temper his cast-iron judgments. “Now that I have access to the roots of knowledge and the world of reality,” he writes casually, “Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, Marx and other secular thinkers began to look like pygmies. In fact, I began to pity them, for they could not resolve issues, despite grappling with them throughout their life and producing thereon huge volumes.” No one else need bother with these men and their tedious inconclusive books, he seems to say; I’ve read them for you.
Mawdudi’s most widely read book is undoubtedly the brief introductory primer Towards Understanding Islam, a required text in nearly every madrasa curriculum in Pakistan and elsewhere. But it was the multivolume Tafhim al-Qur’an, a work of translation and Qur’anic commentary, that established the foundation of Mawdudi’s intellectual authority and provides the key to the leader he struggled to become. The revelations contained in the Qur’an, Mawdudi writes in the introduction, “drove a quiet, kind-hearted man from his isolation and seclusion, and placed him upon the battlefield of life to challenge a world gone astray.” This was a reference to Muhammad’s transformation, but perhaps there was something of Mawlana Mawdudi, too, to be found here.
Begun in February 1942, Tafhim al-Qur’an occupied Mawdudi during his years of incarceration at the New Central Jail in Multan. By the time he finished thirty years later, Mawdudi had at last retired from his leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami. After his death in 1979, Zafar Ishaq Ansari translated this work into English as Towards Understanding the Qur’an. Unlike his primer, which invited shortcuts, these volumes of “interpretative exposition,” Mawdudi felt, would help orient a student on the Right Path of understanding Allah’s message.
He begins his masterwork by stating that the Qur’an is neither a narrative nor a closely reasoned argument. It is made up of seemingly random verses, exhortations, and divine fiats, arranged in no particular order. It is not sufficient to simply read it from beginning to end. To find the Right Path, Mawdudi counsels, the reader of the Qur’an must do exactly as he did. In the introduction he outlines the steps of the path he took.
First, as the Qur’an is a book like no other, the earnest seeker must abandon all preconceived notions of what will be found between its covers. Then, he must grasp the Qur’an’s fundamental claims. First among these claims is that God has conveyed upon every rational man and woman the gift of understanding. This understanding includes the ability to choose between good and evil, and the power to exercise one’s full potential. With these gifts alone, every human being will have what is needed to reach a sincere faith and an explicit grasp of God’s commands. There is no question for which the Qur’an and the various books of Hadith do not contain the answer. “Nothing is missing,” he writes elsewhere; “no part is vague or wanting.”
According to Mawdudi, what the Qur’an asked of its readers was clearly no different from any other disciplined course of study; there was something comforting and encouraging in that. But as he continued with his instruction on how to read it, the path seemed to get more and more treacherous. Each of the Qur’an’s 114 suras requires careful examination, the Mawlana cautions. The seeker must take notes, organize verses with similar themes together, and compare and contrast the Qur’an’s teachings with those found in other books, ancient and modern, sacred and secular, that have addressed the same large questions.
There will also be linguistic difficulties, he warns, even for those fluent in classical Arabic. The problem with literal translations, he explains, is that even though the Qur’an was written in “clear Arabic,” its terminology “may give rise to ambiguities.” One word may have several meanings or be used to denote different states of mind.
Mawdudi’s most widely read book is undoubtedly the brief introductory primer Towards Understanding Islam, a required text in nearly every madrasa curriculum in Pakistan and elsewhere. But it was the multivolume Tafhim al-Qur’an, a work of translation and Qur’anic commentary, that established the foundation of Mawdudi’s intellectual authority and provides the key to the leader he struggled to become. The revelations contained in the Qur’an, Mawdudi writes in the introduction, “drove a quiet, kind-hearted man from his isolation and seclusion, and placed him upon the battlefield of life to challenge a world gone astray.” This was a reference to Muhammad’s transformation, but perhaps there was something of Mawlana Mawdudi, too, to be found here.
Begun in February 1942, Tafhim al-Qur’an occupied Mawdudi during his years of incarceration at the New Central Jail in Multan. By the time he finished thirty years later, Mawdudi had at last retired from his leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami. After his death in 1979, Zafar Ishaq Ansari translated this work into English as Towards Understanding the Qur’an. Unlike his primer, which invited shortcuts, these volumes of “interpretative exposition,” Mawdudi felt, would help orient a student on the Right Path of understanding Allah’s message.
He begins his masterwork by stating that the Qur’an is neither a narrative nor a closely reasoned argument. It is made up of seemingly random verses, exhortations, and divine fiats, arranged in no particular order. It is not sufficient to simply read it from beginning to end. To find the Right Path, Mawdudi counsels, the reader of the Qur’an must do exactly as he did. In the introduction he outlines the steps of the path he took.
First, as the Qur’an is a book like no other, the earnest seeker must abandon all preconceived notions of what will be found between its covers. Then, he must grasp the Qur’an’s fundamental claims. First among these claims is that God has conveyed upon every rational man and woman the gift of understanding. This understanding includes the ability to choose between good and evil, and the power to exercise one’s full potential. With these gifts alone, every human being will have what is needed to reach a sincere faith and an explicit grasp of God’s commands. There is no question for which the Qur’an and the various books of Hadith do not contain the answer. “Nothing is missing,” he writes elsewhere; “no part is vague or wanting.”
According to Mawdudi, what the Qur’an asked of its readers was clearly no different from any other disciplined course of study; there was something comforting and encouraging in that. But as he continued with his instruction on how to read it, the path seemed to get more and more treacherous. Each of the Qur’an’s 114 suras requires careful examination, the Mawlana cautions. The seeker must take notes, organize verses with similar themes together, and compare and contrast the Qur’an’s teachings with those found in other books, ancient and modern, sacred and secular, that have addressed the same large questions.
There will also be linguistic difficulties, he warns, even for those fluent in classical Arabic. The problem with literal translations, he explains, is that even though the Qur’an was written in “clear Arabic,” its terminology “may give rise to ambiguities.” One word may have several meanings or be used to denote different states of mind.
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