Abul A'la Maududi

"[Unbelievers] “have, however, absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines. For if they are given such an opportunity, corruption and mischief will ensue. In such a situation the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”"

"It is made clear that one need not guard one’s private parts from two kinds of women – one’s wives and slave-girls."

"Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals."

"[Muslims (of the right-thinking kind) constitute a Revolutionary Party whose objective] is to expend all the powers of body and soul, your life and goods in the fi ght against the evil forces of the world, not that having annihilated them you should step into their shoes, but in order that evil and con- tumacy should be wiped out and God’s law should be enforced in the world."

"In the jihad in the way of Allah, active combat is not always the role on the battlefield, nor can everyone fight in the front line. Just for one single battle preparations have often to be made for decades on end and the plans deeply laid, and while only some thousands fight in the front line there are behind them millions engaged in various tasks which, though small themselves, contribute directly to the supreme effort."

"Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which nation assumes the role of the standard-bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet .... because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare programme [of Islam] … Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution and a composite term for the use of all these forces is ‘Jihad’. .... the objective of the Islamic ‘ Jihād’ is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of state rule."

"Finally, no less a figure than Sayyid Abu ’l-‘Alā’ Mawdūdī, one of the major thinkers behind modern Islamist ideology, said that in an Islamic state as envisioned by him, “no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect, the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.”"

"“God has prohibited the unrestricted intermingling of the sexes and has prescribed purdah [a word of Persian origin meaning the religious and social practice of female seclusion]” recognizing “man’s guardianship of woman,” for Muslims must guard against “that satanic flood of female liberty and licence which threatens to destroy human civilization in the West.”"

"The reforms which Islam wants to bring about cannot be carried out merely by sermons. Political power is essential for their achievement."

"(The) materials for the constitution of an Islamic state are to be found in four principle sources, the Koran, the Sunna of the Prophet, the conventions and practices of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, and in the rulings of the great jurists of the Islamic tradition."

"The power to rule over the earth has been promised to the whole community of believers; it has not been stated that any particular person or class among them will be raised to that position. From this it follows that all believers are repositories of the Caliphate."

"[The Islamic State] cannot…restrict the scope of its activities….It seeks to mould every aspect of life and activity in consonance with its moral norms and programme of social reform. In such a state no one can regard any field of his affairs as personal and private. Considered from this aspect the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states."

"Jihad Fee-Sabilillah," or "Jihad in the way of God," a 1939 essay by Sayyid Abu A'la Mawdudi, argues that the pursuit of political power-rather than what he called "a hotchpotch of beliefs, prayers and rituals"-was integral to the practice of the Islam.14 "Islam," he insisted, "is a revolutionary ideology which seeks to alter the social order of the entire world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals." It was therefore imperative for Muslims to "seize the authority of state, for an evil system takes root and flourishes under the patronage of an evil government and a pious cultural order can never be established until the authority of government is wrested from the wicked." Indeed, Mawdudi insisted that the word "Muslims" referred not to a religious community but to a politically-bound "international revolutionary party." "The party of the Muslims," Mawdudi concluded, "will inevitably extend the invitation to citizens of other countries to embrace the faith which holds out the promise of true salvation and genuine welfare. At the same time, if the Muslim Party commands enough resources, it will eliminate un-lslamic governments and establish the power of Islamic government in their place." He concluded: "Hence it is imperative, for reasons both of the general welfare of humanity and for its own self-defence, that the Muslim Party should not be content just with establishing the Islamic system of government in one territory, but should extend its sway as far as possible all around." It is worth noting, parenthetically, that these ideas resonated in the works of Islamist movement elsewhere. Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Said Qutb's work drew extensively on Mawdudi; indeed, he liberally acknowledged the debt. Palestinian jihadist Abdullah Azzam, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden's ideological mentor and co-founder of arguably the largest terror group in the world, Lashkar-e-Taiba. In this view, "jihad is incumbent on the Islamic state," he stated, "to send out a group of mujahideen to their neighboring infidel state. They should present Islam to the leader and his nation. If they refuse to accept Islam, jizyah (a tax) will be imposed upon them and they will become subjects of the Islamic state. If they refuse this second option, the third course of action is jihad to bring the infidel state under Islamic domination."

