Rebuttal of Maududi Philosophy

The Hindu rivivalist move-ments took an aggressive turn in the early 1920s after the failure of the joint Hindu-Muslim khilafat movement. The Hindu Mahasabha, founded at Hardwar in 1914 by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946), joined the Arya Samaj in its campaign of shuddi (re-conversion) and purification of Muslims, initially in the Punjab, the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), the Deccan and other parts of India. By forcing Muslims to ‘wash away their pollution’ with total immersion in a river or w a t e r-tank, Hindu gangs provoked communal rioting. Between 1922 and 1926 over 200 Hindu-Muslim clashes were reported. Verbal and written attacks on Islam and Islam’s Prophet(sa) became widespread. In their religious zeal, the writers of shuddi literature made scurrilous attacks on the Holy Prophet(sa). An Arya Samaj preacher, Pandit Kalicharan Sharma, wrote his own account. He emphasised the P r o p h e t ’s( s a ) alleged immorality and the fact that he married to ‘correct’ the view of history. His book, Vichitra Jiwan (Strange Life), also stressed ‘the spread of Islam by the sword.’ All Muslims, according to Pandit Sharma, were intent on looting, arson and rape. In May 1924, a Lahore book-seller, R a j p a l, published an Urdu tract by an anonymous author criticising the Holy Prophet( s a ). The tract, Rangila Rasul (Playboy Prophet) suggests that all great religious leaders are associated with sets of ideas and symbols. For instance, the founder of Arya Samaj, Swami Dayanand, had glorified celibacy and closely 22 The Review of Religions – January 2006 Rebuttal of Maududian Philosophy This is the third extract taken from the book Murder in the Name of Allah, and it deals with Maududi’s misinterpretation of the Islamic concept of Jihad. identified his reforms with the Vedas. Similarly, the life and faith of the Prophet of lslam(sa) were linked closely with relationships with women. Rajpal was later murdered by two Muslim youths, which led to Hindu-Muslim rioting. Another Hindu wrote an article, ‘A trip to hell’, in R i s a l a – i – Va rt m a n d e s – cribing the Prophet(sa) in hell and elaborating on his sufferings and ‘sins’. The Ahmadis of undivided lndia immediately got themselves together and defeated the re- conversion movement on its own ground. The Imam of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam at the time, Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad(ra), also took a positive step. He decided that there should be inter- f a i t h conferences where the leaders of different faiths should meet and explain their beliefs in order to pull down the walls of ignorance and prejudice. He set up an annual conference for just this purpose. It was called Yaum-i- Paishwayan-i-Madhahib (The Day of Religious Founders). On that day, for instance, a Muslim would speak of the greatness of Krishna(as) or Buddha(as), while a Hindu would talk of Islam’s Holy P r o p h e t( s a ), putting right mis- understandings about him which were being spread by propa- gandists. The Ahmadi attitude during this unfortunate time of calumny and hatred was that non-Muslims should be educated and given the message of love and peace which the Prophet of I s l a m( s a ) gave the world. Accusations and sectarian diatribes do not help a missionary preach his faith. He should instead emphasise the good points of his religion. The Imam of the Ahmadiyya Movement also persuaded the government of India – then British – to strengthen the law to protect the honour of religious leaders. The Punjab governor, William Hailey, who was briefed by Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad(ra), recommended that the government of India change the law by banning material blatantly o ffensive to religious feeling.1 The government accepted this recommendation. A bill was 23 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 accordingly drafted to add a new section to the Indian Penal Code, 295A, which made it an offence to insult or to attempt to insult the religious beliefs of any class of people. The bill was passed in 1927 by the Legislative Assembly. But Indian Muslims were very upset and indignant at this time. A Muslim calligrapher, Abdul Rashid, outraged by such malicious attacks on the Holy P r o p h e t ’s( s a ) life, murdered Swami Shraddhanand, a shuddi l e a d e r. Rashid was tried and hanged. Thousands of Delhi Muslims went to the Delhi District jail to collect his body and he was buried as a martyr. This glorification of murder enraged the Hindus, who called Islam a religion of violence and force which relied on jihad and not reason or virtue.2 A young journalist, Abul Ala Maududi, answered these accusations in a series of articles in Al-Jamiyat, the newspaper of the Jamiyat Ulama-i-Hind. These articles were subsequently published