The political movements that Mawdudi involved himself in should not just be seen as a reaction against British rule, but also an attempt at self-preservation for a Muslim minority that had enjoyed years of elitist self-cultivation. As Hindu political activity and involvement increased, the need was felt that Muslim political action was also required to maintain any kind of legitimacy. The British Raj identified the Muslims as a separate religious community and, by the Indian Councils Act of 1909, the existence of two separate communal electorates (Hindu and Muslim) was given legal and political status. While this was all part of the British liberal tradition and was well intentioned, it also underlined the differences in language and religion between Muslims and Hindus and gave them the right to petition for grievances, elect their own representatives, and so on. The creation of a Muslim community in India was somewhat artificial because Muslims were by no means united in any kind of communal way at that time, divided as they were by tribal, family, region, class and other factional sections. The fact was, Muslims were incapable of sharing a common identity, and so it was up to the Muslim radicals to invent effectively a new political body: the Muslims of India. This was a movement towards mass politics that at first was somewhat piecemeal and symbolic. One example of this is the Kanpur mosque episode in 1913 when the British wanted to move the washing facilities of the mosque so as to make way for the building of a road. This resulted in local committees being set up to defend the mosque and even in small-scale riots. The significance of the event is that it presented a religious symbol as articulating Muslim identity, whereas previously such an event would hardly have raised an eyebrow. Other riots in Calcutta in 1918, and in Bombay in 1929 (and, in fact, again in Kanpur in 1931) were significant, certainly, but factionalized. It was not until the Khilafat movement that India witnessed its first mass Muslim political action.
Mawdudi’s involvement in the Khilafat movement was due to his association with the journalist and poet Mawlana Muhammad Ali Jouhar (1878–1931). Muhammad Ali was a student of Ahmad Khan’s Anglo-Oriental College and went on to study history at Oxford University. He wrote for a number of major English and Indian newspapers and set up his own paper, the Urdu weekly Hamdard, in 1911. Aside from his involvement in helping the development of Ahmad Khan’s college, he also set up his own university in Delhi, the Jamia Millia Islamia in Aligarh in 1920 with himself as the first Vice Chancellor. For a short while he was also President of the All India Muslim League (1918). In 1919 Ali travelled to England as part of a delegation to persuade the British government to influence Mustafa Kemal into not deposing the Sultan (and, hence, Caliph) of Turkey. Britain rejected this call and consequently a Khilafat Conference was held calling for the restoration of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the setting up of the Jami’at al-’Ulama’-i Hind to fight for Muslim interests and the preservation of the Caliphate.1 How this Congress was meant to preserve the Caliphate was somewhat unclear, however, and the movement seemed to concentrate more on overthrowing British rule in India. When the Sultanate was abolished this seemed to remove the actual rationale of the movement and it soon collapsed. However, one consequence of the movement was that it did bring together many of the Muslim Indian intellectuals in a common cause, as well as a realization of the importance of the media as a sounding board for discontent. To this end, Ali had invited Mawdudi to work with him on Hamdard in 1924, but Mawdudi chose instead to become editor of another paper, the Urdu daily Al-Jamji’at.
Previous to this friendship with Muhammad Ali and subsequent editorship of Al-Jamji’at, however, Mawdudi had a series of journalist jobs. In 1919, together with his brother, he edited a pro-Congress weekly newspaper called Taj in Jubalpur in the Central Provinces, but this closed down soon after they took over. His brother, Abu’l-Khayr, decided to give up on journalism and in time became an Islamic scholar at Uthmaniya University. Mawdudi persisted, however, and with the relaunch of Taj he became once more its editor. An important city at the time, Jubalpur was also a centre for Khilafat activism, and Mawdudi became involved in such activity himself, delivering a number of public speeches and writing articles in Taj which criticized the British government. This criticism led again to the closure of the newspaper in the same year Mawdudi had become its editor. At this time, ‘I sensed that there existed some hidden power within me which would rise and assist me in time of need. Thence forth I never shunned or hesitated to accept responsibility.’2 Mawdudi was now becoming a recognized figure, and with a growing reputation he felt a new-found confidence in his abilities, as well as a mission. Back in Delhi, he became more politically active, joining various groups such as the short-lived Tahrik-i Hijrat (Migration Movement) which campaigned for Muslims to migrate en masse to Afghanistan. Also at this time, Mawdudi worked on his English which not only allowed him to communicate better with the British rulers, but also exposed him to a much greater variety of western thought. Mawdudi’s childhood education meant that he was throughout his life an avid reader. In 1921, he became editor of the newspaper Muslim, which lasted until 1923 when this paper too stopped publication. Muslim was run by the Jami’at al-’Ulama’-i Hind mentioned earlier. Aside from his writing and editing duties, this allowed Mawdudi to meet at first-hand some of the great Muslim intellectuals of the time and, having not gone to university himself, Mawdudi felt he needed to improve his formal education. He came under the tutelage of the Islamic scholar Mawlana ’Abdu’ssalam Niyazi (d.1966) to take a course known as dars-i nizami. On successful completion of the entire course, Mawdudi would gain an ijaza, which meant that he would become a competent Imam and scholar (alim) of Islamic sciences. Achieving such a status would put Mawdudi into the cultural elite as a true guardian of Islam for many Muslims, although the title of alim can also bring with it certain disadvantages, as the ulama were considered by a number of the Muslim intellectuals – for which Mawdudi would quite rightly count himself – as representing traditional, static Islam which is opposed to reform. With the perceived threat of British dominance in India, many of the ulama either adopted a passive attitude to this western encroachment or became more conservative in their stance in an attempt to protect the Islamic tradition. However, Mawdudi’s intent in taking the dars was no doubt his belief that if one wishes to reform Islam it is important to understand it fully. The course itself originated in the Middle East in the twelfth century and was brought over to India in the seventeenth century where it now dominates in the madrasas. Topics studied include Arabic, jurisprudence, Qur’anic exegesis, logic, philosophy, theology and literature as well as emphasizing the students’ moral and religious commitment and their development within the community. However, because Muslim ceased publication in 1923, Mawdudi left without completing his dars with Niyazi and spent the next year and a half completing his studies in Bhopal.
