So far we have looked at Mawdudi’s career and have, to a small extent, interspersed his political progress with some of his ideas. This chapter, and those that follow, will consider in much more detail what Mawdudi’s teachings actually were, as well as the philosophical, political and historical context of his views. As we have already touched upon, Mawdudi’s ideology is peppered with historical paradigms, most importantly the career of the Prophet Muhammad and the establishment of the first Islamic state in Medina. It makes little sense in considering Mawdudi’s views without a full appreciation of this context, as well as that of other religious and philosophical movements and figures that have had a profound effect on Mawdudi. As we have seen, Mawdudi was brought up in the specific historical and social context of India at a time of decline in British colonial power, coupled with a likewise decline in Muslim Mogul dominance and the subsequent rise of Hindu nationalism and secularism. All of these events are obviously important in understanding Mawdudi, and the first five chapters especially have related these events to his political program. However, what must not be forgotten is Mawdudi’s ability to operate ‘outside’ of the present time. It is a common characteristic of many religions and religious movements that the world is perceived in both a concrete real time of contemporary events and socio-economic considerations, while also operating within a framework by what may be referred to as the ‘transhistorical’. As the great American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) has remarked, ideologies bridge ‘the emotional gap between things as they are and as one would have them to be, thus insuring the performance of roles that might otherwise be abandoned in despair or apathy’.1 Mawdudi is strongly representative of his use of Islamic ideology in this way. On the one hand, he is confronted by an Islam as it is practised and engaged in by contemporary, particularly Indian, society in the twentieth century while, on the other hand, this is fed by Islam as an ideology that is utopic in character. For Mawdudi, this utopic ideology is very much present in the everyday. In that sense, the transhistorical has been transcended by informing the everyday with its paradigms.
As an Islamic revivalist, Mawdudi, as do many revivalists, looks to the past, to key Islamic paradigms that inform a ‘golden age narrative’. History, for Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) is ‘a memory determined by the authority’.2 By ‘authority’ Qutb means events, people or myths that can impose themselves upon the collective memory of a culture. For Islamic discourse, that authority is primarily the golden age narrative and this is what is meant by transhistorical Islam. For Mawdudi, there are four specific paradigms. First, there is, of course the holy scripture of Islam, the Qur’an, which Mawdudi was extremely familiar with and, in fact, had written a famous commentary on the Qur’an which is still used today. Second, the deeds and words of the Prophet Muhammad. As the divinely chosen ‘vessel’ for the Qur’an, the life of the Prophet is seen as the paradigm for the perfect Muslim. Third, the creation of the first Islamic state of Medina, formerly Yathrib. Finally, the period following the death of Muhammad known as the period of the Rightly Guided Caliphs (Khalifat-e-Rashidun). The first four Caliphs that followed the death of Muhammad are considered ‘rightly guided’ primarily because they all knew Muhammad personally and so are the first generations of Muslims, or what are known as the Companions of the Prophet (sahabah). The Companions are the men and women who lived, worked and fought beside the Prophet and, consequently, the practices of these Caliphs are seen as paradigms of Islamic leadership. In total, this golden age narrative is a relatively short period of time, from Muhammad’s first revelation in around AD 610 until the death of the fourth Rightly Guided Caliph, Ali, in AD 661. The fact that it was such a short period of time is all the more remarkable given how Islam, in the space of just 50 years, had spread. Given this narrative, it is understandable that Mawdudi felt that Islam, if ‘revived’ in the way it was in the seventh century, would soon overcome India and beyond.
An important facet of Islamic ideology that is often cited by revivalists is that there is no separation between religion and politics. Whether this is actually the case will be considered later on, but it highlights here how the transhistorical can impose itself upon the historical, how a utopic conception of Islam can mould contemporary political ideology. Pure Islam, as understood by Mawdudi, is life, not just a part of life. It is all-encompassing and so is just as much political as it is social, economic, ‘religious’, and so on. This differs from the more modern western perception of politics as concerned with formal institutions and power relations within an organized setting that are separate from religious organizations,3 and so one can talk of the realm of politics as separate from the realm of religion. Also, as it is separate from religion, politics is effectively secular.