in book form as AI-Jihad fil Islam. In the first part of this book, Maududi convincingly proved that the wars fought by the Prophet of Islam ( s a ) w e r e defensive. He fought to establish freedom of conscience and opposed all attempts to suppress the peaceful work of preaching Islam. Having convinced the reader that Islam did indeed establish the freedom of conscience, the Maulana himself seems to cast doubt on his own argument by adding this rider: That freedom of conscience is limited to faith and religion only. It does not mean that people have freedom to commit sin. Islam does not permit the use of force for conversion, but force may be used – in fact, should be used – to prevent people from doing wrong. Non-Muslim countries and cultures cannot be allowed to practise immoral deeds and force used to keep these countries free of vice should be clearly distinguished from that used to convert people to Islam. 24 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 Thus, the Maulana evolved a tortuous method of interpreting the Qur’an and the tradition (hadith) of the Prophet(sa) to prove his point. Maulana Maududi goes a little deeper in discussing the use of force and explains the purpose of verse 29 of Chapter 9 in the Qur’an. Quoting it out of context, he says: The words: ‘Until they pay the jizya’fully explain the purpose of war [prevention of vice]. If the words were: ‘until they accept Islam’ then, of course, one could say that Islam uses force to spread its faith. But the words, ‘until they pay the jizya’ are clear. Consent to pay the jizya ends the war. After this, the life and property of non-Muslims are inviolable, whether or not they accept Islam. Maulana Maududi began writing his book to prove that Islam gives complete freedom of conscience and that the Holy Prophet(sa) went to war because his opponents were suppressing that very freedom. This was in answer to non-Muslim claims that Islam is based on two main principles: the forcing of people to do good and the prevention of them from indulging in vice. Since forcing people to do good is against the freedom of conscience, Islam refrains from it. But the Maulana is a little f o rgetful, for he quotes the Qur’anic words which say that a war should be stopped after non- Muslims have agreed to pay the jizya. How could a war, begun purely to prevent vice, ever be won if the enemy pays the jizya without promising to wipe out vice? The Maulana’s aim was to impose the poll tax. Since an agreement had been reached for its payment, the second principle of Islam, prevention of vice, had been conveniently forgotten. The final part of Maulana Maududi’s logic, however, nullifies the very purpose for which he wrote this book. He says: When all methods of persuasion failed, the Prophet(sa) took to the sword. That sword removed mischief, the impurities of 25 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 evil and the filth of the soul. The sword did something more – it removed their blindness so they could see the light of truth – and it also cured them of their arrogance: arrogance which prevents people from accepting the truth, stiff necks and proud heads bowed with humility. As in Arabia, so in other countries, Islam’s expansion was so fast that within a century a quarter of the world accepted Islam. This conversion took place because the sword of Islam cut away the veils which had covered men’s hearts.3 This portion of the Maulana’s reasoning defeats his promise that Islam establishes freedom of conscience. It also is repugnant to the spirit of Islam. One mistake leads to another. Finally, after 137 pages of sophistry, the Maulana declares: ‘While it is incorrect to say that Islam converts with the sword, it is also wrong to say that the sword did not play any role in conversion’.4 The Maulana began his book with the declared intention of proving that the wars fought by the Holy Prophet( s a ) w e r e ‘defensive’. He fought to establish freedom of conscience, yet ends up joining hands with Islam’s enemies. In doing so, the Maulana opens the doors for an orientalist onslaught. The prestige he enjoys among a small, but vocal, minority of Western-educated Muslims helps the orientalists, who bolster their anti-jihad arguments with the Maulana’s brandished sword to ‘play a role in the preaching of Islam’. Less than two years after the Hijrah (the Prophet’s migration from Makkah to Madinah), his companions were confronted by a thousand Makkans, determined to blot out Islam, its Prophet(sa) and his followers. It was dawn on Friday, 17th March AD 623 (17 Ramadan, 2 AH) when the Makkans with 700 camels and a cavalry of 100 horses began descending towards the valley of Badr from the slope of Aqanqal, twenty miles south of Madinah. 