The move to Bhopal is significant in one particular respect: this was a city where the Ahl-i Hadith were particularly strong and Mawdudi would undoubtedly have been affected by their ideas. The Ahl-i Hadith tended to be associated with the salafis and, therefore, look to restore Islam to what is considered to be its original teachings and practices as existed during Muhammad and the Rashidun. The name ‘salafiyya’ derives from the phrase salaf as-salihin (‘the pious ancestors’) and seeks to reform Islam by referring to the lives and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions as the primary source for guidance. Mawdudi’s writings are very much representative of this view. They see much of Islamic practice as a deviation from the purity of Islam. They also believed that the survival of Islam required the abandonment of taqlid; the blind imitation of the medieval interpreters of the Qur’an. An important scholar here is the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) whose approach to salafi was to call for the dissolution of the four legal schools altogether and instead to use the ‘pious ancestors’ (that is, the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions primarily) as the ‘beacon’ for guidance, but in line with man’s rational capacity. He stressed that while those laws that governed worship such as prayer, fasting, and pilgrimage were unchangeable, the huge majority of legislation, such as regulation on family law and the penal codes were open to change according to the social and cultural traditions of the time. In theory, then, a salafi approach to Islam should allow for independent reasoning, although there is always the danger that – in the same way some Muslim scholars have been reluctant to contradict the rulings of traditional legal scholars – the ‘fundamentalist’ or conservative element could be unwilling to adopt anything other than a literal approach to the ‘pious ancestors’ and the Qur’an.3
In 1925, Mawdudi returned to Delhi to become editor of the new paper Al-Jam’iat (a paper associated with Jami’at al-’Ulama’-i Hind), having decided against working on Hamdard. His articles for Al-Jam’iat included ‘The State of Christians in Turkey’ (1922), and ‘Tyrannies of the Greeks in Smyrna’ (1922); both defending Turkey. He also translated from Arabic to Urdu Al-Mas’alah al-Sharqiyah (The Eastern Question) by the Egyptian journalist and politician Mutafa Kamil Pasha (1874–1908). Mustafa Kamil (‘Pasha’ is an honorary title, rather like Sayyid) was something of a idol to many Indian Muslim intellectuals, and there are many parallels between the crisis of Muslim identity in Egypt and that of India, with intellectuals in both countries setting up newspapers, political groups and schools at the same time in an attempt to address this threat. Just as India often looked to Egypt, so Egypt often looked to India. Kamil is one example of someone who had founded a newspaper, Al-Liwa (‘The Banner’) as a platform for his political views and also founded a boys’ school, as he was only too aware of the importance of education. He argued for state independence and, although considered by some to be quite secular and nationalist, he also had a pan-Islamic element to his views. Mawdudi also wrote a series of articles under the title Islam ka sarchashmih-i qudrat (‘The Sources of Islam’s Power’) which were obviously influenced by Mustafa Kamil in that they looked to the past in order to find solutions to the present day. Like Kamil, the importance of the Islamic past was key here, but did not, unlike some within the salafi movement, argue that this necessarily meant a return to the past. This is perhaps why Kamil was accused of being secular in outlook, but in Mawdudi’s case he was much more suspicious of nationalism as a solution, believing that its nature was too secularist to protect Islam, especially in a country like India where Muslims were such a small minority. Interestingly, only a year after writing a biography of Kamil, he started to then be critical of him: Mawdudi’s flirtation with secular nationalism was both subtle and extremely brief.