"Human relations are so integrated that no state can have complete freedom of action under its principles unless the same principles are not in force in a neighbouring country. Therefore, a, ‘Muslim Party’ will not be content with the establishment of Islam in just one area alone –both for its own safety and for general reform. It should try and expand in all directions. On one hand it will spread its ideology; on the other it will invite people of all nations to accept its creed, for salvation lies only therein. If this Islamic state has power and resources it will fight and destroy non-Islamic governments and establish Islamic states in their place."

"It [Jamaat-e-Islami] is not a missionary organisation or a body of preachers or evangelists, but an organisation of God’s troopers."

"[Islam] leaves no room of human legislation in an Islamic state, because herein all legislative functions vest in God and the only function left for Muslims lies in their observance of the God-made law."

"It must now be obvious that the objective of the Islamic jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system, and establish in its place an Islamic system of state rule. Islam does not intend to confine his rule to a single state or a hand full of countries. The aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution. Although in the initial stages, it is incumbent upon members of the party of Islam to carry out a revolution in the state system of the countries to which they belong; their ultimate objective is none other than world revolution."

"German Nazism could not have succeeded in establishing itself except as a result of the theoretical contributions of Fichte, Goethe and Nietzsche, coupled with the ingenious and mighty leadership of Hitler and his comrades."

"Islam is not a ‘religion’ in the sense this term is commonly understood. It is a system encompassing all fields of living. Islam means politics, economics, legisla­tion, science, humanism, health, psychology and sociol­ogy. It is a system which makes no discrimination on the basis of race, color, language or other external categories. Its appeal is to all mankind. It wants to reach the heart of every human being."

"The Qur'an is not a book of abstract theories and cold ideas, which one can grasp while seated in a cozy armchair. Nor is it merely a religious book like other religious books, whose meanings can be grasped in seminaries and oratories. On the contrary, it is a Book which contains a message, an invitation, which generates a movement. The moment it began to be sent down, it impelled a quiet and pious man to abandon his life of solitude and confront the world that was living in rebellion against Allah. It inspired him to raise his voice against falsehood, and pitted him in a grim struggle against the lords of disbelief, evil and iniquity. One after the other, from every home, it drew every pure and noble soul, and gathered them under the banner of truth. In every part of the country, it made all the mischievous and the corrupt to rise and wage war against the bearers of the truth."

"“the simple fact is that according to Islam, non-Muslims have been granted the freedom to stay outside the Islamic fold and to cling to their false, man-made, ways if they so wish.” ...“There is no compulsion in religion.” ...(unbelievers) “have, however, absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines. For if they are given such an opportunity, corruption and mischief will ensue. In such a situation the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life”"

"In our domain we neither allow any Muslim to change his religion nor allow any other religion to propagate its faith."

"The real place of women is the house and she has been exempted from outdoor duties…She has however been allowed to go out of the house to fulfil her genuine needs, but whilst going out she must observe complete modesty. Neither should she wear glamorous clothes and attract attention, nor should she cherish the desire to display the charms of the face and the hand, nor should she walk in a manner which may attract attention of others. Moreover she should not speak to them without necessity, and if she has to speak she should not speak in a sweet and soft voice."