Mawdudi’s conception of Islam in its pure state is certainly utopic, as we shall explore, but having a utopic vision need not be seen as necessarily negative. Although Plato, in his Republic, goes into considerable detail on the nature of his utopic state which suggests that Utopia, ‘no place’ being the literal translation of the Greek, can actually become a reality. The problem with a utopia arises when it is considered seriously as a possibility which can then result in a state that is ideological, impotent and static.4 We are always inclined to see people’s philosophical writings in a global sense, but sometimes it makes more sense to see it in a local manner. Perhaps Plato’s criticisms of democracy, for example, had more to do with its responsibility for the death of his friend and mentor Socrates. As another example, Nietzsche’s philosophy is often ad hominem, concerned more with responding to Wagner, Schopenhauer, etc., than presenting a global view. And, indeed, many Nietzsche scholars would argue that he does not have a political philosophy at all. It has been argued that to some extent Mawdudi can be read in a similar manner: the complexity of Mawdudi’s treatment of democracy perhaps has to do with the context in which he first encountered it: Indian nationalism promised democracy in a pluralistic society, while many Muslims saw Indian nationalism as a vehicle for Hindu supremacy. For that reason, Mawdudi was suspicious of democracy while also aware of its positive connotations. Ultimately, it is argued, Mawdudi conceived of the state in ahistorical terms as an ideal type in which the question of democracy would not even arise. However, although Mawdudi may not have intended to present a detailed account of an Islamic state, the realities of day-to-day political engagement meant that he did just that in considerable detail and, like Plato, we cannot simply ignore these writings and treat them merely as speculative whims. Mawdudi engages in a form of active utopianism, that is he wishes to engage actively in creating a utopia on earth. Generally speaking, as in Plato for example, speculation upon the nature of a utopian society is founded upon a recognition that these societies have never existed in any substantial form. Certain forms of philosophical Romanticism do make reference to a historical utopia, most notably that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) in his brilliant Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (published in 1755), where he deals most clearly with humankind’s alienation from nature. Rousseau presents us with a ‘hypothetical history’ of man in a pre-social condition:
I see an animal less strong than some, and less active than others, but, upon the whole, the most advantageously organised of any; I see him satisfying the calls of hunger under the first oak, and those of thirst at the first rivulet; I see him laying himself down to sleep at the foot of the same tree that afforded him his meal; and behold, this done, all his wants are completely supplied.5
Rousseau did not see the state of nature as a brutal war, as Hobbes did. Rousseau’s ‘savage man’, taken further back in history than Hobbes’, does not live in fear and anxiety, being in a position to fight or flee from other creatures. It is only as humankind moves out of its natural condition that it fears death.6 In addition, ‘In proportion as he becomes sociable and a slave to others, he becomes weak, fearful, mean-spirited, and his soft and effeminate way of living at once completes the enervation of his strength and his courage.’7Importantly, however, Rousseau does call for a return to this form of utopia and, in fact, argues that such a thing would be disastrous for the human race. Rather, he argues for a greater role for nature within a modern social setting. This is where Mawdudi differs so much, for not only was his utopic vision regarded by him as being a historical reality, he also argued for its recreation in the modern world: not an exact copy, of course, but nonetheless within the same framework in terms of the paradigms referred to earlier. Because of the golden age narrative, utopia was a concrete reality in a relatively not-too-distant past. It follows, so far as Mawdudi is concerned, that if something actually did exist in the past, then it could be realized once more in the future. There could be no prophet, of course, but there could be a leader, a ‘sheikh’, with considerable authority. Further, and this is rather like Rousseau here, Mawdudi’s Islamic society is completely in line with nature. In fact, it is nature. As Islam is the one and true religion and Medina was its incarnation on earth, governed by the Prophet of God, then this was a society governed by the laws of God/nature (God being the creator of nature and the harmony within it). Man is a natural being in the sense he is a religious being. The Qur’an is full of such references to man, who by turning away from God, is also turning away from his own true nature. As another famous American anthropologist, Ernest Gellner (1925–95), pointed out, ‘Islam is the blueprint of a social order’.8 To be a Muslim is to live in an Islamic state, for ultimate authority rests in divine order. A political order living under sharia is the realization of a utopia. The topos where this order of perfection exists is the time of Prophet Muhammad and the Rashidun. Medina is perceived as the authentic Islamic community, with Muhammad as the authentic Islamic leader. While Mawdudi talks of this state as being a theo-democracy, and more on this later, his understanding of the Islamic state is that it does not fit neatly into any form of existing political order, whether it be Marxist, socialist, democratic, dictatorial or a monarchy. These are ‘imported ideologies’. To be religious is ‘to bind’ (religio) oneself to the Divine and so the Muslim both exists in the temporal, historical world and in the eternal, transhistorical. The Islamic community, in its perfection, mirrors the heavenly archetype; the exempla is that of Medina. The Muslim’s relation to the community defines his relationship with Allah so that to be a good Muslim in the Islamic community is to follow the laws laid down, primarily, by the Qur’an: the ‘descent of the Absolute’.