He also resumed once more his study of the dars, although this time under the tutelage of the Deobandi ulama at the Fatihpuri mosque’s seminary in Delhi. The formation of the Deobandi is perhaps the most important expression of Islamic reformism in nineteenth-century India. The first seminary was founded in 1867 in Deoband in Uttar Pradesh by Mawlana Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi and was called the Darul Uloom Deoband. Following the dars curriculum, its aim was to train the Muslim youth in Islamic knowledge using modern methods of teaching and, like the Aligarh experiment, was influenced by British educational methods in that the Deobandi schools set up were entirely independent, not being part of a household of religious scholars or associated with a local mosque. It also avoided the patronage of local nobles, instead seeking financial contribution from the general Muslim public. Teaching was standardized in all of its schools and so it could truly claim to have a ‘national’ curriculum with examinations and affiliated institutions, as well as employing staff on a permanent, professional basis. Within 30 years of its foundation, there were over 40 branch schools which unashamedly practiced dawa (proselytizing). However, while ‘modern’ in many respects, the Deobandis follow the fiqh (jurisprudence) of the law school of Abu Hanifa (AD 699–767). The law school he founded, the Hanafi, today has the largest following among the Muslim community. The Hanafi law school, like that of the Maliki, generally encouraged judges to exercise personal reflection and independent reasoning when reaching decisions; a principle known in Islamic law as ijtihad. The proviso was that the judges should be sufficiently qualified to engage in such independent reasoning of course, otherwise it would be wiser to imitate (a term known as taqlid) previous decisions by those more qualified. What became of increasing concern was the greater emphasis on taqlid, even by well-qualified legal scholars, which resulted in the eventual stagnation of Islamic law: hence Abu Hanifa’s title of ‘rationalist’ in his willingness to engage in reason to determine legal decisions in the spirit of the Qur’an. This independent reasoning, however, is not a matter of opinion but is to be understand within not only the context of the Qur’an as a whole, but also from the sources of the Prophet’s own words and deeds, referred to as the sunna, for Muhammad was effectively Islam’s greatest interpreter of the Qur’an as well as its reciter. Aside from the sources, the Hanafi school developed a methodology in which the underlying principles and divine injunctions can be derived, as well as determining the relative importance of these. This consisted, among other things, of qiyas (analogical reasoning) and istihsan (juristic preference). The Hanafi school of today remains the most liberal of the four established sunni law schools and is dominant in Central and Western Asia (Afghanistan to Turkey), Lower Egypt (Cairo and the Delta) and the Indian subcontinent. The Deobandis are also affiliated to the Chisti Order – the order that Mawdudi already belonged to – although its form of Sufism would not have been considered in any way ‘deviant’, but rather very much adhering to traditional hadith scholarship. In 1926, Mawdudi achieved his ijazahs and from then on was a Deobandi alim, but he preferred not to enter the ranks of the ulama or use his title in any kind of ‘clergy-like’ manner, quite possibly for the reasons stated above: a suspicion among Muslim intellectuals that the ulama were retrogressive in their views. As he himself said:
I do not have the prerogative to belong to the class of Ulema. I am a man of the middle cadre, who has imbibed something from both the systems of education, the new and the old; and has gathered my knowledge by traversing both paths. By virtue of my inner light, I conclude that neither the old school nor the new is totally in the right.4
While Mawdudi preferred not to become an alim he was certainly influenced by Deobandi ideas in his writings, especially regarding the concern for the decline in Islamic culture as a result of westernization. As we shall see, Mawdudi imitated the Deobandis in emulating ‘the practice of an authentic text or an idealized historical period’5 to argue for his political and ethical views. Also like the Deobandis, Mawdudi was critical of what he saw as ‘un-Islamic’ practices and groups, for example such Sufi practices as saint ‘worship’ and music and dancing, or the very existence of the group known as the Ahmadis (see below).
With the collapse of the Khilafat movement, Muslims in India became more politically and socially active, as well as developing increasingly violent means to achieve their ends. Hindus, in turn, organized their own groups. This was the start of the Shuddi movement, initiated by the Hindu revivalist party, Arya Samaj. This movement helps to explain to some extent why Mawdudi felt that something had to be done among the Muslims themselves and it is coupled with the Congress party becoming more and more Hindu in its identity. Mawdudi perceived these two events as evidence of Muslims being sidelined in India and, worse than that, being discriminated against.
If we consider the Shuddhi movement first, the word ‘shuddhi’ is Sanskrit for ‘purification’. The Arya Samaj (‘Noble Society’) was founded by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875. Dayananda was a sannyasi (‘renouncer’) who, previous to the setting up of Arya Samaj, had established a number of ‘Vedic schools’ in parts of India to inculcate Vedic values. Not unlike Mawdudi, then, Dayananda saw the importance of education as a form of social and religious reform. Students at the schools were provided with food, accommodation, clothing and books free of charge and were also taught Sanskrit, considered by many to be the exclusive right of Brahmins. Importantly, only those texts which accepted the authority of the Vedas were to be taught. In fact, Dayananda rejected all non-Vedic beliefs, condemning idolatry, ancestor worship, pilgrimages, child marriages, animal sacrifices and the caste system, all of which he claimed had no Vedic basis. As it turned out, these schools were not very successful6 which led Dayananda to found the Arya Samaj to drum up popular support. He also wrote Satyarth Prakash7 (‘Light of Truth’) to promote his teachings. It is divided into 14 chapters on such topics as bringing up children, and social values such as marriage, diet, etc. There is a chapter on the concept of God, in which Dayananda states quite clearly that there is only one God and that the Vedas were revealed by God in Sanskrit (being a holy and universal language, the ‘mother of all languages’ rather than country specific). The final four chapters deal, respectively, with other Indian religions: Buddhism and Jainism, Christianity, and, finally, Islam (or the ‘Muhammadens’ as it is referred to). These chapters generally consist of refutations of the claims of other religions, with the chapter on Islam questioning the validity of the Qur’an as the word of God.
