that it make efforts to wipe out the ruler-ship of non-Islamic systems, and, as opposed to these, to establish the Government of that just and balanced laws of civilization and social life which the Quran terms by the comprehensive name kalimatullah (‘word of God’).
This ‘Islamic party’, Maulana Maududi contended, is not a party simply of ‘religious preachers’ ‘lecturers’ and ‘people who spread good news’ Rather, he wrote, ‘It is a party of soldiers of God, and its work is to forcibly wipe out oppression, corruption, immorality, disobedience and illegal exploitation from the world.’ This ‘party’ aimed at ending the worship of everyone except God and replacing evil with good. ‘Hence’, Maulana Maududi added, ‘this party has no choice but to capture the powers of Government’. This, he explained, is because a civilization that is based on immorality depends for its existence on a government that is based on immorality, while a pious civilizational system cannot be established unless the reigns of political power are snatched from those who are immoral and sinful, and come into the hands of the pious.
The Purpose of Worship
In the political interpretation of Islam, worship or ibadat acquires a certain definite political meaning and status, as is evident in the statement below in Maulana Maududi’s book Khutbat:
Prayer, fasting Haj and zakat, which God has made a duty for you and has appointed as pillars of Islam—all these things are not, as in the forms of worship in other religions, mere rituals and offerings and customs that you perform and God is happy with you. Rather, the fact of the matter is that they have been made into a duty to prepare you for a lofty purpose and to train you for an important task. This aim is to wipe out the rule of human beings and to establish the ruler-ship of the one God. To be ready to sacrifice one’s everything and make efforts for this purpose even at the cost of one’s life is called jihad. Prayer, fasting, Haj and zakat are all for preparing for this particular purpose.
In his book Islami Ibadat Par Tahqiqi Nazar (‘An Analytical Perspective on Islamic Worship’), Maulana Maududi wrote about what he regarded as the purpose of congregational prayers in Islam as follows:
For Muslims, this world is a battlefield for stern struggles, contestations and difficulties. There are large groups here of people who rebel against God, and who, with full force, have imposed on human beings the laws that they themselves have devised. In opposition to them, Muslims have been given the responsibility—a very backbreaking responsibility—to spread God’s laws here and to get them to be enforced, to wipe out human-made laws wherever they are in operation and, in their place, to establish the system of life linked to the law of the one God who has no associates. This great service that God has given Muslims to do cannot be undertaken by any Muslim individual by himself against the groups of people who rebel against God. Even if there are tens of millions of Muslims in the world and if they make individual efforts separately, by themselves, still they cannot succeed in the face of the organized strength of their opponents. That is why it is indispensable that all those who want to worship God should make one group and should struggle in a united way for achieving their goal. Prayer does this work, in addition to the building of individual character. It builds the entire structure of the social system, establishes and preserves it, and brings it into action five times every day so that this system continues to function, like a machine.
The Understanding of Piety and God-Consciousness
In the political understanding of Islam, piety and God-consciousness also come to be understood in a particularly political way. Thus, in his book Tehrik-e Islami Ki Akhlaqi Bunyaden (‘The Ethical Foundations of the Islamic Movement’), Maulana Maududi wrote that taqwa or piety is based on fear of God, which leads people to save themselves from His wrath, while the basis of ihsan or spiritual excellence is God’s love, which inspires people to acquire His pleasure. He explains what he regards as the difference between taqwa and ihsan with the help of the following analogy.
Among the employees of the Government, Maulana Maududi wrote, are some who are very dutiful and who do the work they have been assigned very diligently, carefully abiding by all the rules and regulations. They do not do anything that, from the Government’s point of view, is objectionable. On the other hand, there is another group of employees who are very loyal to the Government, and who are willing even to sacrifice their very lives for it. Not only do they perform the tasks they have been assigned, but, more than that, they constantly think about how the Government’s interests can be better served. And so, they go beyond their duties and do extra work for the Government. If the Government faces any challenge or threat, they are willing to sacrifice their lives, their wealth and their children for its sake. If someone revolts against the Government, they stir themselves up and put their lives at stake to quash the revolt. They simply cannot tolerate even seeing anyone damaging the Government’s interests. Their heart-felt desire, Maulana Maududi wrote, is that their Government’s power alone should prevail throughout the world, and that not even a bit of land should remain across the world where their Government’s writ does not run.
