was a monthly Islamic journal which was originally founded and published by an independent Muslim scholar in Hyderabad. This convinced Mawdudi that his intellectual efforts were having the desired effect and thus he continued to champion the cause of the Indian Muslims and write prolifically.
Mawdudi continued to publish the Tarjuman from Hyderabad until 1937, when Sir Muhammad Iqbal invited him to move to Pathankot (located in East Punjab, India) and help him to establish an Islamic research center there. After his move to Pathankot in 1938, he continued to edit and publish the Tarjuman and also began work on the proposed research center. With the active support of a number of leading Indian Islamic scholars, in 1941 he formally launched the Jama’at-i-Islami (The Islamic Organization), an Islamic political party, in order to reform Indian politics, culture and society in the light of Islam. This situation changed radically following the formation of Pakistan as an independent country in 1947. Along with his close friends and supporters, Mawdudi left India in favor of Pakistan and tried to establish an Islamic political, economic and cultural order there.
It was the formation of Jama’at-i-Islami in 1941 – and his subsequent migration to Pakistan in 1947 – which provided the ideal opportunity for Mawdudi to engage in politics on a full-time basis for the first time. He actively campaigned for an Islamic constitution, as well as the need to implement the Shari’ah (Islamic law) in that country. Mawdudi did not believe in the pursuit of intellectual activity minus socio-political activism. And although his political activism landed him in prison on more than one occasion, he remained as firm and steadfast as ever. He believed there was no room for the depoliticisation of Islam. Accordingly, Mawdudi and his Jama’at-i-Islami fully embraced socio-political activism.
As an Islamic ideologue and author, Mawdudi wrote more than one hundred books and treatises on all aspects of Islam. However, it is his Tafhim al-Qur’an (Towards Understanding the Qur’an), a voluminous Urdu translation and commentary on the Qur’an, which is today considered to be his most influential work. His critics have argued that his books read more like manuals for socio-political action, rather than works of Islamic wisdom and spirituality, but the Jama’at-i-Islami party which he founded and led for more than three decades continues to operate in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to this day.
Mawdudi is today considered to be one of the most widely-read Muslim authors of modern times. He died in a hospital in Buffalo (New York) at the age of seventy-five and was buried in front of his house in Lahore. Prior to his death, Mawdudi received the prestigious King Faisal International Award for his services to Islam.
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Abul Hasan al-Ash’ari (873-941): After the death of Caliph Uthman, huge controversy ensued within the Islamic State regarding the question of leadership and political legitimacy. During this period, a number of political factions emerged including the Shi’at Ali, khawarij, Murji’ah and the Mu’tazilah. Of these factions, the most politically neutral were the Mu’tazilah who later acquired a largely philosophical and theological contour under the influence of Wasil ibn Ata. Famous Abbasid rulers like Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma’mun became ardent champions of Mu’tazilism. Abul Hasan al-Ash’ari, one of the Muslim world’s most influential theologians (Mutakallimun), emerged to turn the tables on Mu’tazilism.
Abul Hasan Ali ibn Ismail al-Ash’ari was born in Basrah (in modern Iraq) into a distinguished Muslim family which traced its lineage back to Abu Musa al-Ash’ari, who was a prominent companion of the Prophet. Al-Ash’ari mastered Arabic grammar, literature, Islamic sciences and the philosophical and theological doctrines of Mu’tazilism from an early age.
Al-Ash’ari was considered to be far superior to all of them on account of his mastery of the finer points of Mu’tazilite philosophy and theology. According to al-Ash’ari, the Prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to champion the cause of Islamic orthodoxy, rather than that of Mu’tazilism. Suddenly, it was as if al-Ash’ari woke up from a deep sleep, only to discover that he had already spent four decades of his life studying and championing the cause of an un-Islamic creed. He went straight to the central mosque in Basrah, which at the time was packed to its maximum capacity. He stepped onto the minbar (pulpit) and delivered a historic announcement. This announcement was to mark the beginning of the end for philosophical rationalism and the resurgence of Islamic traditionalism. ‘Lo! I repent that I have been a Mu’tazilite.’ The Mu’tazilite rationalists lost one of their most formidable champions. Al-Ash’ari now became the Mu’tazilites most formidable intellectual adversary.
Al-Ash’ari’s repudiation of Mu’tazilism was both comprehensive and monumentally effective. He composed more than ninety books and treatises on all aspects of Islamic beliefs (Aqidah) and theology (kalam), in refutation of the Mu’tazilite creed, and aspects of Islamic epistemology and philosophy.
Led by eminent Islamic scholars like Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the traditionalists vehemently opposed the philosophical interpretation of Islamic theological matters. Al-Ash’ari stated that the Qur’an was the uncreated (Ghair Makhluq), eternal Word of God, and that only the ink, paper and individual letters were created. The Mu’tazilite creed was eventually rooted out from the intellectual and cultural lives of Muslims.
Al-Ash’ari was not only an outstanding Islamic intellectual; he was also one of the greatest religious thinkers of all time. He died and was buried in a place close to Bab Al-Basrah (or ‘the Gate of Basrah’); he was sixty-eight at the time. Ash’arism became the most dominant religious theology in the Muslim world.
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Abul Hasan al-Mas’udi (895-957): After the emergence of Islam in seventh century Arabia, the once illiterate and uncivilized Bedouins of the desert burst onto the global stage under the banner of their new faith and transformed the course of human history. The Arabs crushed the mighty Roman and Persian Empires and carved out for themselves one of the greatest empires in history. Muslims prepared the way for the emergence of modern science, culture and civilization. The tenth century was one of the most intellectually productive periods in the history of Islam, for it was during this period that great Muslim thinkers like Ibn Sina, al-Farabi, al-Razi, al-Biruni and Ibn al-Haytham lived and thrived. Al-Mas’udi, the famous Muslim scholar and polymath, also lived during this period and contributed immensely to the development of science, philosophy, Islamic history, geology, geography and natural history.
Abul Hasan Ali ibn Hussain ibn Ali al-Mas’udi was born in Baghdad during the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Mu’tadid. Al-Mas’udi grew up at a time when the influence of Mu’tazilism was still very strong within the intellectual and cultural circles of Baghdad, which at the time was one of the Muslim world’s foremost centers of philosophical and scientific learning. After completing his formal education, he left his native Baghdad and travelled extensively in pursuit of knowledge. Like Ibn Sina, al-Razi and al-Biruni (who were his contemporaries), the incessant pursuit of knowledge and wisdom became his main preoccupation in life.
Everywhere he went al-Mas’udi carefully observed both the geographical and demographical make-up of the place, and took copious notes about the locals, their culture, traditions and social habits. Three centuries before Marco Polo and Ibn Batuttah were born, al-Mas’udi travelled across a significant part of the then-known world on his own. From his native Baghdad, he journeyed across Persia and reached India while he was still in his twenties. From India, he retreated to Kirman in Persia, where he stayed for a period of time before returning again to India. After a short stay in Madagascar, he set out for what is now the Gulf State of Oman, via Basrah. Al-Mas’udi then travelled across the Middle East and Asia in pursuit of knowledge, and in the process he became a pioneering cultural explorer as well as a great geographer.
Prior to al-Mas’udi’s time, some of the Muslim world’s great thinkers and scientists (like al-Khwarizmi, al-Kindi and al-Sarakhsi) had researched