While condemning the teaching of Islam and Christianity, Dayananda was influenced by the evangelical spirit of these two religions in his intention to put Hinduism on a par with them in terms of the supernatural authority of the Vedas. This view certainly went against much received scholarship on the matter, but it also fell into the hands of Hindu nationalists who wanted to build a Hindu nation based on universal principles. If it could be shown that the Vedas had such universal principles, then there was no need to look to Islam or Christianity. Hinduism had its own infallible authority.
Although the Sanskrit word ‘shuddhi’ means ‘purification’, it was used by the Arya Samaj to mean ‘reconversion’, particularly of those Hindus who had converted to Islam. Aside from the economic advantages, many Hindus would have converted to Islam to escape the caste system. As Arya Samaj also condemned the caste system, and Hindus were now able and encouraged to get employment in positions of power, there were good reasons for Muslim converts to reconvert to Dayananda’s understanding of Hinduism, especially as it was seen as a ‘universal church’ to which anyone was welcome to join. Dayananda himself was a charismatic figure who was able to hold his own in public debates, and so, coupled with an increase in anti-Islamic feelings, the Arya Samaj grew quickly.
Swaraj, or ‘self-rule’, usually refers to Gandhi’s effort to establish an independent, stateless society. In this sense, it was not intended to be ‘nationalist’ in character at all, as Gandhi was actually influenced by anarchist literature, so that self-government actually meant being independent of government control in which everyone is their own master. This was certainly an idealistic and utopian goal and, as such, was probably destined to fail. Jinnah was right to be critical in arguing that independence could only be achieved constitutionally rather than through the transformation of individuals. When, in 1920, the Indian National Congress adopted Swaraj as its cause, it was perceived as a political tool to gain independence from British rule, rather than as a utopian vision for Indian society of a stateless, direct democracy. From 1921, Gandhi led the Congress and he introduced a new constitution in the hope of making Swaraj a reality by making it less elite in terms of its membership, but his imprisonment in 1922 resulted in it splitting, with a lack of cooperation between Hindus and Muslims. Although Gandhi himself seems to have said nothing against Islam,8 the same could not be said for some other members of the Party, and increasingly the Indian National Congress became identified as pro-Hindu and anti-Islam.
Consequently, Mawdudi lost faith in the Congress Party and in the pro-Congress Jami’at al-’Ulama’-i Hind. In fact, Mawdudi began to lose faith in democracy altogether as the realization dawned that democracy in India would not help the Muslims in India unless they were the majority of the population. The Muslim scholar and politician Abul Kalam Azad, mentioned earlier, always argued that India should not be partitioned between Muslims and Hindus. He was a great supporter of Gandhi’s ideas, including the Swaraj movement, and was president of the Indian National Congress from 1940–45 during which he became the most prominent Muslim opponent to a separate Muslim nation. Azad presents us with an interesting contrast to Mawdudi for, although like Mawdudi, Azad was steeped in knowledge of the Islamic religious sciences (jurisprudence, Qur’anic exegesis, philosophy, and so on) and was even destined to become a member of the ulama, and by all accounts was as precocious as Mawdudi was when he was younger, it did not logically follow for him that Muslims need a separate state in order to maintain their identity. In fact, he identified Muslim identity with religious dogma which resulted in his adoption of self-described ‘atheism’ for some 10 years.9 Instead, Azad stressed the importance of a united India, one of religious harmony rather than division, and he saw religious dogma as detrimental to the unity of the state. His newspaper, Al-Hilal, to which Mawdudi’s father would read to him when he was a child, encouraged Muslims to fight in the defence of India, not of Muslims specifically, although he did also support the Khalifat movement. Azad called for India to be a secular nation and, as he grew to be friends with the statesman and future Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964), looked to socialism as a guiding political principle. Mawdudi, however, saw a necessity for Islamic revivalism coupled with a political strategy to defend the interests of Muslims in what he believed was an increasingly hostile India. With the collapse of the Khalifat movement, Muslims could not look to any external authority for identity or support, and so they had to look within themselves. Here, Mawdudi disagreed with Azad that Muslims should see themselves as Indian first and Muslim second. After being a journalist for 10 years, Mawdudi left Al-Jami’at in 1928 and devoted himself to this new vision for Muslims.
With the increase in the Shuddhi movement and in Hindu nationalism, an additional concern arose for Mawdudi within the ranks of Muslims themselves: the Ahmadis. The Ahmadiyya Jama’at, to give them their full title, are just one of the many groups that make up sunni Islam, although followers of the Ahmadi argue that they are not a new religion, or an innovation, but rather a fresh presentation of Islam in its original form. The Ahmadiyya movement itself began life in India as a reaction to the missionary activity of the Arya Samaj. It was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908) at the end of the nineteenth century. Ahmad proclaimed himself to be a mujaddid: a ‘reformer of the age’, as well as being the promised messiah that was foretold by the Prophet Muhammad. The Ahmadiyya sees itself as the true Islam, an attempt to revive Islam as it once was. Their beliefs are interesting and, perhaps not surprisingly, they are considered to be non-Muslims by the majority of orthodox Muslims. In 1924, some Ahmadi missionaries in Afghanistan were brought to trial on charges of apostasy. They were found guilty and executed. Mawdudi himself condemned them as heretics in 1973, and they have been the victims of persecution throughout most of their short history. The majority of Muslims do not refer to the Ahmadis by this name, but use the derogative Qadianis (Qadian, in north-west India, is the birthplace of Ahmad) and Mirzai (referring to Mirza Ahmad). By using these terms, the point is being made that Ahmadiyya is a new religion founded by a particular person at a particular time, unlike Islam which is universal: Muhammad is a Prophet, not a founder, and therefore it is considered derogative to refer to Islam as ‘Muhammadism’.
