India Islamicism

Philip Jenkins has an excellent brief introduction to the thought of the Indian Muslim thinker, Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi, in the December 24 issue of TNR . He writes:

“His guiding assumption was a totalistic view of Islam: Everything in the universe was God’s creation, so Muslims could freely use modern technology and organization—but only to build a visionary new Islamic order. Where Mawdudi broke from his contemporaries was in his utter rejection of all historic Islamic models as unworthy of Islam’s First Age: He condemned virtually every achievement of Islamic politics and culture as jahiliyya , ignorance, the word normally used to describe the pagan darkness that prevailed in Arabia before Muhammad’s time. Muslims who resisted the call were part of a new jahiliyya and could legitimately become the targets of jihad . . . .

“This total rejection of the past shaped Mawdudi’s views of the Islamic state, which he believed should be founded on iqamat-i-deen , ‘the establishment of religion.’ In this theocratic vision, society and the state would be subject entirely to Islamic law, sharia , which comprehended every aspect of human life and behavior. Mawdudi claimed that such a state would be a theo-democracy, in which elected officials would rule under clerical guidance. Yet it is difficult to understand his model as anything but totalitarian. As everything was subject to God, there could be no personal or private life that was not subject to law. Even he seemed to understand that. ‘Considered from this aspect,’ he wrote, ‘the Islamic State bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states.

“Not surprisingly, Mawdudi preached an absolute confrontation between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds. His Islamic state would free itself from all non- Muslim influences and would wage jihad against the whole non-Muslim world. In fairness, he makes it clear that he is talking about a spiritual rather than a military campaign, but his language easily lends itself to violent interpretations.”

Mawdudi’s influence has spread widely in the Muslim world: ”

By the 1970s, Mawdudi’s ideas—particularly his writings on jihad—were appearing freely in the works of Islamic radicals in Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere. The more time Arab radicals spent in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the more assuredly they would be exposed to JI and to Mawdudi’s thought. His ideas influenced Abdullah Azzam, the Palestinian militant who served as a mentor to the young Osama bin Laden during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. South Asian communities overseas, including significant numbers in Britain, were hugely influenced by Mawdudi’s work. Remarkably, Mawdudi’s impact also extended to Shia Iran, where Ayatollah Khomeini reputedly met Mawdudi as early as 1963 and later translated the Master’s works into Farsi. To the present day, Iran’s revolutionary rhetoric often draws on his themes.”