For Muslims in particular, this ‘binding’ to God has political implications. It is considered by Mawdudi as much more than a personal relationship, because Islam concerns itself with all matters of human society, whether social, political or economic. Whereas in Christianity, for example, salvation effectively lies in the acceptance of Christ as the Messiah as manifested in sacramental rituals such as baptism and matrimony, for the Muslim salvation is living one’s daily life. The everyday decision he or she makes are religious acts:
Christianity is essentially a mystery which veils the Divine from man … In Islam, however, it is man who is veiled from God … Islam is thus essentially a way of knowledge; it is a way of gnosis (ma’rifah) … Islam leads to that essential knowledge which integrates our being, which makes us know what we are and be what we know or in other words integrates knowledge and being in the ultimate unitive vision of reality.9
However, as Patrick Bannerman points out:
For Muslims, there is an added complexity in that the era of Rashidun, the ‘Golden Age’ of Islam, has become an idealized state in which pristine and pure Islam sprang forth, like Aphrodite from the waves, completely furnished with all the impedimenta of a fully-fledged state and society – law, philosophy, administrative machinery, economic principles, etc. Yet as many authorities, including Muslim authorities, have conclusively demonstrated, the evolution of the impedimenta of a fully fledged state and society took place over a period of some three centuries or more following the Golden Age. Furthermore, the period of the Rashidun was itself one of the most innovative in the history of Islam.10
As will be shown, the problem with Mawdudi is that he does idealize the Islamic state and fails to take account of its social and cultural milieu and development. The very thought that Islam could have been influenced by something outside of Islam was inconceivable for Mawdudi. To help to understand Mawdudi’s concept of the transhistorical, there is an interesting article by Bert de Vries, ‘Theocracy in Islam’, which is worthwhile summarizing here as he provides such a succinct account of the features that make up the transhistorical view of the Islamic state, borrowing heavily as he does from traditional and medieval sources of political theory.
(a) Every act is a religious act. This is something that the Prophet Muhammad believed to be the case. What he said and what he did was not merely the acts of the political leader of a state, but it was the acts of a human being – eating, drinking, socializing – who is considered the perfect Muslim.
(b) The state of Medina was a perfect theocracy. In its initial stages it was little more than a tribal confederacy ruled by the Prophet. However, even as it grew rapidly into a world empire ruled by the Abbasids from their capital in Baghdad, the basic framework of this first theocracy remained in place.
(c) In these Islamic societies, there is no distinction between the spiritual and political realms, for God expresses His will directly and clearly to humankind through the body politic. A harmony between humankind and state is therefore achieved.
(d) The Qur’an is the literal word of God, communicated through the Prophet Muhammad. It is not simply a ‘holy book’, but a comprehensive guide to every aspect of the Muslim life. Daily life is sacrament, and salvation comes through living every aspect of your life as a Muslim. In the Qur’an it is stated: ‘This day I have perfected your religion for you and completed My favour to you. I have chosen Islam to be your faith’ (5.4). The key word here is ‘perfected’; it is the perfect, the complete religion. The Qur’an, therefore, provides political direction, especially given that the Prophet Muhammad was also a political leader. In time, the Qur’an and the words and deeds of Muhammad, the hadith, became that body of law known as sharia. Sharia, as the law of God, stands above the state and its ruler. ‘In this sense it is perhaps more apropos to characterize Islamic politics as “nomocratic” rather than “theocratic”.’11
(e) As the Islamic state is governed by divine law, its full citizens must, by implication, be Muslim. Looking back at the first Islamic state, the umma consisted of those who had submitted to the will of God. The Islamic state, therefore, is not defined by national boundaries, or by race, gender or class, but by its membership of Muslims. This is what constitutes the Dar al-Islam (‘The House of Islam’).