26 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 There were just 313 Muslims there to defend Islam. They had only two horses and were so short of arms that when Ukkashah’s sword was broken during the fighting, the Prophet(sa) could only replace it with a wooden club, which he used instead. Their situation became so desperate that the Prophet(sa) cried out: ‘Allah! If this small band of Muslims is annihilated t o d a y, no one will be left to worship Thee!’ As Montgomery Watt puts it, Abu Jahl was ‘presumably hoping to get rid of Muhammad once and for all’5. Will Durant agrees with Watt: ‘If Mohammed had been defeated his career might have ended there and then.’6 Abu Jahl’s hopes were, however, not fulfilled and the Muslims successfully defended themselves against the well- equipped and far superior Makkan forces. Islamic history has preserved the names of all 313 Companions of the Prophet( s a ) who defended Islam in the valley of Badr. One wonders what role the sword played in converting these 300- odd Muslims. Among them were Abu Bakr(as), Umar(as), Uthman(as) and Ali(as), who succeeded the Prophet(sa) as his caliphs. Was it the sword which removed the ‘dross’ from their hearts? Then there were Awf b. Harith, Umar b. Salimah, Muawwidh and many others who fell that day. The exact details of their conversion are not unknown. Can anyone say that the filth of their souls and the evil of their hearts were cleansed by the blade of a sword? The three great Companions who later fought so valiantly to defend the faith were Sad b. Abi Waqqas, Abu Ubaydah b. al- Jarrah and Khalid b. Walid. None was converted to Islam by force. Hundreds of Emigrants (Muhajirun) and thousands of Helpers (Ansar) were converted and gave the persecuted Prophet(sa) sanctuary. No sword was involved in their conversion. These converts were the fruits of Islam, the pride of mankind, the signposts on the path to ultimate 27 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 truth. What greater insult to them than to say their hearts were purified by the sword, or to suggest that it was ‘fallacious to say that the sword did not play any role in [their] conversion’? What were these people before the advent of Islam? Before M u h a m m a d( s a ), Arabia existed as a political unit only, as Wi l l Durant pointed out. He said: ‘In the careless nomenclature of the Greeks, who called all the population of the peninsula Sarakenoi (Saracens), apparently from the Arabic sharqiun, ‘ e a s t e r n e r s ’ .7 Previously they were called ‘Scenite Arabs’ – Arabs who lived in tents (from the Greek word skene, a tent. They lived in an arid land and communication problems meant there was tribal self-suff i c i e n c y. During the second millennium before the Christian era, the Arabs domesticated the camel, an animal perfectly suited to the desert. It provided milk for sustenance and urine for medicinal use. Its meat was tender and its hide and hair made tents and clothing. Even its dung could be used for fuel. It could go for twenty-five days in winter without water and five in s u m m e r, small groups of nomads followed the camels, the camels being their most important resource. Aloy Sprenger summed up the whole pre-Islamic Saracen history by describing the Arabs as the ‘camel’s parasites’. The Arab felt no duty of loyalty to any group larger than his own tribe, but the intensity of his devotion varied inversely to its extent; for his tribe, he would do with conscience what civilised people do only for their country, religion or race – i.e., lie, steal, kill and die.8 He was bound by no written laws and no state existed to enforce the l a w. Arabs mourned the birth of daughters and hid their faces in shame. Sometimes daughters were killed at birth. If they survived, their natural charm might earn them a few years of love from husbands and lovers who would go to the ends of the earth to defend their honour. But 28 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 they were no more than pieces of p r o p e r t y. They were part of the estate of their fathers, husbands or sons and were bequeathed with other belongings. They were also slaves, rarely friends of their fathers, husbands or brothers. The Arab gave scant thought to life after death. He offered human sacrifice; he worshipped ‘sacred’ stones. The centre of this stone worship was Makkah. In pre- Muslim days, within the Ka’aba, were several idols supposed to represent gods. The great god of Makkah was Hubal, an idol made of cornelian. But in the Hijaz, three goddesses – Lat, Manat and Uzza – had pride of place as the daughters of God. Well-built and strong, the Arab could live on just a few dates and some camel’s milk. From the date palm, he made a wine which raised him up into poetic flights of imagination and romance. His life alternated between loving and fighting and he was quick to avenge insult and injury, not only for himself but also on his tribe’s b e h a l f . An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was