"In the 1960s, military dictators used religion as a rallying cry against India, feeding further intolerance against Hindus and appeasing Islamists. Social and cultural life continued unperturbed, but some now brandished Pakistan as a citadel of Islam. The architect of that citadel would be Abu A’la al-Mawdudi, the man who had inspired Qutb in Egypt and Khomeini in Iran. Mawdudi had not always been a religious fundamentalist. Born in 1903 in British India, he was a journalist, a poet, and newspaper editor whose intellectual, mystical, theological journey made him the twentieth century’s greatest revivalist Islamic thinker. He transformed from a young man in a suit with a round face and a mustache to a preacher with a traditional karakul (curly lambskin) hat and a beard. Mawdudi dabbled in Marxism and Western philosophy, and was inspired to become a writer by a poet friend. He admired Mahatma Gandhi and was even briefly an Indian nationalist. But like his contemporary Egypt’s Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mawdudi was dismayed by the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1924 and the secularism of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Mawdudi’s ideas about Islam and Muslim identity reflected his own existential questioning and evolved at a time of deep flux for Muslims in India. In a landscape littered with the vestiges of a collapsed Muslim power, the Mughal Empire, Muslims were caught between the uncertainty caused by a departing colonial power and growing Hindu nationalism. Mawdudi believed that the rise of the Western concept of nationalism among Muslims had led to the downfall of the Ottomans, allowing European powers to enter the region. He believed the answer lay not in more nationalism, or in a new country for Muslims, but in reviving Islam and implementing true Islamic rule."

"By 1941, in Lahore, he had founded Jamaat-e Islami, the vanguard of the Islamic revolution of his dreams. His followers would deny he had ever written such heathen verses. Mawdudi had opposed the creation of Pakistan. But once it came into existence, he worked relentlessly to turn it into his utopian Islamic state. From philosopher and ideologue, he became a strategist, a politician with a program. The Jamaat organized a highly structured network of activists to spread the message, pushing to institutionalize Islamic values at every level of society and public life, including politics. According to Mawdudi, no ruler, no system had ever been truly Islamic, because Muslims had become estranged from the true precepts of their religion, and governments that did not strictly apply the shari’a, Islamic law, were apostates. The jahiliyya, the pre-Islam age of ignorance, therefore continued, and Mawdudi’s response was the hukm, sovereign rule, of God over earth through the rule of shari’a. In its Arabic root declination, the word hukm led to the word and concept of hakimiyya: an Islamic state that was the result of the Islamization of society and state through education, the Islamization of private and public life, a totalitarian model in which God’s law was supreme and elected officials governed only under the guidance of clerics."

"These were the ideas that would later be attributed to the Egyptian thinker Qutb, but they were unmistakably Mawdudi’s. He was the missing link between Banna’s vague vision for an Islamic society and Qutb’s urgent political manifesto, Milestones. Novel and radical in their day, Mawdudi’s ideas are at the root of modern-day political Islam, radical Salafism, and jihadism. He inspired his contemporaries and the generations since, both Shia and Sunni. His profound influence on Pakistani politics is the bridge that connects the mujahedeen of Afghanistan in the 1980s to the jihadists of the Middle East. Decades later, when Western authors and journalists went looking for the clues that led to 9/11, they would settle on Qutb as the source of much of the evil, providing only a partial understanding of what had happened and why. Mawdudi’s key influence would be mostly forgotten, including his connections with revolutionary Iran. Mawdudi’s work had begun to appear in Iran, translated into Persian, in the early 1960s. The Pakistani scholar and Khomeini met in 1963 in Mecca, where Mawdudi delivered a lecture about the duties of Muslim youth that impressed Khomeini. The two men talked for a half hour at their hotel with a translator. Khomeini explained his campaign against the shah. This was the year of protests against the White Revolution, and Khomeini would soon be exiled to Iraq. Mawdudi did not believe in a revolution for Pakistan; he preached for the Islamization of society as the natural path to an Islamic state. But the majority of Pakistanis were indifferent to his message. He was also unpopular with the country’s leaders. Mawdudi was jailed four times, only narrowly escaping a death sentence thanks to the intervention of Saudi Arabia in 1953. During the elections of 1970, the Jamaat won only four of the three hundred seats in the National Assembly. But in Zia’s Pakistan, Mawdudi was suddenly useful. The pious general sought his advice, and the scholar’s views were now published on the front page of newspapers"