It is a small group, with numbers probably only around 30,000 to 50,000, although promotional literature will talk of a membership of 180 million! Qadian is the birthplace of Ahmad, and it is also where he was buried. Until the partition of India in 1947 it was also the headquarters of the Ahmadi before moving to Rabwah in the newly formed Pakistan. Ahmad was born in the mid-1830s, probably 1835. Like Mawdudi, Ahmad was raised in a noble Moghul family and therefore received a good classical education in the Islamic sciences. He worked for a while as a court clerk, but hated this, preferring to devote himself to reading the Qur’an and other holy texts. Following the death of his father in 1876, and roughly at the same age when the Prophet Muhammad started receiving his revelations, Ahmad claimed he started to receive visions and divine revelations. In these visions, Ahmad claimed to have met ‘some of the prophets of the past and saints of high ranks who have passed in this Ummah’.10 In one of his visions he was told to fast, and so he did this for six months, taking only one meal after sunset: ‘As a result of fasting the wonders that were disclosed to me, were various forms and types of visions.’11 He claims to have seen the Prophet Muhammad, as well as the Prophet’s grandsons, Hasan and Husain, and his cousin (and fourth Caliph or first Imam for the Shia) Ali. Ahmad went on to publish his Barahin-i-Ahmadiyyah (‘the Ahmadiyya proofs’) over the period 1880–4. The publication of this work caused controversy in the Muslim community. According to tradition, based upon a well-known hadith, each one hundred years a ‘renewer’, a mujaddid, will come who will restore Islam to its right path, having, one assumes, veered away. Such generally recognized ‘renewers’ include al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah and Shah Wali Allah. These were, for the most part, scholarly and unique individuals. One requirement of being a mujaddid, however, is that it is up to the public to recognize him, rather than for the mujaddid to declare it himself. Ahmad, however, claimed himself that he was the next mujaddid: ‘then, when the thirteenth century came to a close and the fourteenth century was about to dawn, God the most high, informed me by revelation: you are the Mujaddid of this century’.12 Ahmad’s claims became more exaggerated, that he was now the Indian Messiah, and that ‘he had come in the power and spirit of Jesus, and that his personality and character bore close resemblance to Jesus’.13 He claimed to have received ilham (personal divine inspiration) and wahy (messages from God), he was the Mahdi14 for Muslims as well as the Messiah for Christians and a manifestation of Krishna for Hindus. The ulama, of course, rejected his claims and issued a fatwa against him, denouncing him as a kafir. Ahmad, nonetheless, formed his Ahmadiyya Jama’at on 23 March 1889 at Ludhiana, with 41 followers who took bai’at (a pledge of allegiance). The first official gathering of the Ahmadis occurred at Qadian in 1891 and there followed an annual conference. At the second conference there were 500 Ahmadis and the decision was made to engage in missionary activity with the movement’s first missionary, Sayyed Muhammad Ahsan, and to establish a printing press and school. In April 1908 Ahmad fell ill with an attack of diarrhoea while visiting Lahore and he died a month later.
After his death, the Ahmadis were led by the Khalifat al-masih-I anwal (‘the first successor to the Messiah’), who was then followed by a succession of Khalifats to this day in one group. However, a split occurred among those who were against the idea of total obedience to one Khalifa, leading to the formation of a much smaller group,15 the Lahore Ahmadiyya Association for the Propagation of Islam, or the Lahori Ahmadi, with its headquarters in Lahore. This latter group is led by a collective body of senior members, called the Anjuman, with an appointed Amir, or President who is elected for life but who has less authority than the Khalifa equivalent. They also do not accept the view that Ahmad was appointed as a prophet. They consider Ahmad to be a muhaddath, that is someone who has the qualities of a prophet while not actually being appointed as a prophet. It is rather like saying someone has ‘kingly properties’ without actually being appointed king. The properties Ahmad possessed are not, in fact, dissimilar to a wali (saint) in Sufism, although they say that Ahmad never made a claim to be an actual prophet and that, therefore, Muhammad remains the last prophet. The Lahori Ahmadi are also more ‘orthodox’ in accepting that those who are not Ahmadis are still nonetheless Muslim provided they have recited the kalmia shahada (profession of faith), whereas the second khalifa stated that the Ahmadis should regard all non-Ahmadis as non-Muslim. For these reasons, the Lahori Ahmadi are at pains to distance themselves from the Qadian group.
