Encyclopedia of Islam

Mawdudi, Abu al-Ala

  

463  J

---

his call for all Muslims to join together to form 

a single 

umma

 (community) of believers modeled 

after that of Muhammad and his Companions in 

the seventh century. Ideally this Islamic state was 

to be one that transcended all national, ethnic, and 

racial boundaries, governed only by God’s law, the 

sharia. Mawdudi was careful to say that he was not 

calling for the creation of a theocracy on the model 

of the medieval papacy in Europe. Rather, his 

Islamic state was to be a “theo-democracy” gov-

erned by a collective polity united in faith, acting 

as God’s 

caliph

 on earth. The Jamaat-i Islam was to 

be the elite vanguard that would bring his utopian 

vision to fruition, and its participation in Pakistani 

politics was directed to this end. W

omen

 and non-

Muslims, however, held secondary or marginal 

status in Mawdudi’s eyes, and he came to see Hin-

dus, Sikhs, and Ahmadis as enemies of his cause. 

Although his movement has not engaged in overt 

militancy, his ideology is thought to have con-

tributed to the radical jihadist doctrines of Sayyid 

Qutb and a number of radical Islamic movements 

that first emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.

See also  c

hishti

  s

UFi

  o

rder

; 

colonialism

; 

i

slamism

; 

reneWal

 

and

 

revival

 

movements

.