Read Online Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror by Mahmood Mamdani - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mahmood Mamdani
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7 million before the Mahdist revolt to somewhere between 2 and 3 million after the fall of the Mahdist state in 1898. As in Saudi Arabia and West Africa in previous centuries, the experience of Sudan also showed that the same jihad that had begun as the rallying cry of a popular movement could be turned around by those in power—at the expense of its supporters.
Whereas an armed jihad was not known in the nine decades preceding the Afghan jihad of the 1980s, the call for one in radical Islamist thought can be traced to two key thinkers at the beginning of the Cold War: the Pakistani journalist and politician Abul A’la Mawdudi, whose work began to be published in Egypt in 1951, and Sayyid Qutb. Mawdudi (1903-1979) appeared at a moment when the ulama, organized as the Jam’iyat-i-Ulama-i-Hind (Society of the Ulama of India), were supporting a multireligious, decentralized yet united India against the demand, led by political intellectuals, for the creation of Pakistan. As we have seen, Muhammad Iqbal had envisioned Muslim political identity not in terms of a nation-state, but as a borderless cultural community, the umma. The irony was that though the formation of Pakistangave its Muslim inhabitants self-determination, this was as residents of a common territory and not as an umma. Instead of being the profound critique of territorial nationalism and the nation-state that Muhammed Iqbal had intended it to be, Pakistan was a territorial nation as banal as any other nation preoccupied with building its own state. Mawdudi seized upon this contradiction in his appeal to postcolonial Islamist intellectuals. Mawdudi claimed that Pakistan (“the land of the pure”) was still Na-Pakistan (either “not yet the land of the pure” or “the land of the impure”). For Mawdudi, the Islamic state could not just be a territorial state of Muslims; it had to be an ideological state, an Islamic state. To realize that end, he established Jamaat-i-Islami (the Islamic Community) in Karachi in 1941 and had himself confirmed as its emir. Key to Mawdudi’s thought was centralized power and jihad as the ultimate struggle for the seizure of state power. He defined “the ultimate objective of Islam to abolish the lordship of man over man and bring him under the rule of the one God,” with jihad as its relentless pursuit: “To stake everything you have—including your lives—to achieve this purpose is called Jihad…. So, I say to you: if you really want to root out corruption now so widespread on God’s earth, stand up and fight against corrupt rule; take power and use it on God’s behalf. It is useless to think you can change things by preaching alone.” (italics mine) With both eyes focused on the struggle for power, Mawdudi redefined the meaning of Din (religion) in a purely secular way: “Acknowledging that someone is your ruler to whom you must submit means that you have accepted his Din…. Din, therefore, actually means the same thing as state and government.” He also secularized Islam, equating it not with other religions but with political ideologies that seek the conquest of the state, such as popular sovereignty or monarchy or, above all, Communism: “A total Din, whatever its nature, wants power for itself; the prospect of sharingpower is unthinkable. Whether it is popular sovereignty or monarchy, Communism or Islam, or any other Din, it must govern to establish itself. A Din without power to govern is just like a building which exists in the mind only.” Mawdudi was the first to stress the imperative of jihad for contemporary Muslims, the first to claim that armed struggle was central to jihad and, unlike any major Muslim thinker before him, the first to call for a universal jihad.
Mawdudi’s influence on Sayyid Qutb regarding the necessity of jihad as an armed struggle is widely recognized. Less recognized, though, is the difference between the two. Even if Qutb proclaims the absolute sovereignty of God, he does it
Whereas an armed jihad was not known in the nine decades preceding the Afghan jihad of the 1980s, the call for one in radical Islamist thought can be traced to two key thinkers at the beginning of the Cold War: the Pakistani journalist and politician Abul A’la Mawdudi, whose work began to be published in Egypt in 1951, and Sayyid Qutb. Mawdudi (1903-1979) appeared at a moment when the ulama, organized as the Jam’iyat-i-Ulama-i-Hind (Society of the Ulama of India), were supporting a multireligious, decentralized yet united India against the demand, led by political intellectuals, for the creation of Pakistan. As we have seen, Muhammad Iqbal had envisioned Muslim political identity not in terms of a nation-state, but as a borderless cultural community, the umma. The irony was that though the formation of Pakistangave its Muslim inhabitants self-determination, this was as residents of a common territory and not as an umma. Instead of being the profound critique of territorial nationalism and the nation-state that Muhammed Iqbal had intended it to be, Pakistan was a territorial nation as banal as any other nation preoccupied with building its own state. Mawdudi seized upon this contradiction in his appeal to postcolonial Islamist intellectuals. Mawdudi claimed that Pakistan (“the land of the pure”) was still Na-Pakistan (either “not yet the land of the pure” or “the land of the impure”). For Mawdudi, the Islamic state could not just be a territorial state of Muslims; it had to be an ideological state, an Islamic state. To realize that end, he established Jamaat-i-Islami (the Islamic Community) in Karachi in 1941 and had himself confirmed as its emir. Key to Mawdudi’s thought was centralized power and jihad as the ultimate struggle for the seizure of state power. He defined “the ultimate objective of Islam to abolish the lordship of man over man and bring him under the rule of the one God,” with jihad as its relentless pursuit: “To stake everything you have—including your lives—to achieve this purpose is called Jihad…. So, I say to you: if you really want to root out corruption now so widespread on God’s earth, stand up and fight against corrupt rule; take power and use it on God’s behalf. It is useless to think you can change things by preaching alone.” (italics mine) With both eyes focused on the struggle for power, Mawdudi redefined the meaning of Din (religion) in a purely secular way: “Acknowledging that someone is your ruler to whom you must submit means that you have accepted his Din…. Din, therefore, actually means the same thing as state and government.” He also secularized Islam, equating it not with other religions but with political ideologies that seek the conquest of the state, such as popular sovereignty or monarchy or, above all, Communism: “A total Din, whatever its nature, wants power for itself; the prospect of sharingpower is unthinkable. Whether it is popular sovereignty or monarchy, Communism or Islam, or any other Din, it must govern to establish itself. A Din without power to govern is just like a building which exists in the mind only.” Mawdudi was the first to stress the imperative of jihad for contemporary Muslims, the first to claim that armed struggle was central to jihad and, unlike any major Muslim thinker before him, the first to call for a universal jihad.
Mawdudi’s influence on Sayyid Qutb regarding the necessity of jihad as an armed struggle is widely recognized. Less recognized, though, is the difference between the two. Even if Qutb proclaims the absolute sovereignty of God, he does it
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