tone, too, is all along personal and intimate. He does not speak as an outsider who is delivering moral sermons from lofty towers. He is part of us. He shares our agonies and difficult decisions. That is why he is also always prepared to lay bare his innermost feelings and thoughts. It is this personal quality that never lets his discourse become wooden, that always accentuates the force of his appeal.
Look how the foolish and ironic inconsistencies of our conduct towards the Qur’ān are exposed in a convincingly reasoned argument that shakes us to our foundations. The fusion of rationality with feeling compels us to reflect upon our situation as well as awakens us to do something about it:
Tell me: what would you say if somebody got a doctor’s prescription and hung it round his neck after wrapping it in a piece of cloth or washed it in water and drank it? Would you not laugh at him and call him a fool? Yet this is the very treatment being given before your eyes to the matchless prescription written by the greatest of all doctors … and nobody laughs! …
Tell me: what would you think if someone who was ill picked up a book on medicine and began to read it, believing, thinking that this would cure him. Would you not say that he was deranged? Yet this is how we treat the Book which the supreme Healer has sent for the cure of our diseases.9
Or, see how, after depicting the miserable situation in which we Muslims find ourselves today, he appeals to our sense of honour, our sense of justice, and thereby leads us to think about the state of our Islam.
Is this the blessing of Allah? If it is not – but rather a sign of anger – then how strange it is that it is Muslims on whom it is descending! You are Muslims and yet are wallowing in ignominy! You are Muslims and yet are slaves! This situation is as impossible as it is for an object to be white and black …
If it is an article of faith with you that God is not unjust and obedience to God can never result in disgrace, then you will have to concede that there is something wrong in your claim to be Muslims. Although you may be registered as Muslims on your birth certificates, Allah does not base His judgements on what is written on pieces of paper.10
Above all, and fifthly, what matters most, what really startles and provokes us, what compels us to choose and respond to the summons of our Creator, is the rhythm of confrontation that permeates Sayyid Mawdudi’s entire discourse. His rhythm is not that of narration and exhortation, or even mere persuasion. From a series of kernels of simple truth, he expands his rhythm into one that persistently challenges and confronts us.
The simple truths, in his hands, become the tools with which he makes us expose our inner selves, as well as they provide us with a powerful critique of our society. His purpose is not to preach to us, but to change us. He wants us to think for ourselves and make our own choices. What startles us is the way he lays bare the implications of what we have always so placidly and lazily continued to believe; what provokes us is the way he divulges our inner contradictions and hypocricies, our incongruous, incomprehensible attitudes towards things we claim to value most.
The above examples illustrate how everything that Sayyid Mawdudi says pulsates with the rhythm of confrontation. But nowhere does it stand out so sharply and powerfully as when he calls upon us to compare our lives and conduct with those of Unbelievers:
Unbelievers do not read the Qur’ān and do not know what is written in it. If so-called Muslims are equally ignorant, why should they be called Muslims? Unbelievers do not know the teachings of the Prophet, blessings and peace be on him, and the straight path he has shown to reach God. If Muslims are equally ignorant of these, how can they be Muslims? Unbelievers follow their own desires instead of the commands of Allah. If Muslims are similarly wilful and undisciplined, setting their own ideas and opinions on a pedestal, indifferent to God and a slave to lust, what right have they to call themselves Muslims? …
… [indeed] almost the only difference now left between us and Unbelievers is that of mere name …
I say ‘almost’ because there is, of course, a difference between us: we know that the Qur’ān is the Book of God, … yet we treat it as an Unbeliever treats it. And this makes us all the more deserving of punishment. We know that Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him, is the Prophet of Allah and yet we are as unwilling as an Unbeliever to follow him.11
There are many reasons for these paradoxes. But one reason Sayyid Mawdudi explains in his characteristic style: ‘You know the damage caused if crops are burnt; you know the suffering which results from failure to earn a livelihood; you know the harm resulting from loss of property. But you do not know the loss of being ignorant of Islam.’12
Finally, let us look at one especially exquisite extract from Sayyid Mawdudi’s discourse which epitomizes all the distinguishing characteristics of his style. Answering the question, has the Prayer lost its power to change lives, he points to the clock which was in front of his audience and which all of us have, and proceeds to explain why. Note the simple but powerful argument and the beauty and grace of language.
Look at the clock fixed to the wall: there are lots of small parts in it, joined to each other …
If you do not wind it, it will not show the time. If you wind it but not according to the method prescribed, it will stop or, even if it works, it will not give the correct time. If you remove some of its parts then wind it, nothing will happen. If you replace some of the parts with those of a sewing machine and then wind it, it will neither indicate the time nor sew the cloth. If you keep all its parts inside its case but disconnect them, then no part will move even after winding it …
Imagine Islam like this clock … Beliefs and principles of morality, rules for day-to-day conduct, the rights of God, of His slaves, of one’s own self, of everything in the world which you encounter, rules for earning and spending money, laws of war and peace, principles of government and limits of obedience to it – all these are parts of Islam…
[But now] … you have pulled out many parts of the clock and in their place put anything and everything: a spare part from a sewing machine, perhaps, or from a factory or from the engine of a car. You call yourselves Muslims, yet you render loyal service to Disbelief, yet you take interest … which un-Islamic gadget is there that you have not fixed into the frame of the clock of Islam.
Despite this you expect the clock to work when you wind it!13
The parable of the clock not only serves to explain the ‘holistic’ nature of Islam – which no intellectual discussion could have explained so lucidly – but it also symbolizes Sayyid Mawdudi’s own contribution to Islamic resurgence: according each part of Islam its due place, infusing it with its true meaning, relinking all of them together.
III
What does Sayyid Mawdudi say? He talks, as we noted in the beginning, about things which are central to Islam: faith and obedience, knowledge and righteous life, the present world and the world to come, the Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving, Pilgrimage and Jihad. But is this not what every religious writer and preacher talks about? So, what is so unique about his discourse? The question is legitimate. Let us see if we can answer it.
No doubt he explains and expounds their meanings and import, too, in a manner which in itself is distinctive and uncommon. But more significantly, and this is central to the importance of this book, he imparts a radical quality to all these elementary everyday
