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.