In his article ‘Shun the Hate Letter Signed by 25 ‘Academics’ – Not Books by Maududi’ (The Wire, August 17, 2022), Irfan Ahmad rightly criticises Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) for removing from its curriculum books written by one of South Asia’s most radical proponents of political Islam, Abul ‘Ala Maududi (1903-1979).
AMU’s knee-jerk decision came days after the 25 academics wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding a total ban on what they said was a ‘jihadi curriculum’ at AMU, Jamia Millia Islamia and Hamdard University, arguing that “the never-ending violent attacks on Hindu society, culture and civilization are a direct outcome of such teachings” at these “Islamic” universities.
Maududi, as is well known, was an Indian-born autodidactic scholar who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in 1941 with a view to constituting what he called a theodemocracy (hukoomat-e-ilaahiya) for the enforcement of “Allah’s sovereignty” on earth.
One of the many Islamist ideologues that Maududi influenced was Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the Egyptian revolutionary and critic of Western civilisation, who, like Maududi, believed that Islam in reality is a universal declaration of freedom from human servitude and therefore, its establishment as a system of governance is incumbent on Muslims through jihad bissaif (jihad with sword) – i.e. a militant confrontation with other existing systems particularly communism, monarchy, military dictatorship, and liberal democracy. In response to the letter from the Group of 25, Qutb’s books were also banned by AMU.
Ahmad is right in pointing out that AMU was obliged to academically jettison the texts only if the University Grants Commission (UGC) had demanded a ban on them. In his opinion, AMU should have initiated a debate on intellectual freedom and academic autonomy instead of succumbing to the nescient arguments of the petitioners.
Aligarh Muslim University. Photo: PTI
Maududi and democracy
However, for a person who considers himself to be an authority on JI and its founder, Ahmad’s apologia for Maududi is not just problematic but disingenuous. For instance, he writes that Maududi’s commitment to democracy was genuine and not cosmetic because he had, in the context of Pakistan, said that the state “should not be enforcer of the Sharia but the implementer of the will of the people.”
But in the reference cited by Ahmad to a 2013 article he wrote, these words are attributed to Syed Vali Reza Nasr, who used them to appraise Maududi. However, Nasr’s assessment was confined to Maududi’s preference for sharia to be adopted willingly rather than by official diktat and not a claim that Maududi was committed to democracy in some fundamental sense:
“It was obvious to Maududi that the Islamic state would not be able to reconcile the rigid demands of Islamic law and the ideals of democracy unless the population would willingly abide by the demands of Islamic law. The Islamic state should not be the enforcer of the Shari‘a but the implementor of the will of the people. Ideally, popular will should demand implementation of the Shari‘a, unburdening the state and legitimizing its rule. Hence, the shape of the state hinges as much on the character of its population as on its mode of operation.”
In other words, for Maududi a society has to be Islamicised first before imposing Islamic law. And the Islamicisation would happen, to use Nasr’s words again, “by taking over the centres of political power and effecting large scale reforms from the top down“.
Nasr goes on to state that in Maududi’s view socio-economic problems such as population growth, economic inequalities, and social justice are “not real issues.” They are “symptoms of the absence of an Islamic order“ and a reflection of the failure of western ideologies. They would disappear only when “the state and society were Islamised”, and therefore, “Muslims were best advised not to dwell on these issues but to focus on establishing and managing the Islamic state.“
According to Nasr, Maududi viewed even “Islamic economics“ as primarily the implementation of Islamic laws on such issues as usury, inheritance, and the rights of labour. Put differently, “Islamic economics were the economic policies of the Islamic state” in Maududi’s view.
Ironically, Ahmad’s 2013 article and his citations unwittingly prove that Maududi’s commitment to democracy was not even cosmetic because, as Ahmad tells us, “secular democracy, to Mawdudi, was haram [proscribed by Islam] for it replaced divine sovereignty with human sovereignty.”
The article also lists a number of things the JI’s constitution obligates its members to boycott. Among them are assemblies that pass secular laws, a secular judiciary, interest-based banks, and educational institutions (including Muslim ones) that serve jahiliyyat (anti-Islamic polity). No wonder Maududi described universities such as AMU as “slaughterhouses”!
Furthermore, in a biographical note on Maududi that Ahmad wrote in 2013 for The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (pp 332-334), he points out that Maududi was opposed to Jinnah’s Muslim League because it sought to establish Pakistan as a secular “infidel state of Muslims.” For Maududi, Ahmad tells us, if a shariah-based theocracy was “central to Muslims’ very belief in monotheism”, secular democracy was the ultimate expression of jahiliyyat. Hence his ruling that it was forbidden (haram) to vote or contest elections in a secular, democratic state.
In this context, Ahmad reveals, the JI lifted its boycott of democratic elections in Pakistan only in 1949 after its Constituent Assembly passed the Objectives Resolution acknowledging the sovereignty of Allah. In India, on the other hand, the JI continued to shun elections until the mid-1980s because the Indian constitution does not recognise divine sovereignty of any kind. It needs to be mentioned here that the Indian JI’s post-1985 change of heart towards elections happened several years after Maududi’s death, and therefore, was not a result of Maududi revisiting his ideology. In any case, it was cosmetic – an old-wine-in-new-bottle kind of embellishment of Maududi’s medievalism.