What is significant about the events of 1924 are that the British were critical of the executions of the Ahmadis, which Mawdudi perceived as, on the one hand, a condemnation of orthodox Islam and, on the other, support for a form of Islam that Mawdudi, like so many orthodox Muslims, would not have wanted to be perceived as in any way Islamic. The concern was that the British may be more accepting of the seemingly16 more peaceful and all-embracing form of Islam presented by the Ahmadiyya. Other Muslims too may find this more attractive as a reaction to Muslim aggression towards Hindus, for example in the killing of a number of prominent figures in the Arya Samaj, such as Swami Shradhanand in 1926, by Muslims. Swami Shradhanand, or Lala Munshi Ram as he was also known, has been quoted as saying, ‘Many of the Muslim religious leaders have said in their speeches that the snake and the mongoose can be friends, but there can be no unity between Hindu kaffirs and Muslims.’17 While the Ahmadis were also against the Arya Samaj, they were equally against violent jihad, regarding this as anti-Islamic. More than ever, Mawdudi felt the need to articulate Islamic doctrine, in particular the concept of jihad.
One doctrine that both Ahmadi groups agree on is on their view of a peaceful jihad. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s views on jihad emphasizes the jihadi akbar (‘greater jihad’) as opposed to the jihadi asghar (‘lesser jihad’): the ‘greater’ involving a struggle for the individual believer against nafs (the self) and the pursuit of taqwa (‘God consciousness’ or inner righteousness) and so has nothing to do with holy war, violence or terrorism. Ahmad set out ‘to convince the world that Islam, as its name showed, was the religion of peace, and that it could bring about a revolution in the world without the use of physical force’.18 Advocating the Qur’anic principle ‘there is no compulsion in religion’,19 the Ahmadi ‘strongly reject violence and terrorism in any form and for any reason’.20 Ahmad, in his work Government-I angrezi awr Jihad (‘The British Government and Jihad’) presented asghar jihad as primarily a defensive doctrine in that there are only three legitimate types of war in Islam: war ‘undertaken in self-defence’; as ‘chastisement for aggression’; and ‘those undertaken for the establishment of freedom of conscience, that is to say for breaking up the strength of those who inflicted death upon such as accepted Islam’.21 Therefore, jihad by the sword is not wholly rejected here, but Ahmad is reflecting the general view that the promised Messiah would put an end to fighting:
with the advent of the Promised Messiah22 it is incumbent on every Muslim to give up Jihad. If I had not come, there could not have been some excuse for this misconception. But with my advent you have become witnesses at the appointed hour. Now you have no excuse for using swords for religious battles before God.23
Among many orthodox Muslims is the belief in the Ghazi Mahdi, a divinely guided warrior who will spread Islam by the sword. However, the Ahmadi reject this, arguing that the Ahmadi will actually bring an end to violence. The Ahmadi use Qur’anic support,24 and the example of the Prophet Muhammad is cited as a model of non-violence, patience, justice and mercy. It is only because, the Ahmadis argue, the Meccans were aggressive towards the Muslims that they fought in self-defence.
Historically, Ahmadis have not always remained pacifist. Asghar Jihad, remember, is acceptable in certain circumstances (see above). Ahmad stated that: ‘Islam does not allow the use of the sword for the faith; except in the case of defensive wars, or in the case of wars waged to punish a tyrant or to uphold freedom.’25 Consequently, the Ahmadi have been involved in some conflicts. For example, the second Ahmadi Khalifa supported the Kashmiri Muslims against the Hindu Maharaja during the 1930s and, in 1948, after the creation of Pakistan, the Ahmadis raised a volunteer fighting force to fight against Indian troops in Kashmir. It formed its own militia to defend itself during the India and Pakistan partition, and the second Khalifa also gave full support to the British during the Second World War, urging Ahmadis to join the army and fight, for which perhaps up to 15,000 joined the Punjab Regiment.
The Ahmadi were subsequently criticized by some Muslims for fashioning their beliefs simply to gain British support. As Ahmad pointed out: ‘To every persuasion the [British] government has granted full freedom to preach one’s beliefs. Hence an opportunity has been afforded for followers of all faiths to scrutinise and assess the principles on which various faiths are based … for this reason again and again in my writings and speeches I have been making mention of the favours of the British Government.’26 Ahmad argued that to fight against British rule, which he equated with just rule, would not be jihad, but a crime.
The Ahmadis have often found themselves persecuted, in Pakistan especially. Mainly due to pressure from the ulama, on 7 September 1974 the National Assembly of Pakistan passed a resolution which declared that all Ahmadis in the country were a non-Muslim religious sect. In 1984, General Zia-ul-Haq went further in imprisoning Ahmadis for practising their faith. Many Ahmadi mosques were burned to the ground and they have been persecuted, harassed or even murdered, resulting in many finding refuge in Europe or America. Some blame must be placed on Mawdudi for inflaming the passions of many Muslims against the Ahmadi in the first place. Two pamphlets in particular, The Qadiani Problem and The Finality of Prophethood, contain strong attacks on Ahmadi teachings.