the law. Never- ending shame awaited an avenger if he could not kill his tormentor. A large part of his life was spent in tribal vendetta (Arabic tha’r). In the pre-Islamic Arab history Ayyam ul-Arab, (Days of the Arabs), was the name applied to the battles the Arabs fought among themselves. Particular days were called, for example, Day of Buath or Days of al-Fijar. These inter- t r i b a l hostilities generally sprang from disputes over cattle, land or springs. One of the most famous was fought between the Banu- Bakr and their kinsmen the Banu-Taghlib over a she-camel, owned by an old woman from Bakr called Basus. A Ta g h l i b chief had wounded the camel … the resulting war lasted forty years! It ended only when both tribes had exhausted each other. Another famous war was the Day of Dahis and Al-Ghabra, which erupted over the unfair conduct of two chieftains in a race between a horse (named Dahis) and a mare (called Al-Ghabra). War broke out soon after the 29 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 Basus conflict ended and continued at intervals for several decades. This was the social background in which Muhammad( s a ) was brought up and these were the people whom God gave the first opportunity of embracing a persecuted prophet’s faith. To suggest that these fierce and warlike people – who would sound the battle cry at the drop of a hat – could have been converted by force is to contradict history. M o r e o v e r, it demeans the faith of those pioneers who put their lives at stake to defend Islam at the battle of Badr. Usayd b. Hudayr, Sad b. Khaythamah, Asd b. Zurahah, Abdullah b. Rawahah, Sad b. Ubadah, Mundhir b. Amir, Bara b. Marur, Ubadah b. as-Sami, Rafi b. Malik and many other Helpers travelled all the way from Madinah to Makkah to embrace Islam. Even to hint that the sword played a part in their conversion is also to deny historical fact. While in Christian history it is religion which converts swords into ploughshares9, Maulana M a u d u d i ’s interpretation of Islamic history asks us to believe it is the sword which prepares the soil of the soul to receive religion’s seed10. was it the Holy P r o p h e t ’s( s a ) sword or a few verses of the Holy Qur’an which turned Umar b, Khattab – a sworn enemy of Islam into Islam’s devoted servant? In the early days of the Prophet’s, persecution, Umar, a headstrong young man of 26, decided to kill the Prophet(sa), thus wiping out the main cause of division among the Quraysh. On his way to the Prophet’s(sa) house, he met Nuaim b. Abdullah, who sensed his evil intentions and said: ‘O Umar! Go back to the people of thy house! Thy sister, Fatima, and thy b r o t h e r- i n – l a w, Saeed, have embraced the religion of M u h a m m a d( s a ). And, without a single word, Umar went straight to his sister’s house, where a Companion, Khabbab, was reciting the opening verses of the Surah, Ta-Ha (XX). As soon as 30 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 Umar went in, Khabbab hid in a corner and Fatima hid the pages of the Qur’an in her clothing: But Umar had overheard Khabbab’s recital and attacked both Saeed and Fatima. When Fatima was covered in blood, he softened and asked to see the verses, He read them and exclaimed: ‘How beautiful and how noble these words are!’ And he went straight to Arqam’s house, where the Prophet(sa) was sitting with his Companions. He cried out: ‘O Messenger of Allah! I have come to thee that I may declare my faith in Allah and His Messenger and in what he hath brought from Allah.’ Why is Maulana Maududi so determined to paint a violent picture of Islam? Why are there contradictions in his theory of jihad? A glance at the Maulana’s background and the conditions under which he wrote his book, Al-Jihad fil Islam, can help us answer these questions. Syed Abul Ala-Maududi spent his childhood and early youth in Hyderabad (Deccan) where the Nizam still ruled in the style of the great Mughal and where his Hindu prime minister sang the praises of the Holy Prophet(sa).11 At the crossroads, from north to south and east to west, it was the last stronghold of Mughal – predominantly Muslim – culture in India. In a state where the population was overwhelmingly Hindu (more than 80 per cent) and Muslims were a small minority just 10 per cent), the ruler though without eff e c t i v e p o w e r, still recalled the past glory of Mughal rule. It was an unreal world. The court, with its Paigah nobility, chamberlains, household troops, brocade sherwanis, ceremonial dastar (turban), bugloos (buckle) and g o rgeous jewellery, was a reminder of the Delhi Court before it was ravaged by Nadir Shah (1739). There were Arab mercenaries with gilded daggers and long muskets and the regular army with all the paraphernalia of modern warfare. The rajas and maharajahs, some of them reigning over areas larger than the Hindu