Why Maududi’s Islamism Must Be Rejected

A woman without economic autonomy, without access to the public world, lacks the power to challenge patriarchal abuses of power. She cannot exit an abusive relationship because she doesn’t have the means of survival. She cannot refuse her husband’s demands because she can’t turn to anyone else. Indeed, this is the essence of Maududi’s vision: a world in which women, stripped of all autonomy, must remain servile

By Yanis Iqbal

The Companion, the national magazine of the Students Islamic Organization of India (SIO) (students’ wing of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind) has released a list of 10 books to read this Ramadan. The first among them is Abul  A’la al-Maududi Towards Understanding Islam. This choice is curious, because SIO’s constitution lists the promotion of “moral values in the educational system” as one of its goals. 

However, Maududi presents the most immoral system imaginable – immoral in its radical denial of equality.

God-Given Inequalities

In Towards Understanding Islam, Maududi argues that the “husband has been given the position of head of the family” since “no institution can work smoothly unless it has a chief administrator”. We can’t think of “a school without a headmaster or a city without an administrator”. If no one controls institutions, chaos will reign. 

An impeccably anti-democratic ideology drives Maududi’s thinking. Students of a school or residents of a city can be charged with the potential for chaos only if they are presupposed as inherently incapable of fully knowing and managing their situation.

In contrast to the ignorant masses, there exists a coterie of individuals (“geniuses” and “super geniuses”) who possess superior “physical, mental, and moral” capacities. From where do they get these capacities? 

According to Maududi, they “are the gifts of God. They are incarnated in the nature of those men whom God has destined to be thus distinguished. They are mostly inborn and cannot be acquired merely be education and training.”

Why does God distribute capacities in an unequal manner? 

Maududi answers that if all human beings were given the same capacities in equal measure, they would become entirely independent of one another, making cooperation unnecessary. This is a flawed assumption because equal potentiality does not mean the absence of interdependence—in fact, it means the opposite.

If all humans share an equal capacity for growth and development, then cooperation becomes necessary precisely because no one is born with a complete set of fully realized abilities. People require socialization, learning, and exchange to cultivate their potential. The fact that no one is inherently wiser, stronger, or more capable than another in an absolute sense creates the basis for mutual dependence—not a hierarchy of permanent dependence and independence.

Maududi misinterprets equality as meaning that each individual would be self-subsisting if they had identical faculties. But, equality refers not to absolute autonomy, but to the shared human condition of incomplete self-sufficiency—where everyone is equally dependent on cooperation for their development. 

His solution, which assigns some as leaders and others as dependents, is based on the very assumption he denies: that human beings are incapable of independent survival. Instead of seeing this shared limitation as the foundation for reciprocal cooperation, he frames it as a justification for hierarchical authority.

A clearer way to see his mistake is through an analogy: imagine a classroom where everyone (including the teacher) has an equal potential to learn, but no one is born already knowing everything. The fact that everyone has equal intellectual capacity does not mean they no longer need teachers or peers. On the contrary, it means that learning is a collective process, and all benefit from cooperation. Likewise, in society, equal potentiality does not remove the need for mutual reliance—it reinforces it.

Maududi’s logic ultimately undermines itself: if inequality is necessary for cooperation, then the most powerful and independent individuals should also not need cooperation from others. However, in reality, no one—however gifted—can thrive in isolation. His argument, then, does not justify hierarchy; it only reveals his inability to conceive of equality as an interdependent, rather than atomized, human condition.

Using ‘Faith’ to Deny Democracy

Once Maududi has mischaracterized and jettisoned equality, he proceeds with the legitimization of “faith in the unknown” (iman-bil-ghaib): “You achieve the knowledge of what was not known to you from one who knows.” These people who “know” are the “geniuses” and “super geniuses” whose divinely ordained existence Maududi has so easily presupposed. 

His argument for iman-bil-ghaib has used a faulty analogy. He states that just as we trust doctors, lawyers, and teachers in matters beyond our personal expertise, we should also trust prophets as intermediaries of divine knowledge. However, this analogy doesn’t hold because our trust in professional fields like medicine or law is not an uninformed leap of faith into the unknown. Rather, it is the product of a prior process of socialization that establishes the credibility of these fields.

To take an example, we don’t trust medical knowledge simply because doctors claim expertise. Rather, our trust is formed due to the existence of an institutional framework that follows guidelines for rigorous training, peer review, public accountability, and empirical testing. Medical practices are seen as reliable given the structured processes of scrutiny that open them to the possibility of critique and revision. Even if an individual patient does not personally check a treatment’s efficacy, they operate within a collective environment where such verification has already taken place through democratic and institutionalized processes.

He claims that we “surrender our own right of judgment” to experts and follow them unquestioningly. This is demonstrably false. 