In The Qadiani Problem, Mawdudi starts by defending the proposals, initially put forward by the ulama in 1953, to declare the Ahmadis a non-Muslim minority. He begins by explaining how the term Khataman Nabiyyeen (‘Seal of the Prophets’) is to be understood. Whether as the ‘last’ prophet or, as Mawdudi argues is the view of the Ahmadis, that no one can be a prophet after Muhammad unless he bears Muhammad’s ‘seal’, as in ‘authority’. Mawdudi goes on to state: ‘The Qadianis contend that the prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is not the only issue on which they fundamentally differ from Muslims. They also hold that their God, their Islam, their Qur’an, their fasts, in fact everything of theirs is different from that of the Muslims.’27 He makes reference to a number of Ahmadi pieces of literature to show that it is the Ahmadis who have cut their ties with other Muslims, not the other way around:
This cutting of ties is not merely of an academic nature confined to speeches and writings. It has been translated into action, and millions of people in Pakistan are witness to its practical demonstrations to the effect that Qadianis have, as a matter of fact, severed religious and social relations with the Muslims and have organised themselves into a separate and distinct Ummat. The position being what it is, what reason on earth could there be to thrust Qadianis upon Muslims and forcibly tie them with the Muslim community? Why should not the fact of their separation be constitutionally recognised which has been there, in theory as well as in practice, for the last fifty years or so?28
Mawdudi goes on to argue that the existence of the Ahmadi is the very reason why Muhammad is the final prophet, for otherwise it is a demonstration of how the umma would have disintegrated into parts. But it is in Mawdudi’s use of language, of scathing attacks against the Ahmadi, that certainly incite hatred towards the Ahmadiyya. For example, he raises his own question as to why the Ahmadis should not be tolerated in the same way certain other Muslim minority groups are. Mawdudi responds to his own questions so:
the continuous propagation of the Qadiani creed is a constant menace to the religion of the millions of ignorant Muslims. Moreover it has created many a social problem for the Muslim society. It has separated husbands from wives, fathers from sons, and brothers from brothers. In addition to this, it has developed acute economic rivalries between the Qadianis and the Muslims. The Qadiani community as a separate group is opposing the Muslims in Government offices, in the fields of commerce, industry and agriculture, etc.29
Such statements seem, to say the least, unfounded and inflammatory.
In The Finality of Prophethood, its message is summed up clearly in the Foreword, which is worth quoted in full here:
Of all the conspiracies hatched against Islam in modern times, the most dangerous is a false claim to Prophethood made in the beginning of this century. This claim has been the main cause of wide spread mental chaos amongst the Ummah for the last sixty years. Like all other schisms, the root cause of this mischief is that the Muslims are generally ignorant of their religion. Had they been truly imbued with its knowledge and developed a clear understanding of the article of faith relating to the finality of Prophethood, it would have been well-nigh impossible for any false claimant to Prophethood to take root and thrive among the people of Islam after the last ministry of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). At this juncture the most perfect and effective remedy for eradicating this evil is to educate the maximum number of people in the best possible manner about true faith in the finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him) and stressing the importance and value of this article of faith in the religion of Islam. It is also imperative that all doubts and skeptical notions about the final ministry of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) should be dispelled through reason and logic. This booklet has been prepared to serve this very purpose. Readers who find it useful should take a step further and extend their full co-operation in the propagation of its contents. This booklet ought to reach all literate people and they having studied it themselves should read it out to the non-literate. It is hoped that a study of this booklet will not only immunize people who have not been contaminated with this malady but would also make the truth manifest to the right-minded persons among those who have received some of its germs. However, those who have fallen victim to falsehood and are impervious to all reason – for them, hope and salvation lies only with Allah.30
As the title suggests, the primary aim of this pamphlet is to demonstrate that Muhammad was the final prophet, with, again, considering in some detail the exact meaning of the phrase Khataman Nabiyyeen:
It is evident that the text can bear one meaning and it is that Khatam-al-Nabiyyin stands for the Finality of Prophethood with a clear implication that the prophethood has been culminated and finalized in Muhammad (PBUH). It is not only the context that supports this interpretation but also the lexicography.
According to Arabic lexicon and the linguistic usage Khatam means to affix seal; to close, to come to an end; and to carry something to its ultimate end. Khatama al-’Amala is equivalent to ‘Faragha min al-’Almali’ which means ‘to get over with the task [sic]’. ‘Khatama al-Ina’ bears the meaning ‘The vessel has been closed and sealed so that nothing can go into it, nor can its contents spill out.’ ‘Khatam-al-kitab’ conveys the meaning ‘The letter has been enclosed and sealed so that it is finally secured.’ ‘Khatama-’Ala-al-Qalb’ means ‘The heart has been sealed so that it cannot perceive anything new nor can it forswear what it has already imbibed.’
‘Khitamu-Kulli-Mashrubin’ implies ‘the final taste that is left in the mouth when the drink is over.’
Katimatu Kulli Shaiinn ‘Aqibatuhu wa Akhiratuhu means ‘The end in the case of everything denotes its doom and ultimate finish.’ Khatm-ul-Shaii Balagha Akhirahu conveys the sense, ‘To end a thing means to carry it to its ultimate limit.’
The term Khatam-i-Qur’an is used in the similar sense and the closing verses of Qur’anic Surahs are referred to as Khawatim. Khatim-ul-Qaum Akhirhuum means ‘The last man in the tribe.’ (Refer to Lisan-ul-’Arab; Qamus and Aqrab-ul-Muwarid).