(f) The following are characteristic theocratic institutions of the Islamic state:
i. The Caliphate. Prophethood ended with Muhammad, but the role of political leader of the state was passed on in the form of the Caliph; the ‘successor’ of the prophet of God. The first four Caliphs are considered ‘rightly guided’ (rashidun), because they lived concurrently with the Prophet and knew him personally.
ii. The ulama. Although it is often stated that there is no ‘priesthood’ in Islam, the ulama – as experts in the Islamic sciences – have often in the past wielded considerable authority. As interpreters of God’s will, they are often seen as the guardians of theocracy and a check against the abuse of power by the political authorities.
De Vries goes on to note that the traditional theocratic concept of the Islamic state was threatened and undermined by the European conquests during the period of roughly 1750–1950, which saw the introduction of alien ideologies such as liberalism and nationalism. When talking of an Islamic resurgence, this began in around 1950 as a reaction against these alien ideologies. At first this resurgence seemed, ironically, to be characterized by the adoption of other – seemingly alien – ideologies such as socialism or communism, although it was argued by figures such as Qaddafi in his Green Book that it is actually compatible with Islam. More recently, however, revivalists have looked to the golden age narrative as the model for Islamic revival.
Although the characteristics above are inevitably a generalization, they do to a great extent fit with Mawdudi’s form of revivalism. What Mawdudi meant by ‘intellectual independence’ was for an Islam that was pure, that was unsullied by external cultural influences. This was most specifically in terms of the ascending culture of Hinduism, but more widely it was a desire for Islam to be divorced from any external influence, any ‘-ism’, whether Marxism, Communism, secularism, and so on. Mawdudi saw Islam as possessing its own ‘-ism’: Islam is Islamism. It is a completely independent alternative to other systems that existed. This concept of intellectual independence derives to some extent from Mawdudi’s readings of Muhammad Iqbal and his concept of khudi (selfhood), which Mawdudi interpreted as Islamic self-assertion against alien ‘-isms’.12
The importance that Mawdudi places on the Prophet Muhammad as a paradigm is also evident in Iqbal’s poetry, Asrar-i-Khudi (‘Secrets of the Self ’, 1915), as are a number of Iqbal’s poems, in turn, influenced by Nietzsche’s views on the Ubermensch, and Iqbal, indeed, saw the Prophet Muhammad as something of a Nietzschean ‘superman’. As Malise Ruthven notes:
Iqbal’s mystical humanism reflected his reading of Bergson and Nietzsche, as well as ideas developed from the traditions of Islamic neoplatonism, Nietzsche’s ‘superman’ and Ibn Arabi’s ‘Perfect Man’, Bergson’s ‘elan vital’, and Rumi’s evolutionary spiral, merge in his thinking, along with perceptions drawn from Hegel, Whitehead, Russell and Einstein.13
Iqbal is much more philosophical, and more subtle, than Mawdudi and, although they both emphasized the importance of the Prophet, Iqbal’s paradigm was less political in character. Also, Iqbal – unlike Mawdudi – thought that the perfect Islamic state has never existed in past history and so to create such a state requires looking to the future, not the past.
In the Ruthven quote above, mention is also made of Bergson as an influence on Iqbal. Mawdudi’s concept of the transhistorical is also, indirectly, an influence of Bergson’s distinction between ‘time’ and ‘duration’: the influence is indirect in that it was through Iqbal that Mawdudi directly encountered this view. Iqbal looked to western thought; not to ‘borrow’ from it, but to see how it helps to illustrate what he considered to be universal truths that are indigenous to Islam. Iqbal was not threatened by external thought, as he had sufficient confidence in the resilience of Islam to withstand such external forces. Knowledge, no matter where it comes from, is there to be used and it is not necessary to agree to it. As he says in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, ‘Approach modern knowledge with a respectful but independent attitude and to appreciate the teachings of Islam in the light of that knowledge, even though we may be led to differ from those who have gone before us.’14 The appeal of Islam for many Muslims, and Mawdudi included, is that he took Islam out of its historical context and made it transhistorical by appealing to its universal and absolute principles. By applying these principles to any given time or place allows for Islam, in principle at least, to remain fresh and creative. Coupled with this was Iqbal’s unwavering confidence in the ability of Islam to adapt and withstand attacks upon it. The response to external, ‘alien ideology’, was not to submit and admit defeat, but rather to see within other ideologies common universal ideas that are shared. Like Nietzsche, Iqbal has been described as a philosopher of the future, and it can be seen why.
