July 2012 
Year 18    No.167
Editorial


 

Of faith and force

It is a commonly held Muslim belief, cutting across sectarian divides, that Islam stands on five pillars –
Kalima (proclamation that there is no god but one god), namaaz (five daily prayers), roza (month-long
fasting during Ramzan), zakaat (a religious tax on property owners) and Haj (the once-in-a-lifetime pil-
grimage to Mecca). Of these, the first three are believed to be obligatory for all Muslims, men and women, while the last two are only for the moneyed. In other words, it can be said that a Muslim who complies with these is fulfilling his essential obligations to Allah.

Not so, argued the late Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami at a gathering of 75 followers in Lahore in August 1941. The maulana claimed that unlike other religions, Islam is not merely about ritual observances such as namaaz or roza. Rather, it is an ideology much like capitalism, communism and fascism are. The big difference, according to him, was that Islam is a revolutionary, god-given ideology. To be a Muslim is to be a revolutionary whose obligation it is "to strive with every means possible" to overthrow all man-made institutions and laws, establish an Islamic state and impose Allah-given Shariah rules. What’s more, in Islam, there is no concept of nations and nation states: the whole world must be brought under Allah’s sovereignty.

Inspired by Maududi, his contemporary, Sayyid Qutb of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, went a step further, making explicit what was implicit in Maududi’s world view: in the pursuit of the Islamic state ideal, the resort to violence was justified, including violence against those who were "Muslims only in name". Today many scholars, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, hold Maududi and Qutb responsible for transforming the religion of Islam in the 20th century into an ideology ("Islamism") and fusing faith with power ("political Islam").

Maududi’s Islamism was debunked by the large majority of the subcontinent’s ulema who also consistently opposed the idea of India’s partition along religious lines. Maududi himself did not initially favour partition. But the moment Pakistan was born, he switched gears, seeking its immediate transformation into an Islamic state. And, believe it or not, he was sure that there was "at least a 60 per cent chance" of Hindu-majority India moving in the same direction.

Our cover story this month traces the fate of Maududism and its organisational carrier, the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), in an India that opted for secular democracy. All seemed well for a brief period when his followers were as clear as their leader about the road map to Islam’s inevitable triumph in Hindu-majority India. Not only were elections to be totally boycotted, government jobs, courts, schools and colleges were all to be shunned, as having anything to do with them amounted to participating in man-made institutions and endorsement of man-made laws. But the JIH was soon to run into roadblocks. Ironically enough, the biggest hurdle came from India’s Muslims, most of whom seemed more than keen on "un-Islamic" pursuits such as elections, government jobs, secular education and what have you.

The short summary of the JIH’s 64-year history in post-independence India is that this self-appointed leadership, this vanguard of Indian Muslims has ended up being led by the masses. An organisation that had scorned democratic politics and boycotted the electoral process for more than three decades has now spawned a political party of its own and is an eager collaborator with secular forces to "safeguard Indian democracy from Hindutva’s fascist threat". The JIH’s shift in the democratic direction, no matter how reluctant, is certainly a welcome development. But the fact remains that the organisation is in many ways still hitched to Maududism and its ideal of an Islamic state. The dichotomy between the JIH’s word and deed is apparent, for example, when you examine its Constitution which remains even now firmly locked in the past. As is only to be expected, the organisation thus lays itself open to the charge of being double-faced, no different from the sangh parivar which the JIH denounces as fascist.

The JIH’s reluctance or inability to confront its past and to progress beyond the tortuous attempts to reconcile irreconcilables has other serious implications. As the JIH is well aware, Muslim extremists in India and elsewhere in the subcontinent still draw their primary inspiration from the writings of Maududi and Qutb. The best example of this is the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) which was established with the full blessing of the JIH in the 1970s and which turned to extremism in the early 1990s. SIMI has for years accused the Jamaat of treachery, of abandoning the Maududian path, even as it proclaimed itself to be the real inheritor and follower of the maulana.

There is only one way forward for the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind today: In order to ensure its survival as also to fight the menace of Muslim extremism in the subcontinent, it must engage in a sincere critique of Maududism, distance itself from the politics of marrying faith to force and openly denounce the Jamaat’s extremist chapters in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir.

– EDITORS

 

 


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