Maulana Maududi argued that the first sort of people exemplify taqwa, while the second category exemplify ihsan. The former, he wrote, ‘will also receive promotions and their names will also be included in the list of good employees’. However, he stated, ‘no one can share the glorious stature’ of the latter. Although those who have taqwa (muttaqin) are also worthy of respect and trust, he commented, the ‘real power of Islam’, is ‘the group of those with ihsan (muhsinin), and the work that Islam wants should get done in the world can be done by this group.’
Bearing Witness to the Truth
In the political interpretation of Islam, bearing witness to the Truth is considered to be incomplete without the establishment of Islamic Government. Thus, in his Shahadat-e Haq (‘Witness to the Truth’), Maulana Maududi wrote:
If this witness can reach its culmination, it can only happen when a state is established based on these principles and it brings the entire deen into action, and, through its justice, its reformist programme, its good administration, the welfare of its subjects, the good character of its rulers, its pious internal politics, its principled external policy, its noble warfare and its loyal reconciliation, it bears witness throughout the world that the religion that has given birth to such a state is truly a guarantor of human welfare and in obeying it lies the welfare of humankind. When this sort of witness combines with verbal witness, the responsibility that has been given to the Muslim ummah is properly fulfilled—that is when itmam-e hujjat [providing the necessary proofs of Islam in the appropriate manner] with regard to humankind is accomplished.
The Prophet’s Ascension
As a result of the political interpretation of Islam, religious realities such as the ascension of the Prophet, too, come to be given a political interpretation. Thus, in his book titled Miʿraj ki Raat (‘The Night of the Ascension’), Maulana Maududi wrote that the Planet Earth is a ‘small province’ of the ‘grand Sultanate of God’. The status of the Prophet who has been sent from God to this ‘province’ can be likened, he wrote, to that of a governor or viceroy who is sent by the Government to a country that is subordinate to it.
The Prophet of Islam engaged in preaching work for around twelve years when his mission entered a new stage. This new stage began when the time had arrived to leave the unfavourable environment of Makkah and shift to the more favourable environment of Madinah and where, Maulana Maududi wrote, ‘the movement of Islam was to be transformed into a state’. That is why, he maintained, on this important occasion of his new ‘appointment’ and to give him new ‘instructions’, God, ‘the Emperor of the entire universe’, called the Prophet to His presence. This was, he says, the miʿraj or Prophet’s ascension.
The Maulana wrote that the fourteen principles that were given to the Prophet during the ascension were not just moral or ethical teachings. Rather, these were what he called ‘Islam’s manifesto’ and the ‘programme’ on the basis of which the Prophet was to build up a society. These instructions provided during the miʿraj were, he said, given to the Prophet when his movement was crossing the stage of preaching and ‘was about to step into the stage of Government and political power.’ And so, ‘before the beginning of this stage’, the ‘principles’ on the basis of which the Prophet was to ‘establish the system of civilization’ had been clarified. ‘This is why besides laying down these fourteen points,’ the Maulana wrote, ‘God made prayers five times every day a duty for all the followers of Islam, so that moral discipline should develop in those who stood up in order to give this programme a practical shape and they should not be negligent of God.’
One could cite several more such passages from Maulana Maududi’s writings to indicate his distinctly political interpretation of Islam. The passages provided above are, however, more than adequate to understand the nature of the problem at hand. It is readily apparent—and anyone can easily see this—how in the political interpretation, every aspect of Islam comes to assume a political dimension. The purpose and meaning of life and the universe are given a distinctly political colour—in just the same way as in Marxism everything is coloured by the economic or material question. The goal of life is projected as essentially political. The deen of Islam comes to be seen as shaped by politics. God’s sending of prophets to humankind also comes to be seen as impelled by political goals. The highest position for the Muslim ummah was as a political party. Worship is reduced to a preface to politics. Piety and spiritual excellence come to be shaped in a distinctly political mould. Witnessing to the truth becomes a political act. The ascension comes to be seen as a sort of political journey. In other words, in this political interpretation of Islam, the whole of the religion of Islam wrongly comes to be seen as a collection of parts whose individual and collective significance cannot be understood without linking them with politics.
Can this be called simply stressing the importance of the political aspect of Islam, of highlighting one aspect of Islam among many? No, not at all! Rather, it is nothing short of a complete interpretation of the deen—and which, for want of a more appropriate term, one can call ‘the political interpretation’ of Islam.