Two concepts that were important in Iqbal’s writings were khudi, mentioned above, and tawhid: ‘humanity needs three things today, spiritual interpretation of the universe, spiritual emancipation of the individual, and basic principles of a universal import directing the evolution of human society on a spiritual basis’.15 The khudi, or ego, is expressed in both an existential sense of emerging and evolving, but also in a communal sense of being part of the group consciousness of the umma. In a way, it’s a resolution of the moral problem that is encountered in a study of existentialism of how the individual can be a moral agent and be free. For Iqbal, the agent’s freedom is expressed through the communal, but he also wants to stress that the moral conclusions the individual draws are universal in nature.
The importance of tawhid, the oneness of God, was equally emphasized by Mawdudi. For Iqbal, tawhid implied the rejection of the Cartesian dualistic conception of the world as mental and physical. If we may digress for a moment and consider what is meant by this Cartesian view and why it is significant here: for the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), the physical world is subject to strict mathematical laws that can be controlled by humankind. For Descartes, the world is essentially there to be appropriated by humankind, a ‘utility’ to be used for the service of humankind, for humankind is able to make itself master and possessor of nature. Descartes had an unbending confidence in logical deductive reasoning over the uncertainty of mere probabilities, in isomorphic method with its reliance on the supposed a priori analytic certainty of mathematics. Iqbal’s existential philosophy, alternatively, allows the human body much greater freedom to escape from the limitations of scientific determinism. The concept of tawhid contains within it a unity of body and soul, spirit and matter, the individual and the communal.
For Iqbal, the ultimate khudi is God. God is both transcendent, but also, in another sense, immanent, as God is intimately connected with humankind through his creative power. This is very much a Sufi conception of God: not a distant, unobtainable figure, but as the often quoted verse in the Qur’an states: ‘We created man. We know the promptings of his soul, and are closer to him than his jugular vein.’16 Mention in the Ruthven quote is made of the influence also of ‘Rumi’s evolutionary spiral’ for God, as the Ultimate Ego, manifests Himself from the lowest forms of matter to the highest evolutionary form which is humankind. For Iqbal, ‘Reality is essentially spirit’, but ‘Indeed the evolution of life shows that, though in the beginning the mental is dominated by the physical, the mental as it grows in power, tends to dominate the physical and may eventually rise to a position of complete independence …’17 The human ego evolves gradually from the position of possessing hardly any freedom at all and subject to the laws of nature of human appetites, to a more spiritual state of independence and dynamism: ‘The “unceasing reward” of man consists in his gradual growth in self-possession, in uniqueness, and intensity of his activity as an ego.’18 Like Mawdudi’s view, the paradigm of the perfect human for Iqbal is also the Prophet Muhammad as the creator of new values. The purpose of human life on earth is the creation of self-creative egos, the men with khudi; the lords of creation. Iqbal’s Vicegerent is his perfect Muslim; of which the finest example is the Prophet Muhammad. Speaking of the Prophet, he says:
He is the preface to the book of two worlds,
All the people of the world are slaves and he is the master.
Mankind is the cornfield and thou the harvest,
Thou art the goal of life’s caravan.19
The Prophet spoke of the divine within the human and so, in theory at least, humankind is capable of overcoming the transcendent and taking part in the divinity. The separation between the divine and human can be linked; the rope that ties humankind to God can be pulled in. Although not always easy to determine, Iqbal seemed to have a much greater faith in the individual to overcome his or her animal-like inclinations and partake in the divine, for his or her conception of humankind does seem to be more existential and capable of freedom than Mawdudi’s humankind who, on the whole, is perceived as weak and ineffectual and reliant upon authority for spiritual guidance. While Mawdudi accepts the paradigm of the Prophet and other occasional individuals through history such as the Rashidun, he has less faith in the majority of the population to achieve this.
