Criticisms
- Maududi has been an intensely controversial figure. Criticism has come both from secularists and from within the Islamic religious establishment. Many of the Ulema who were involved in the founding of the Jama`at-e Islami left shortly afterwards in protest against Maududi's policies and leadership style. Both Barelwi and Deobandi ulama have accused Maududi of having turned Islam upside down.
- From the Barelvii side, a representative critique is that offered by Shaikh al-Islam Sayyid Muhammad Madani Ashrafi who authored a series of books on Maududi's misunderstanding and abuse of traditional Islamic terminology. Foremost amongst Deobandi scholars who have written formal refutations of Maududi is Shaikh Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhalwi, the late hadith scholar and influential figure in the Tablighi Jama`at. Kandhalwi's book "Fitna-e Mawdudiyyat" begins with a mention of how Maududi was expelled from his madrassah studies for insubordination. Both authors concur that Maududi's self-education led him to develop a distorted understanding of Islam. They claim Maududi and his movement urge Muslims to take up religious rituals (prayer, etc.) in order to prepare for acquiring state power, whereas some other Aalim's (professor) understanding is that the rituals of Islam are the purpose of life, and state power is a means to establishing the worship of Allah. The critics also point out that Maududi seemed to have no control over his pen and an unlimited sense of his own importance. He repeatedly denigrated the traditional ulama and the sufis, and, more grievously, defamed the prophets of Allah in his "Tafhim al-Quran" and elsewhere, and the Companions of the Prophet in "Khilafat wa Mulukiyyat."
- Secular and Muslim critics say that Maududi's political theory, like that of Sayyid Qutb in Egypt, is more influenced by Stalin or Mussolini than by the Qur'an and Hadith and the example of seventh-century Madina, while the majority of Muslims regard this view as completely borne out of ignorance and a hatred of Islam.
- Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the Amir (Head) of Jamaati Islami, devoted himself to the study of theology in 1927. Despite his great learning, immense knowledge and forceful style of Urdu, his critics — especially ulema of the Deoband and Lucknow schools — say that his lack of training in theological discipline was his great weakness. He criticized the Jamiyat Ulamai Hind for its composite nationalist theory which exposed Muslim India to the serious dangers of religio-cultural absorption into Hinduism, yet simultaneously attacked Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim nationalism as no less dangerous than Congress nationalism. There was no difference to him whether the irreligious Muslims of India survived in the form of Pakistan or not (Musalman or Mau Judah Siyasi Kashmakash (Muslims and present political tussle) , Pathankot, 1946, 6–7). It is in the tradition of medieval Christianity, and not of Islam, that Maulana Maudoodi developed the original ideals of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and the Khairi brothers’ Hukumati Ilahiyya. St Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes provided him with the non-Islamic concepts of orthodoxy, dogma and heresy — and also with the rhetoric of intolerance age.
Dr. Haider Maudoodi, the son of Maulana Maudoodi, has openly denounced the actions of Jamaati Islami, the very same Jamaat his father formed and a Jamaat that is following his example to the letter. He stated in The Nation on 1/27/99 that his father would not allow his children to go near Jihad, but would sell this idea to millions of others; he would never allow any of his children to read any of his 80 books. While Jamaati Islami was encouraging an uprising by Kashmiri’s against the Indian occupation, Haider Maudoodi stated, “Islam does not allow them taking up arms against the State” and praised Pakistani’s for not allowing religious extremists like Jamaati Islami members from attaining many seats in the National Assembly of Pakistan. “My father though he could only use the people who came to him. But in his old age, he did get a taste of his medicine. When he was on his deathbed, these Maulana’s treated him as dirt.”
- Maududi was a key source of the extremism which caused the persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan, and the passage of highly problematic "blasphemy" and "Hudood" laws that have led to many human-rights violations being committed against religious minorities and women. This fact is well documented in the Pakistani newspapers of the time.
another leading Muslim scholar of the 20th century. Together, Maududi, along with Qutb, is considered by some to be one of the founding fathers of the global Islamic revivalist movements.
