Mawdudi’s Contribution To The Development of Modern Islamic Thinking in The Arabic Speaking World

 A Review of the Article

Sayyid Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi (1903–1979) was the one influential Muslim Thinkers. He was the most systemastic thinker of modern Islam. This article is started with  a change in the Egyptian Government which led to the release of most Muslim Brethren from emergency detention and also the banning of Ikhwan Organization. The Egyptian Prime minister  Mahmud Fahmi and the founder of Ikhwan, he was Hasan Al Bana was dead in that time. Because of that assassination, some of the university students and graduates began to ask themselves questions such as: Are we on the right track of true Jihad to establish Islamic justice through an Islamic state that enforces a God’s Law? Before Bana’s assassination Bana often have writings and speechs which present Islam as a way of life in very broad lines.
 

After that in Cairo around 1950 a small committed group among those puzzled youth released from detention established a modest bookstore which contained of Mawdudi’s concise writings for example al-Din al-Qayim ( The True or Right Religion ) the Mawdudi’s writing became popular among arab readers. Mawdudi’s also visited and lectured in many cities in the Arab world. Moreover Mawdudi’s writings spoke the aspirations of puzzled Muslim youth, then they trust him as the Islamic thinker and leader who believed not only in the vital role of the educated Muslim youth in the revival of Islam but also in addressing their particular intellectual interests side by side with their spiritual and moral needs and by involving them in social and political activities. So that’s why Arab youth committed to the revival of Islam found and would continue to find enlightenment for their minds and hearts in Mawdudi’s words. Mawdudi believed that negatives and failures must be objectively and honestly presented in the same manner as positives, and he applied this to the political history of Islam, including the period under the last two of the four Caliphs: Uthman (644-56) and ‘Ali (656-61) known as the “fitnah”. He also applied this concept to the history of Islamic revivalist endeavors Mawdudi understands ‘social movement’ as a deliberate, collective endeavor to promote change in certain directions by certain means, an effort by an organized group founded with conscious volition, normative commitment to the movement’s aims and beliefs and active participation on the part of followers and members.

Mawdudi underscored the grievances that Muslims all over the world had against Christian European and American support of Israel against the palestinian people in his response to Pope Paul in 1967. Since the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the British mandate on Palestine after the end of World War One in 1918, Jewish immigration to Palestine had increased enormously, and culminated in the establishment of Israel in 1948. Israel then carried on subsequent aggression and expansion in Palestine and neighboring lands. Palestinians lost their land and their lives. The Vatican’s suggestion was to put all Jewish settlements under British mandate. Referring to this bitter experience, Mawdudi asked the Pope how one might expect good and friendly relations between Muslims and Christians.

That were the example of Mawdudi’s thinkings and writings which contribute to the development of of Modern Islamic Thinking in The Arabic Speaking World.