The goal for humankind is tawhid; unity with God. As Iqbal stated in one of his speeches, ‘It was Islam and Islam alone which, for the first time gave the message to mankind that religion was neither national and racial, nor individual and private, but purely human and that its purpose was to unite and organize mankind despite all its natural distinctions.’20 Tawhid is not just the oneness of God, but it is also the interconnectedness and intrinsic unity of all things, even though it appears disparate. In this sense, Iqbal’s concept of tawhid is far more mystical than Mawdudi’s political mind would allow. Having said that, as we have seen, Iqbal was aware of the political implications of his philosophy. His call for the unity of the umma was not just in a mystical and abstract sense, although he did not address the specifics as much as Mawdudi did. Rather, he dealt with abstracts, believing that the central principles of tolerance, equality and brotherhood would provide the framework for the diversity that is the umma. To some extent this organic emergence was evident in early Mawdudi, but political reality resulted in the need to put such abstracts into a more pragmatic and concrete programme. Iqbal saw this development of the umma always as a gradual, evolutionary spiritual growth, whereas Mawdudi realized the need for political practicalities. Inevitably, however, translating abstract ideals into specifics opens Mawdudi to criticism, which will be explored in more detail in later chapters.
Iqbal’s notion of the individual, the ego, the khudi, emerging in an evolutionary manner like Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, begs the question why the khudi would feel any need to acquiesce to the ethical requirements of Islam. The clash between the existential self and ‘being moral’ is a topic that Sartre, for example, never satisfactorily resolved, falling back on a form of Kantian categorical imperative. Likewise, Nietzsche’s ‘creator of values’ has raised questions as to the moral character of these Ubermensch. It is perhaps for this reason that Mawdudi was more reticent in his confidence that Muslims could be morally responsible for their own actions or, rather, that those who called themselves Muslims were not technically Muslim because they were not morally responsible.
Iqbal described khudi in the following way:
Metaphysically the word khudi? (self-hood) is used in the sense of that indescribable feeling of ‘I’ which forms the basis of the uniqueness of each individual. Ethically the word khudi? means (as used by me) self-reliance, self-respect, self-confidence, self-preservation, self-assertion when such a thing is necessary, in the interest of life and power to stick to the cause of truth, justice, duty etc. even in the face of death. Such behaviour is moral in my opinion because it helps in the integration of the forces of the Ego, thus hardening it, as against the forces of disintegration and dissolution, practically the metaphysical ego is the bearer of two main rights that is the right to life and freedom as determined by Divine Law.21
Here then, the self is an ethical self-possessing certain moral qualities that, for Iqbal, are universal. Like Plato’s Philosopher-King, they would be good, because good is a universal truth. For Iqbal, his concept of the universe is spatio-temporal with millions of egos interacting in an ever-changing evolutionary soup. The ego is disintegrated in hell, whereas in heaven it is distinct and self-conscious. This, if nothing else, is an important motivator for humankind to strive towards tawhid, and it also gives purpose to one’s existence in the temporal world. In the Augustinian sense, the world is ‘soul-making’. Again, Iqbal gets very mystical and poetic when he emphasizes the role of the heart (or dil or ’ishq) in his philosophy (Bergson’s élan vital) as the vital force for creative evolution:
Beneath this visible evolution of forms is the force of love which actualises all strivings, movement and progress. Things are so constituted that they hate non-existence and love the joy of individuality in various forms. The indeterminate matter, dead in itself, assumes or more properly is made to assume by the inner force of love, various forms and rises higher and higher in the scale of beauty.22
Unlike Bergson’s élan vital, however, the khudi must be attached to some goal. Iqbal’s evolutionary process is teleological. While the Prophet Muhammad was the perfect man, others can achieve this too, and this is what Iqbal meant by the mujahid. As already suggested, how many can achieve this spiritual state is unclear, however, from Iqbal’s writings. Although Iqbal’s understanding of humankind’s potential seems more democratic than Mawdudi’s, he also seems more in line with Nietzsche in supposing that most people will not listen to this message. This raises problems for his conception of the umma if it is to remain hierarchical. Humankind must first become conscious of its own true fitrah, or nature, which has its roots in the Divine: ‘It is by rising to a fresh vision of his origin and future, his whence and whither, that man will eventually triumph over a society motivated by inhuman competition and a civilization which has lost its spiritual unity by its inner conflict of religions and political values.’23