"What is beyond dispute is that Mawdūdī did inspire many people who wanted to establish an Islamic state and at least some of these people may have wanted to expedite the process through violent revolution. His journal Tarjumān al-Qur’ān lays out arguments for the Islamic state and its blueprint in almost every issue. Indeed, he initiated his efforts to create such a state in Pakistan from the very beginning as one of his interviews broadcasted from Radio Pakistan on 18 May 1948 bears witness.... Mawdūdī is often credited with being one of the intellectual fathers of Islamist militancy which is much in evidence nowadays in the form of violent attacks on civilian targets, suicide attacks, and so on. Yet by his own actions and writings he does not advocate the use of force in the way militant thinkers do. Mawdūdī might have inspired them in certain of their doctrines, but he did not personally choose to legitimise violence by non-state actors either against one’s own rulers or against non-Muslims in general... . In short, though Mawdūdī’s method is not outwardly revolutionary his conclusions are. And, since political power is his main concern, the establishment of an Islamic state, and jihad, carry great significance in his works."

"As we can see, Mawdūdī’s major hermeneutical device is his ideological imperative, i.e. that Islam must be politically dominant since God wants the world to be ruled according to the laws of Islam. It is the only system of being and doing which ensures the sovereignty of God hence no other form of rule can be tolerated.... But when and how ideas on the philosophical plane influence people to such a degree that they are ready to die and kill for them? This we may not know for certain but we do know that they do, and Mawdūdī and Quṭb were powerful influences upon radical Islamist thought in the contemporary era irrespective of the differences between them and their actual meanings."

"The South Asian activist Abul A‘la Mawdudi has been very influential in twentieth-century Islamist circles. Although he was at best sporadically educated in the traditional religious sciences, his influence derives not from any exceptional reputation as a religious scholar, but rather from his forceful, charismatic personality and his uncanny ability to articulate in an emotive Islamic idiom the sociopolitical concerns of his co-religionists in a colonial context."

"In the end, we should probably describe Mawdūdī as a fundamentalist, though a rather open- minded and well- mannered one where the scholarly tradition is concerned."

"Take the case of those Muslims who opposed Jinnah and his communalist demand for partition. While Aligarh was a hotbed of Pakistani agitation, the Deoband school advocated the gradual Islamization of the entire united India. The godfather of modern Islamic fundamentalism, Maulana Maudoodi, was one of the staunchest opponents of Partition. He claimed that the Muslims had a right to rule all of India."

"Among the scions of the Deoband school we find Maulana Maudoodi, the chief ideologue of modern fundamentalism. He opposed the Pakistan scheme and demanded the Islamization of all of British India. After independence, he settled in Pakistan and agitated for the full Islamization of the (still too British) polity. Shortly before his death in 1979, his demands were largely met when general Zia launched his Islamization policy."

"It was in Hyderabad that Mawdūdī fully developed his views on the corruption of Islam “by centuries of incorporation of local customs and mores that had obscured that faith’s veritable teachings,” writes University of San Diego assistant professor of political science Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr. “Salvation of Muslim culture and the preservation of its power lay in the restitution of Islamic institutions and practices after they had been cleansed of the cultural influences that had sapped Muslims of their power.”"

"“Mawdudi’s revivalist position was radical communalism as it articulated Muslim interests and sought to protect their rights, and demanded the severance of all cultural and hence social and political ties with Hindus in the interests of purifying Islam.”"

"He argued that the Islamic state was an ideological one, and the preservation of its ideological purity was therefore the condition sine qua non for its survival and development. Extended rights for minorities would undermine the Islamic state as they would diffuse its ideological vigilance. Therefore limiting their rights to those of zimmis in Islamic law was a matter of national security and self-preservation."

"Mawdūdī also clearly did not accord women a sociopolitical role equal to men. Fearing that greater interaction of the sexes would lead to immorality and undo the Islamic State, he “comes close to characterizing women as an insidious force whose activities ought to be regulated and restricted before they could wreak havoc.”"

"Introductory books on Mawdūdī rarely refer to his views on jihād. These views are uncompromising, unapologetic, and very disturbing in their implications. Mawdūdī begins his short treatise, Jihād in Islam, with a definition of religion and a definition of nation: But the truth is that Islam is not the name of a “Religion”, nor is “Muslim” the title of a “Nation.” In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. “Muslim” is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And “Jihād” refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective."

