WAS Maulana Abul Aa‘laMaududi a popular public figure? The answer, in the conventional sense of mass popularity, is probably no. Yet a question remains: why, half a century after his death, is Maududi still the subject of debate? One possible answer is that he founded the Jamaat-e-Islami, which became part of a global Islamic Movement whose influence extended beyond national borders. That is certainly part of the answer. But there was something else that distinguished Maududi from the thinkers and reformers who came before him, from his contemporaries and from those who came after him. What was it?

In my view, the Jamaat-e-Islami was the second identity of Maududi. His first was his pen. Maududi wrote on an extraordinary range of subjects. Religion, economics, politics, history—there was hardly a major subject on which he did not write and often with such force and conviction that he appeared to leave his mark on the subject itself. His writings remain his first and most enduring identity. Does the Jamaat-e-Islami come next? I believe we would be too quick to answer that question........

© Pakistan Observer