Imagine a university classroom where a teacher lectures about democracy but simultaneously maintains rigid control over discussions. When a student points out a contradiction in his argument, he lashes out at him, insisting true learning requires that students surrender their judgement and accept his speech as the ultimate truth.

The absurdity becomes clear: if education requires complete surrender, no intellectual progress would take place. The inability to challenge arguments would lead to the persistence of errors, thus causing the self-destruction of knowledge. That is why education is fundamentally about the student’s right to revolt against the teacher – to question, criticize and even reject the teacher’s responses.  

Maududi doesn’t operate within this democratic pedagogical process of critique and revision. Instead, he models knowledge on the structure of an undemocratic prophethood, where obedience is ensured through the personal sincerity and moral self-evidence of divine truth. In this way, he bypasses the mechanisms of collective reasoning and critique.

The Nature of Prophethood in Islam

What is important to note is that prophet-hood within Islam is hardly as authoritarian as Maududi wants it to be. First, the Qur’an itself describes Prophet Muhammad as a reminder (dhakir), rather than an enforcer: “So remind, (O Muhammad); you are only a reminder. You are not over them a controller.” (Qur’an 88:21-22). 

The Prophet’s role is not to rigidly press for obedience, but to serve as an impetus for right thinking. 

Second, the Qur’an asserts mutual consultation (shura) as a governing principle: “…and those who have responded to (the call of) their sovereign and have established prayer, and their affairs are (determined by) consultation (shura) among themselves…” (Qur’an 42:38).

This means that prophetic authority does not negate the collective reasoning of the community. Instead, decisions are taken through the participation of all. The Prophet himself used to consult companions like Abu Bakr and Umar on political and military issues, instead of releasing unilateral commands.

Third, during the Prophet’s life, companions disagreed with him and they were not punished for it. During the Battle of Badr, Al-Hubab ibn al-Mundhir questioned the Prophet’s choice of battlefield positioning. The Prophet listened to his reasoning and changed his decision accordingly. 

Similarly, Umar ibn al-Khattab openly debated with the Prophet about the terms of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, indicating the possibility of rational engagement. 

Fourth, unlike Christianity (where ecclesiastical authorities organize the believer’s access to divinity), Islam lacks a formal priesthood. This allows knowledge to be transmitted by anyone without the institutional rigidities of an overweening clergy.

Enforcing Female Slavery

Having established the anti-democratic nature of Maududi’s ideology, we can now return to his insistence on the necessity of a male family head that was explored at the beginning of the article. He argues that men have been endowed with certain natural qualities that make them suited for governance (qawam) over the family, while women, due to their natural limitations, have been placed in a dependent position for their own safety and protection. 

This supposed dependence, in his view, necessitates male authority and discipline, which extends to physical punishment when women do not conform. According to him, “There are certain women who do not mend their ways without a beating.”

His argument about the natural acumen of men for governance is so devoid of any explanations that it shouldn’t even merit a rebuttal. Nevertheless, consider an example from Islamic history itself that clearly disproves his flimsy, ungrounded statements. 

The Prophet’s first wife, Khadijah, was both a wealthy merchant and a leader in Meccan society. She single-handedly ran a successful business, hired men (including the Prophet himself, before their marriage), and was famous for her intelligence and leadership. If women were naturally dependent on men, how did Khadijah thrive as a self-sufficient entrepreneur in a patriarchal society?

Once Maududi has established men’s natural superiority in matters of governance, he claims that Islam has “freed” women from external responsibilities, allowing them to devote themselves fully to the home. The word “freedom” here functions as a cruel joke, for in reality, what he actually describes is an elaborate system of captivity. 

Women are to be confined, cut off from financial independence, locked away from education and public life, and reduced to their reproductive functions. This is hardly liberation – it is the planned construction of a slave class that is forced to bow to male authority.

A woman without economic autonomy, without access to the public world, lacks the power to challenge patriarchal abuses of power. She cannot exit an abusive relationship because she doesn’t have the means of survival. She cannot refuse her husband’s demands because she can’t turn to anyone else. 

Indeed, this is the essence of Maududi’s vision: a world in which women, stripped of all autonomy, must remain servile.

Maududi transforms coercion into protection, subjugation into harmony, and exclusion into divine favour. Yet beneath this rhetorical trickery lies a stark reality: his theory is not just flawed—it is fundamentally immoral. It does not merely misrepresent Islam; it stains it—preaching a philosophy of radical inequality and hierarchy.

This is why Maududi’s Islamism must be rejected.

Yanis Iqbal is an undergraduate student of political science at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Aligarh, India. He is the author of the book, ’Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia’. He has published more than 300 articles in different media publications and websites on imperialism, social movements, political theory, education, and cultural criticism. 

Courtesy: countercurrents.org