Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

1 1 4Islam i n World Cult u r e sand political order grounded on the fundamental doctrine of hakimiyya ( t h eabsolute sovereignty of God). In this paradigm, the Qur’an serves as both a religiousand political standard-bearer and as a measuring stick for personal andpublic behavior. As activists and ideologues, Islamic revivalists claim the soleprerogative to interpret and institutionalize the dictates of sacred scripture.Employing the instruments of modernity—political institutions, propaganda,mass media—and a remarkable organizational acumen, revivalists attempt toanswer the challenges of Western dominance through a renewal ( t a j d i d ) of thevalues and institutions of an idealized Islamic past.In South Asia, Muslim revivalism is nearly synonymous with the name ofMawlana Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1903–1979). An activist, writer, and politician,Mawdudi lived through turbulent times, and his legacy has had a deep impactthroughout the Muslim world. Born into a highly conservative family, he receiveda traditional Islamic education before attending Aligarh Muslim Unive r s i t y, the bastion of modernist thinking. Following the failure of the Khilafatmovement, Mawdudi’s thinking took a decidedly conservative turn. Disillusionedwith nationalism, modernization, and Western values, he embraced aradically exclusive communalism, effectively dividing the world into “Muslim”and “Other.” Throughout his broad corpus of writings, Mawdudi called uponMuslims to abandon static interpretations of the faith and the outmodedteachings of the u l a m a in order to return directly to the message of the Qur’anand h a d i t h .M a w d u d i ’s scripturalist style views Islam as a totalizing system, a completeway of life. In his assessment, the s h a r i ’ a is nothing less than timeless, immutabledivine law, encompassing every dimension of human existence. In hisfamous treatise To w a rds Understanding Islam, Mawdudi wrote,This law [s h a r i ’ a] is eternal. It is not based on the customs or traditions of anyparticular people and it is not meant for any particular period of human history.It is based on the same principles of nature on which man has been created. Andas that nature remains the same in all periods and under all circumstances, thelaw based on its unalloyed principles should also be applicable to every periodand all circumstances. (Mawdudi [1940] 1970, 177)For Mawdudi, as for his Islamist counterparts elsewhere in the Muslim world,the lessons of Islamic sacred history impart timeless truths applicable to everyage. Rejecting the separation of religion (din) and the state ( d a w l a ) , he envisionedthe establishment of a “theo-democracy” as the basis of a utopian Islamicstate. Beyond his voluminous writings, Mawdudi’s most enduring legacywas the creation of a political organization, the Jama’at-i Islami, in 1941. Althoughthe Jama’at’s success at the ballot box has proved less than spectacular,the dedication of its membership and the impact of its message stand as an