Abul A'la Mawdudi

Abul A'la Mawdudi (1903-1979) was one of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the twentieth century and the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami ("Islamic Party"), a religious-political movement that spread across South Asia. He was born in Aurangabad, in the princely state of Hyderabad in British-ruled India, into a family that traced its descent to the Chishti line of Sufi teachers. Largely self-taught after his early madrasa schooling was interrupted, he learned several languages and read widely in both Islamic tradition and Western thought.

Mawdudi began as a journalist, editing Urdu newspapers in Delhi in the 1920s before moving to Hyderabad, where from the early 1930s he edited the journal Tarjuman al-Qur'an, which became the vehicle for his ideas. In 1938 he relocated to Pathankot in the Punjab; in 1941 he founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in Lahore. After the 1947 partition he settled in Pakistan, campaigning for the new state to be governed by Islamic law. This brought repeated clashes with the authorities: he was imprisoned several times, and in 1953 was sentenced to death over an anti-Ahmadiyya pamphlet, a sentence later commuted under public pressure.

His best-known work is the multi-volume Tafhim al-Qur'an ("Towards Understanding the Qur'an"), a commentary written over roughly three decades. Assessments of his legacy differ sharply: admirers regard him as a revivalist reformer, while critics fault his political vision. He died in Buffalo, New York, while receiving medical treatment, and was buried in Lahore.