It is this conflict between a faith in humankind to utilize its creative power in creating an organic community, a ‘higher religion’ symbolized in Islam during the Prophet Muhammad, and the seeming unwillingness for most human beings to be either capable or motivated to engage in the itjihad required to achieve such a goal. Iqbal felt that a society must be created that cultivates humankind’s creative power and, one suspects, Mawdudi hoped for this too. Yet, at the same time, Mawdudi is more conservative, practically speaking, which only results in suppressing creativity. In the same way Iqbal called for a new Islam that faced modern realities, Mawdudi hoped to change Muslim popular values and redefine Islam as something unique, a new force that was not hitching a ride on other prevailing ideologies. To this extent, Mawdudi was much more reluctant than Iqbal in making use of western intellectual discourse. At least, he was more reluctant to admit this influence. As much as possible, Mawdudi tried to view Islam as an independent ideology, completely unreliant on other belief systems or cultures. If an ‘alien’ culture made a scientific, political, social or what-have-you claim that was in line with Mawdudi’s Islam that was only because Islam possessed that claim independently. And Islam, originating at the beginning of time, and even timeless, means that its claims came first. That is to say, if it is argued that Islam is democratic this is not because of what has been learned from examples of democracy in other states, but because Islam has always been democratic. Democracy has just been ‘forgotten’, because the teachings of the Qur’an are being neglected and need to be revived. Similarly, when talking of scientific claims: scientific discovery in the west did not conflict with Islam, it is Islam. Mawdudi used the same kind of terms as Iqbal when talking of Islam: It was ‘revolutionary’, it was ‘dynamic’, it was a ‘total way of life’. Mawdudi’s understanding of Islam was in many respect backward-looking, but, like Iqbal, it was intended for this constant reference to the past to act as a framework for the modern world. In his own words:
We aspire for Islamic renaissance on the basis of the Qur’an. To us the Qur’anic spirit and Islamic tenets are immutable; but the application of this spirit in the realm of practical life must always vary with the change of conditions and increase of knowledge … Our way is quite different both from the Muslim scholar of the recent past and modern Europeanized stock. On the one hand we have to imbibe exactly the Qur’anic spirit and identify our outlook with the Islamic tenets while, on the other, we have to assess thoroughly the developments in the field of knowledge and changes in conditions of life than have been brought during the last eighteen hundred years; and third, we have to arrange these ideas and laws of life on genuine Islamic lines so that Islam should once again become a dynamic force; the leader of the world rather than its follower.24
By emphasizing the unique, independent nature of Islam, it inevitably resulted in an early form of a ‘clash of civilizations’, unlike Iqbal who seemed more ready to accept common ground among different cultures. Although the differences are subtle, Mawdudi saw the world in much more black and white terms: an apocalyptic battle between the forces of good and evil. In real, local, political terms this meant a perception of Hindu culture – as well as British colonialism – as evil. Unlike, Iqbal, there would be no knighthood for Mawdudi. But, although Mawdudi ‘rejected’ the west in public parlance, he also looked to the west in order to emulate it. The fact was, supremacy at the time was firmly in the hands of the colonial powers. The west represented the display of power and self-confidence in the modern world that Islam seemingly lacked. Mawdudi is something of an enigma: in many ways a romantic, especially when it came to the Islamic past, but in other ways deeply pragmatic, certainly when it comes to adapting Islam to the modern world. This pragmatism is a result of Mawdudi’s concern for restoring Islam to its former glory, to a position of power in the world once more and, in many ways, the pragmatic approach is very ‘Islamic’ when one looks to the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the early rise of Islam. A fact that Mawdudi would have been well aware of, despite his romantic view of the past, is that Islam would not have spread so successfully if it had not been pragmatic in accepting other belief systems and political orders. However, the enigmatic quality of Mawdudi or, perhaps more appropriately, his almost schizophrenic quality, was that he seemed to express often an inner tension between this need for pragmatism for the sake of power and for the restoration of what he saw as a pristine Islam. It raises the question, which will be explored later, whether Islam had ever in its history been ‘pristine’ in the way Mawdudi perceived it and, in that case, Mawdudi was fighting a lost cause, a utopia that could only ever remain in the mind of Mawdudi.