states of British India, occupied the highest places of 31 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 honour in the Nizam’s gov- ernment and were part of a surreal picture of Muslim tolerance and Hindu loyalty. Though the Hyderabadi culture was recognisably Indian based, it was largely Muslim in shape. ‘Social organisation was still feudal, but not in any sense primitive. It was highly cultivated with a grace of m a n n e r, and, above all, a tolerance and mutual respect which could speak volumes to our generation if we could listen.’12 It was in this Hyderabad that the young Maududi’s personality was formed1 3. Sensitive and impressionable, he started his journalistic career in 1918 by joining the editorial staff of the Medina (Bijnore). After working as editor of the Taj (Jabalpur) he took over the editorship of Al- Jamiyat (Delhi) in 1925. The shuddi movement was at its height and, as mentioned earlier, at this time the young editor of AI-Jamiyat started writing his articles. They were obviously written under the pressure of his day-to-day work and they were all completed within six m o n t h s .1 4 Maududi began to write these articles ‘more as a nationalist than a religious zealot’, but on further study of Islamic literature – as much as he could read in six months and without Islamic schooling – he became a religious revivalist.15 Both his articles in Al-Jihad fil Islam and the overall evolution of his own thought were very much piecemeal. He started writing the book as a nationalist Indian16 and, as such, his aim was to prove to the Indian Hindus, and especially to Gandhiji, that Islam was not a religion of violence. In a speech at Jami Masjid, Delhi, the great Indian Muslim leader, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jowhar, said he wished that a Muslim would write a book pointing out that Islam had nothing to do with violence. Young Maududi was among the audience and decided to take up the task.17 So, in the first instalments of his articles, he pointed out to Hindus that Islam was not a religion of the 32 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 sword. But our author was born and bred in a Muslim kingdom where the Hindu majority was under a Muslim leader. The writer of two books on the history of Hyderabad1 8 w a s steeped in the power of political authority. He soon contradicted his own arguments against the jihad of the sword. This Hyderabadi Muslim was to assert: ‘It is fallacious to say that the sword did not play any role in conversion.’ The young journalist was neither a historian nor a scholar of religion. He could not understand that though Muslim dynasties ruled the Deccan for 600 years, the overwhelming majority of that area remained Hindu. Political power in Muslim hands has never helped conversion to Islam. The author of Jihad fil Islam was just 24 years old. And the Maulana, even at the age of 65, remained ‘superficial’. As Prof. Fazlur Rahman observed: Maududi, though not an alim, was nevertheless a self-taught man of considerable intelli- gence and suff i c i e n t knowledge… He was by no means an accurate or profound scholar, but he was undoubtedly like a fresh wind in the stifling Islamic atmosphere created by the traditional madrasas…. But Maududi displays nowhere the larger and more profound vision of Islam’s role in the world. Being a journalist rather than a serious scholar he wrote at great speed and with resultant superficiality in order to feed his eager young readers – and he wrote inces- santly…. Not one of Maududi’s followers ever became a serious student of Islam, the result being that, for the faithful, Maududi’s statements represented the last word on Islam – no matter how much and how blatantly he contradicted himself from time to time on such basic issues as economic policy and political theory.19 The late Mufti Kifayatullah of Delhi held the same opinion. He said: 33 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 ‘I know Maulana Abul Ala Maududi. He has neither learned from nor been disciplined by a scholar of repute. He is very well read but his understanding of religion is weak.’20 The late Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani foresaw the danger very clearly and said: ‘His pamphlets and books contain opinions which are anti-religious and heretic, though written with theological trappings. Lay readers cannot see through these trappings. As a result they find the Islam brought by the Holy Prophet repugnant; the Islam which has been followed by the Ummat-i-Muhammadiya for the last 1350 years.’21 In one of his letters, Maualana Qari Muhammad Tayyab wrote: ‘Having read Maududi Sahib’s writings I have concluded that he did not acquire the disciplines of Muslim legal philosophy and mysticism. He cannot write on them with authority.’22 The late Maulana Ahmad Ali Lahori also wrote in the same vein: Maududi