Content area
Full Text
Revolution to Revolution: Jama'at-e-Islami in the Politics of Pakistan By Abdul Rashid Moten Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust and IIUM, 2002
"Revolution to Revolution" is an important and scholarly book of considerable merit. It is based on a wide range of data in both Urdu and English. Much of this is primary in nature, for example, governmental and non-governmental reports, newspaper and magazine reports and commentaries, statistics, speeches and memoirs. The author also consulted many relevant books and articles in these languages, written by such renowned scholars as Fazlur Rahman, Kurshid Ahmed, Zafar Ansari and Mushtaq Ahmed. Moten should, in particular, be commended for his comprehension and digestion of the vast intellectual legacy of his main character, Mawlana Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi (1903-1977), the monumental 20th century Mujaddid and founder of the Jama'at-e-Islami (the Association of Islam), which is the focus of this study. As a side note, Mawlana may have borrowed this name from Shaykh Hassan al-Banna (d.1949), who several years before in 1928 founded the Jama'at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, (Muslim Brotherhood). However, one really wonders whether Mawlana had been aware that this very term, al-Jama'ah, had long before (in 1803) been coined by the renowned African Islamic reformist 'Uthman Dan Fodio (1754-1817) to describe his own "small, informed, dedicated and disciplined" group of students and fellow independent 'ulama' that served as the vanguard for his jihad against al-Takhlit ("paganization" of Islam), and, subsequently, British imperialism in the African continent. This ultimately culminated in the foundation of the important Sokoto Caliphate (1810-1903). However, the point is that Moten seems to have carefully consulted Mawdudi's diversified treatises on Islamic political theory, Islamic law and constitution, and Islamic justice and legal structure. Drawn from this abundant literature, the book gives a balanced judgment of Mawlana's place in the Tajdid movement and elaborates some of his concepts such as "Theo-Democracy," a term he coined to confirm the affinity between democracy and Islamic government (the "divine democratic government" or the "Kingdom of Allah," as he called it), though he totally rejects the philosophical assumptions of Western democracy, particularly the absolute dichotomy between the spiritual and the temporal.
The literature written in Arabic on and around Mawlana Mawdudi may be limited and scattered, but Moten may nevertheless wish to have...