ABSTRACT
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.