"Mawdūdī declares: Islam has no vested interest in promoting the cause of this or that Nation. The hegemony of this or that State on the face of this earth is irrelevant to Islam. The sole interest of Islam is the welfare of mankind. Islam has its own particular ideological standpoint and practical programme to carry out reforms for the welfare of mankind. Islam wishes to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which nation assumes the role of the standard-bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet—not because the sovereignty over the earth should be wrested from one nation or several nations and vested in one particular nation, but because the entire mankind should benefit from the ideology and welfare programme or what would be truer to say from “Islam” which is the programme of well-being for all humanity. Towards this end, Islam wishes to press into service all forces which can bring about a revolution and a composite term for the use of all these forces is “Jihād.” The message could not be clearer: Islam must conquer the globe, and the purpose of jihād is totalitarian—it demands the engagement of all Muslims until Earth is ruled according to the precepts of Islam. All other ideologies, as systems where man-made laws rule, are enemies. Mawdūdī wishes to replace them with God-made laws: the Shari‘a."

"At the end of his long and cantankerous life the maulana had gone against all his high principles. He had gone to a Boston hospital to look for health; he had at the very end entrusted himself to the skill and science of the civilization he had tried to shield his followers from. He had sought, as someone said to me (not all Pakistanis are fundamentalists), to reap where he had not wanted his people to sow. Of the maulana it might be said that he had gone to his well-deserved place in heaven by way of Boston; and that he went at least part of the way by ."

"The patron saint of the Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan was Maulana Maudoodi. He opposed the idea of a separate Indian Muslim state because he felt that the Muslims were not pure enough for such a state. He felt that God should be the lawgiver; and, offering ecstasy of this sort rather than a practical programme, he became the focus of millenarian passion. He campaigned for Islamic laws without stating what those laws should be."

"The most important of the fundamentalist groups was the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Assembly of Islam. It had been founded by a religious teacher and zealot, Maulana Maudoodi. Before partition he had objected to the idea of Pakistan, for strange reasons. The poet Iqbal, presenting the case for a separate Indian Muslim state in 1930, had said that such a state would rid Indian Islam of the “stamp which Arab imperialism was forced to give it.” Maudoodi’s ambitions were just the opposite. He thought that an Indian Muslim state would be too limiting, would suggest that Islam had done its work in India. Maudoodi wanted Islam to convert and cover all India, and to cover the world. Iqbal had said that an important reason for the creation of Pakistan was that Islam had worked better in India than in other places as “a people-building force.” Maudoodi didn’t think so. He didn’t think the Muslims of the subcontinent and their political leaders were good enough, as Muslims, for something as precious as an all-Muslim state. They were not pure enough in their belief; they were too tainted by the Indian past. Maudoodi had died in 1979. But the attitude of the Jamaat was still that the people of Pakistan and their rulers were not good enough. If Iqbal’s Muslim state had had its calamities, it wasn’t the fault of Islam; it was only the fault of the people who called themselves Muslim. In the fundamentalist way of thinking this kind of failure automatically condemned itself as the failure of a false or half-hearted Islam. And the Jamaat could always say—its cause ever fresh—that Islam had never really been tried since the early days, and that it was time to try it now. The Jamaat would show the way."

"As the scholar Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr observed, Mawdudi's position was "closely tied to questions of communal politics and its impact on identity formation, to questions of power in pluralistic societies, and to nationalism." His worldview, Nasr notes, was "informed by the acute despair that gripped the community [Muslim]" in the early decades of the twentieth century. Mawdudi saw the Hindu revivalism of the Arya Samaj as an existential threat to Muslims, "a proof of the inherent animosity of Hindus towards Islam." Mawdudi would die in 1979, a relatively marginal figure in Pakistan's politics and all but unknown outside Islamist circles in his homeland of India. However, inside a decade Mawdudi's ideas would give birth to a cult of the bomb-led, improbably, by a man with only one hand, a rudimentary knowledge of bomb-making acquired from making fireworks, and no organizational resources behind him."