Also Read: There’s Anger at AMU Dropping Maududi, Qutb. But Why is Sir Syed’s Islam Not Taught?
The constitution of Indian Jamaat-e-Islami
The constitution of the Indian JI, which goes by the name Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), states in Article 4 that its primary objective is “Iqaamat-e-Deen” where iqaamat means establishment and deen is the religion “which Allah, the Lord of the worlds, had been sending through all His prophets in different ages and different lands and which He revealed in its final and perfect form for the guidance of all men, through His Last Prophet…”
Thus the meaning of iqaamat-e-deen, according to Article 4, is: the religion of Allah “in its entirety and without exercising any discrimination or division, should be sincerely followed and followed single-mindedly. It should be so enforced and given effect to in all aspects of human life, individual as well as corporate, that the development of the individual, the reconstruction of society and the formation of State should all conform to this very Deen” (emphasis added).
Indian Muslims who wish to become members of the JIH to practice and propagate its idea of iqaamat-e-deen must, proclaims Article 6, affirm that the objective and its explanation mentioned in Article 4, is their objective too and accept the Creed mentioned in Article 3 as their own.
One of the requirements of this creed is the refusal to recognise anyone other than Allah as the absolute law-giver and law-maker, and the invalidation of all “allegiances which are not subservient to the allegiance of the One Allah and His Law.” This sounds more like a political statement than a religious belief (mazhabiaqeeda).
Members of the JIH are also expected to relinquish any positions they hold under an “ungodly governmental system, or the membership of its legislature, or a judicial office under its judicial system” (Article 8).
If this was not radical enough, Article 9 warns, among other things, that all members of the JIH “should readily part with that means of sustenance” which they may have earned while being part of “any ungodly governmental system, or being instrumental in giving effect to its laws.” They are also prohibited from approaching “un-Islamic law-courts for settlement of matters except under compelling necessity.”
These shockingly anti-democratic provisions make it clear that the regressive ideology of its founder continues to define the JI’s political orientation even in India notwithstanding the occasional lip service JIH pays to liberal democracy and civil rights.
The headquarters of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in Delhi. Photo: Zuhairali/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Maududi’s ideology
Irfan Ahmad sweeps all these facts under the carpet and aggrandises Maududi as a “complex figure”, a “political theorist”, and even an “economic thinker” to boot. The fact, however, is that there was no complexity or chronological variation in Maududi’s thought. His supremacist writings reveal a blinkered constancy throughout his life that is hard to miss.
In other words, Maududi’s dogmatic inflexibility cannot be white-washed or camouflaged by citing out of context the fact that he wrote a biography of Madan Mohan Malaviya, or by mentioning an exchange of pleasantries between Gandhi and Maududi, as Ahmad has done. These facts are not relevant to this discussion. What needs to be put on the table is the narrow interpretation of Islam that Maududi so vigorously sought to establish which Ahmad conveniently avoided discussing in his article.
In his Urdu book Al jihad fil Islam (brought out in English by Delhi-based MarkaziMaktabaIslami Publishers under the title Jihad in Islam), Maududi mistranslates several verses of the Quran to equate jihad with offensive war when there is nothing in the Quran to suggest that it permits aggressive warmongering. Even “defensive war” called qitaal (which the Prophet described as jihad al asghar or lesser jihad) is just one aspect of the primary meaning of jihad which is “a struggle” against evil for the promotion of good. The Quran (25:52) categorically states that the propagation of its message of peace (jaahid hum bihijihaadankabeeran) is the greater jihad.
Maududi brushes aside this meaning to justify military conquests for spreading Islam. Citing some unheard-of medieval jurists he states: “…if Muslims were to conquer a country by force and even if there were not to be any covenant with the people of that country, the conquered non-Muslims would be declared Zimmies and the leader of the Muslims after levying jizya on them would take them under the protection and security of Allah and His Prophet” (pp. 123-124). The non-Muslims, of course, will “never be given to freedom to promulgate their false beliefs and laws and thus spread mischief and persecution on Allah’s earth” (p.122).
Even “unrighteous and ungodly governments which are the cause and effect of all evils” are to be uprooted “if necessary and possible by waging war against them, and establish in their place such a just system of government which is based on fear of Allah and the permanent codes of Law ordained by Allah…” (p.118).
Maududi justified this wanton aggression, saying: “… as it is wrong to say that Islam compels people to become Muslims with the force of a sword, so also it is wrong to say that the sword does not play any role at all in the spread of Islam…The work of propagation is to sow the seeds and the task of the sword is to plough” (pp. 177-178).
Is this the man whose commitment to democracy was genuine and not cosmetic, as Irfan Ahmad would have us believe? Ahmad’s acclamation of Maududi as “a complex figure”, and “a critical friend of democracy” must be challenged in light of the fact that there is no evidence to suggest that Maududi ever recanted his views discussed above.
Nonetheless, banning his books is not the solution. AMU may include his writings in its curriculum but it must also expose its students to literature that questions and intellectually demolishes Maududi’s supremacist understanding of Islam.
A. Faizur Rahman is secretary-general of the Islamic Forum for the Promotion of Moderate Thought. Email: themoderates2020@gmail.com Twitter: @FaizEngineer.