Sahib wants to present a ‘New Islam’ to the Muslims. And Muslims will not accept a ‘New Islam’ unless the old Islam, which they have followed for the last 1,350 years, is not fully destroyed and it is proved that Islam has become irrelevant and impractical.23 Maulana Maududi, as we have seen, was neither an historian nor a religious scholar. He was essentially a journalist and he had the two basic qualities of a journalist: a good command of the Urdu language and the ability to write quickly. The Al-Jamiyat was a bi-weekly at that time and he had to write his column on jihad within two or three days, in addition to editing his news- paper. Having no background in research and no time for it then, he mistook the battle of Hunayn (30 January 630), which came soon after the submission of 34 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 Makkah (11 January), as a turning-point in Islamic history. Since Islam’s enemies were decisively beaten at Hunayn, the Maulana concluded that it was this victory and the political power gained through it, which helped the conversion of the whole of Arabia to Islam. Maulana Maududi is not alone in drawing this conclusion. The orientalists, who see no moral or spiritual force in Islamic teachings and are unable to understand the great miracles performed by our Holy Prophet(sa) have always put Muslim expansion down to force. The orientalists divided the life of the Prophet(sa) into two sections, the first the period of Makkan persecution and second the period of conquest after his migration to Madinah. Our young journalist, Abul Ala Maududi, with his superficial knowledge of Islamic history, accepted this apparently simplistic but, in reality, very clever division of the Holy Prophet’s(sa) life. Armed conflict, war and threats of war were forced constantly on the Prophet (sa). After he migrated to Madinah, the pagans of Makkah and the Jews of Madinah, encouraged by the hypocrites, busily plotted against Islam. They inspired hatred against Muslims and worked pagan Arabs up to a fever pitch against the Holy Prophet(sa). All the defensive actions the Muslims were forced to take obstructed the Prophet’s(sa) basic mission. Muslims needed peace but, as our examination will show, that peace was deliberately disturbed to prevent them from spreading the new faith. Notes 1. William Hailey, to the Government of India, 25 July and 12 August 1927, Government of India Home Political Proceedings 1927, 132. 2. Al-Jihad fi’l Islam , 93. In the second of the subsequent quotations, the words in square brackets have been added. The Arabic words are: ‘an yadin wahum saghirun’. 3. Ibid., 138. 4. Ibid. 5. W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad 35 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006 at Medina (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1981), 15. 6. Will Durant, The Story of Civilisation, 11 vols. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950); vol.IV, The Age of Faith, 168. 7. Ibid., 157. 8. Ibid. 9. ‘They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.’ The Book of the Prophet Isaiah, 2:4. 10. Maulana Maududi’s original Urdu word is qalbarani, literally ‘ploughing’. 11. Maharaja Kishen Perhad Shad was a Persian and Urdu poet and was known for his Nati-i-Rasul (Hymns honouring the Holy Prophet (sa)). 12. Harriet Rouken Lynton and Mohini Rajan, The Days of the Beloved (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), ix. The book describes the life and times of Mahbub Pasha (1869-1911), the sixth Nizam of Hyderabad. 13. He was born on 25 September 1903 in Aurangabad; Arif Batalwi, Aik Maududi Das Islam (Lahore). 14. Mu Inuddin Aqil, Tahrik-i-Pakistan aur Maulana Maududi, (Karachi: Khayal-Nau, 1971), 27. Most of the biographical details in this book are taken from Muhammad Yu s u f ‘ s Maulana Maududi Apni aur Dusron ki Nazar Main (Lahore: Maktaba Al-Habib, n.d.). 15. Muhammad Yusuf, op. cit., 363-4; and Mu Inuddin Aqil, op. cit.,27. 16. Maulana Maududi had earlier written a book on Gandhiji’s biography but it was banned before its publication. Arif Batalvi, Aik Maududi Das Islam, op.cit.,10; see Mumtaz Ali Asi, Maulana Maududi aur Jamaati Islam, Aik Jaizah. 17. Mu Inuddin Aqil, op.cit.,26; see Muhammad Yusuf,op.cit.,362-3. 18. Deccan ki Siyasi Tarikh and Daulat-i-Asifiyah aur Hukumat-i- Bartaniya. 19. Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity – Transformation of an Intellectual Tr a d i t i o n ( C h i c a g o : University of Chicago Press, 1982), 116; emphasis added. 20. M a k t u b e – i – H i d a y a t ( D e o b a n d : Kutub Khana Izaziyah),21; see Maulana Muhammad Akhtar, Maududi Sahib Akabir-i-Ummat-ki Nazar Main (Bombay). 21. Maulana Muhammad Akhtar, Maududi Sahib Akabir-i-Ummat-ki Nazar Main,op.cit.,9. 22. ibid., 15. 23. ibid., 48. 36 REBUTTAL OF MAUDUDIAN PHILOSOPHY The Review of Religions – January 2006