About the Book
Like Tafhim al-Qur’an (The Meaning of the Qur’an), Jihad in Islam is a popular text written by one of the most influential and celebrated Islamist intellectuals of the 20th Century, Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (September 25, 1903 – September 22, 1979). Maududi was a political philosopher, theologian, journalist and activist who, in 1941, established the Jamaat-e-Islami in India and Pakistan. This political party was dedicated to Iqamat-e-Deen, the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Shari’a law.
According to the survey of a random 100 American mosques conducted by the Mapping Shari’a Project, an alarming 51% of mosques in this country promote or distribute texts like Maududi’s Jihad in Islam, which explicitly promote the violent imposition of a Shari’a based-political order. Rather than a personal, piestic observance of Islam, according to Maududi, Shari’a’s rulings encompass:
family relationships, social and economic affairs, administration, rights and duties of citizens, judicial system, laws of war and peace and international relations. In short, it embraces all the various departments of life … The Sharia is a complete scheme of life and an all-embracing social order where nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking. (Maududi, Islamic Law, p.57)
Jihad in Islam is the text of a speech Maududi gave in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1939. It is included in many collection’s of the author’s work in English, including the widely-available hardcover and paperback book, Fundamentals of Islam. Coming amid the outbreak of World War II in Europe, the lecture found Maududi identifying the global villains of the time: not Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, but the liberal western European powers Britain and France. Like fellow Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb, he was greatly influenced by Leninism– both in the concept of a revolutionary vanguard and the compulsion to “alter the social order of the whole world,” through terrifying violence if necessary.
The entire lecture is worthwhile and alarming reading, as Maududi plainly asserts his belief in the Islamic state. Special attention should be paid to the following portions of Jihad in Islam (emphasis added):
“In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. ‘Muslim’ is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And ‘Jihad’ refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective.”
“Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which Nation assumes the role of the standard bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State.”
Availability
Maududi’s Jihad in Islam is widely available in English, both online and in print. Online, PDF versions can be downloaded at Scribd, and is passed around at file-sharing sites like 4shared.com.
Jihad in Islam has been distributed on its own as a monograph by the International Islamic Federation Of Student Organizations. According to its website, the IIFSO’s mission is to “serve, develop, integrate, and represent the Islamic student organizations worldwide while building bridges with other cultures in order to participate in building a brighter future for Muslim youth.” On the same page, the IIFSO claims it:
specializes in ideologically oriented works by Abul Ala Maududi, Sayyid Qutb, Muhammad Qutb and Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, among others. The IIFSO’s books are printed in their original language (Urdu, Arabic) as well as in translations to English, French and Spanish.
The organization’s Facebook page, interestingly, lists its political views as, “moderate.”
Read It For Yourself
Author: Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi
Title: Jihad in Islam (PDF, 37 pages, 152KB) and also found in the complete Fundamentals of Islam (PDF, 264 pages, 5MB).
Relevant Quotes
The quotes below come from Jihad in Islam.
On Jihad:
- These [Muslim] men who propagate religion are not mere preachers or missionaries, but the functionaries of God, (so that they may be witnesses for the people), and it is their duty to wipe out oppression, mischief, strife, immorality, high handedness and unlawful exploitation from the world by force of arms. Page 18
- If these people [Muslims] evade their duty of actively striving for this end [imposing an Islamic government], it clearly implies that they are hypocrites and liars in their faith. Page 20
- In these words, the Qur’an has given a clear and definite decree that the acid test of the true devotion of a party to its convictions is whether or not it expends all its resources of wealth and life in the struggle for installing its faith as the ruling power in the State. Page 20
- In reality Islam is a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. ‘Muslim’ is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And ‘Jihad’ refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective. Page 8
- Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which Nation assumes the role of the standard bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State. Page 9