Safdar Mir.
(Photo Courtesy: Raza Naeem)
Today, 25 September, marks the 119th birthday of one of the leading Islamist scholars and ideologues of the 20th century, Maulana Maududi. He has been a lot in the news lately, both in India and Pakistan. In India, his books were recently removed from the curriculum of the Aligarh Muslim University in response to claims that they promoted jihadism.
In Pakistan, a defamation notice was filed against one of Pakistan's premier progressive public intellectuals and musicians, Lahore University of Management Sciences academic, Dr Taimur Rahman by the Jamaat-e-Islami claiming his widely popular and factual vlogs on Maududi and Jinnah defamed and misinterpreted both the leaders. Both developments received scant traction in the print or national media in Pakistan, barring a few social media flashes.
Maulana Maududi.
In Pakistan, a defamation notice was brought against one of Pakistan's premier progressive public intellectuals and musicians, LUMS academic, Dr Taimur Rahman by the Jamaat-e-Islami claiming his widely popular and factual vlogs on Maududi and Jinnah defamed and misinterpreted both the leaders.
In Pakistan, a defamation notice was brought against one of Pakistan's premier progressive public intellectuals and musicians, LUMS academic, Dr Taimur Rahman by the Jamaat-e-Islami claiming his widely popular and factual vlogs on Maududi and Jinnah defamed and misinterpreted both the leaders.
I have been translating noted progressive scholar and polymath Safdar Mir's incendiary essays on Maududi and ‘Maududiyat’ – first published in the weekly Nusrat in the 1960s and 1970s – since the last few months, as a small tribute to the former, since 2022 marks Safdar Mir's birth centenary and 2023 will mark 25 years of his death. I present below an original translation from Urdu of Safdar Mir's essay on Maududism and Capitalism, which convincingly unmasks the lies which the followers of Maududi have been wrongly propagating for decades about his role in the movement for Islamic equality.
This essay sets the historical record about Maududi straight and punctures the Maududi cult in a highly factual albeit polemical manner with sources and cross-references from Maududi's own works and words, as only Safdar Mir could!
Rare image of Safdar Mir.
With the intention of deceiving some people, the fresh tactic of Maududism is to keep declaring one’s exemption about socialism, along with capitalism and feudalism as well, so that the charge cannot be leveled that these people are in search of support of the capitalist and feudal economy behind the curtain of the ‘Islamic system’. The Maududi party has very much said in its recent statements about the economy that limits should be put on land ownership of the feudal system. But along with that, they've laid down a condition that this limitation is temporary; since in Islam any permanent restriction cannot be put on ownership. The ‘new’ economic constitution of the Maududi party does not, in any way, refute their old stance as Maududi himself has said. His old stance regarding landownership is that:
In connection with the legal, and illegal, and unlawful, the decree of the new constitution is:
There is a great intensity in the word ‘all’. But reaching till the end of the line, it seems that firstly, you will have to prove that the personal or hereditary property has been obtained by so-and-so landlord or his forefathers by 'the wrong use of powers'. This style of giving with one hand and taking back with the other is a special strategy of the Maududi party.
In his old economic constitution, Maududi writes in this manner about hereditary assets. This will clarify how any landlord can preserve his hereditary wealth with 'legal means'.
Rare image of Safdar Mir.
What are basic laws of the capitalist system? These are the same laws which Maududi later on is about to present as the laws of the economic system of Islam. Therefore read a bit carefully:
Maududi has declared it accurately. This very ‘right of individual ownership over the means of production’ is the foundation stone of capitalism. In the same manner as the foundation stone of the Maududi party is the opposition and enmity of the leaders of the Pakistan Movement, the Pakistani state and the leaders of Pakistan Movement, for example, Quaid-e-Azam and his companions (along with Allama Iqbal). See Muslims and the Current Political Struggle Part III, and if you go to buy, ask for Part III since this is the very same ‘foundation stone’.
All these economic principles are very important and as Maududi will clarify later, all these are exactly according to Islam because they are ‘according to nature’. But the greatest importance is possessed by the seventh law.
On the other hand, in the very next line Maududi himself presents these values as the eternal values of human economy:
The question arises that if a person who is acquainted with the Koran and Hadith, and is a claimant of the equality of Islam, how can he present an un-Islamic system like capitalism as an Islamic system before us? The gentlemen who are the defenders of Maududism, who keep protesting the foreign, non-national, and un-Islamic way of life all the time, how do they bear that an attempt be made to impose a foreign, non-national, and un-Islamic economic system like capitalism over the people very much in the name of Islam?
The answer to this question is also present very much within this question. After all for us, in our political history of the last 200 years, this is not such a new thing that religion be used for conservative ends. The manner in which Maududi has defined the feudal system in his book and how he has told the association of the Church with the feudal system of Europe; after a little alteration in it, we can duly reach the conclusion that like the Church in Europe, Maududism too is using Islam to support a dying economic system. Maududism is actually a school of thought whose very goal is to support feudalism, capitalism and the neocolonial system in Pakistan.
After the trivial appropriation in Maududi’s text, it is not something difficult to discover the similarity of the map of his ‘Islamic system’ and the map of the feudal system of Europe. In the same connection, the conformity of his new school of thought and the school of thought of the Church of Europe too comes to be understood.
The map of the economy in Maududi’s ‘Islamic system’, in his very own words is like this:
In this system, the shape of Maududism as a school of thought becomes this:
(Raza Naeem is an award-winning Pakistani researcher, translator, and dramatic reader based in Lahore, where he is also the President of the Progressive Writers Association. He is currently working on a book, ‘Sahir Ludhianvi’s Lahore, Lahore’s Sahir Ludhianvi’, forthcoming in 2022. He can be reached through email at: razanaeem@hotmail.com. This is an opinion article and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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