For this reason all linguists and commentators agree that Khatam-ul-Nabiyyin means ‘The Last in the line of Prophets.’ The word Khatam in its dictionary meaning and linguistic usage does not refer to the post office stamp which is affixed on the outgoing mail. Its literal meaning is the ‘seal’ which is but on the envelope to secure its contents.31
Having examined the lexicon of the word ‘Khatam’ as expressed in the Qur’an, Mawdudi then, in typical fashion, provides support for this understanding by referring to hadith literature, although more will be said about the reliability of such hadith later on in this book. In addition, Mawdudi also argues that there was a consensus of the Companions (those who were Muslims contemporaneous with Muhammad) that he was to be the final Prophet:
All authentic historical traditions reveal that the companions of the prophet (PBUH) had unanimously waged a war on the claimants to the prophethood and their adherents after the demise of the Holy Prophet. (PBUH).32
He cites the example of Musailama who claimed co-prophecy with Muhammad, but an army was sent against him by the Companions not because he rebelled, but because he made a claim to religious authority that was not accepted by the majority. Following on from the Companions, Mawdudi utilizes the views of the ulama:
A glance through the history of Islam from the first century up to the modern times reveals to us the fact that the ulema of all periods in every Islamic country of the world are unanimous in their conviction that no new prophet can be raised after Muhammad (PBUH). They all agree in the belief that anyone who lays a claim to Prophethood after Muhammad (PBUH) and anyone who puts faith in such a claim is an apostate and an outcast from the community of Islam.33
Mawdudi proceeds to lists over 20 quotes from religious scholars from a variety of periods and places to support his view that there is a consensus among the ulama that Muhammad is the final prophet. Mawdudi then makes three more points to argue against the Ahmadi’s claim to a new Prophet. First, he argues that if it were indeed the case that there were to be future prophets, then surely on such an important matter, God would have made this clear in the Qur’an: ‘The Apostle of God would never have passed away without having forewarned his people that other Apostles would succeed him and that his followers must put their faith in the succeeding prophets.’34
Second, Mawdudi raises the question as to whether a prophet is needed at this particular time, that is, whether the conditions of prophethood are ripe. He cites four Qur’anic conditions necessary for the arrival of a prophet:
Firstly there was need for a prophet to be sent unto a certain nation to which no prophet had been sent before and the message brought by the Prophet of another nation could not have reached these people.
Secondly, there was need for appointing a prophet because the message of an earlier Prophet had been forgotten by the people, or the teachings of the former prophets had been adulterated and hence it had become impossible to follow the message brought by that Prophet.
Thirdly, the people had not received complete mandate of Allah through a former prophet. Hence succeeding prophets were sent to fulfill the task of completing the religion of Allah.
Fourthly, there was need for a second prophet to share the responsibility of office with the first prophet.35
As none of these conditions need to be fulfilled at the present time, there is therefore no need for another prophet.
Third, and finally, Mawdudi argues that God has completed his mission through the Prophet Muhammad and so there is no room for further prophets.
Mawdudi ends this pamphlet by considering the status and possibility of a Mahdi who, it might be argued, does not come as a new prophet, thus not breaking the tradition that Muhammad is the final prophet, but is the re-emergence of Christ, a ‘Christ incarnate’, or perhaps ‘a man like Christ’. Mawdudi again appeals to hadith in considering the meaning of this ‘al-Masih’ (Messiah). He first of all presents 21 traditions from Islamic scholarship that present the view of a ‘Christ incarnate’. However, Mawdudi argues that these are all reference to Jesus born to Mary by immaculate conception, not to someone who is born from the sperm of a father (as was the case with Ahmad):
Yet another point which is made equally clear by the traditions is that Christ son of Mary will not descend in the capacity of a newly appointed Apostle of God. He will not receive any Divine revelations. He will not be the bearer of any new message or repository of a fresh mandate from God, nor will he amend, enlarge or, abridge the Shariah of Muhammad (PBUH), nor indeed will Christ son of Mary be brought into the world to accomplish the renewal of faith. Christ son of Mary (PBUH) will not call upon the people to put their faith in his own prophethood, nor will he found a separate community of followers.36
So what we have leading up to Mawdudi’s writing on jihad was what he perceived as a threefold threat to Muslim survival in India. First, the Hindu ascendency with the Indian National Congress coupled with the collapse of the Khalifat movement and what Mawdudi perceived as Gandhi’s unwillingness to side with Indian Muslims. Second, the rise in popularity of the Arya Samaj and the Shuddhi movement with such anti-Islamic remarks from its leading figures such as Swami Shradhanand and Dayananda. Third, the challenge to orthodoxy from the Ahmadis.
Mawdudi’s move away from journalism and recognition as a scholar and writer began with a little book Risala al Dinyat (‘Towards Understanding Islam’), published in 1928 which became a staple for Muslim schoolchildren. But his first major and original work was Jihad fil islam (‘Jihad in Islam’), published in 1930 and consisting of a collection of essays that had originally appeared in serial form between February to May 1927 in Al-Jam’iat. He received a number of accolades from Muslim scholars for this work, which no doubt encouraged him to pursue this new career. Rev. Dr Jan Slomp, who lived in Pakistan for a number of years and studied Islam, has written a chapter-by-chapter summary of this book which he considers to be ‘probably the most comprehensive book on this subject ever written by a Muslim’.37