Asia Institute - Theses

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A Historical Comparison of Maududi and Hallaq: Religion, State and Political Theology in Mughal India

Surbuland, Hamza ( 2022)

This thesis examines and compares different approaches to moral coercion and social order in Muslim political ethics. I compare the claims of Maulana Maududi’s Islamism paradigm with what I call Wael Hallaq’s Islamic Governance paradigm, with reference to their analytical relevance in Mughal India. Utilising the expansive resources in recent revisionist scholarship, I analyse Mughal ideas about religion, state and political theology, considering the ways in which Maududi, or Hallaq, are able to capture or appreciate those ideas. I find that, after examining Mughal sources, Hallaq overall offers a more persuasive way of understanding Muslim practice. Instead of solely privileging, as Maududi does, formal state-based legalities and a punitive approach to securing moral compliance, Mughal political culture more closely reflects the model offered by Hallaq. It was a milieu wherein important voices elevated personal ethical cultivation and openness to matters of social order, in a context of social and religious plurality. Ultimately, I contend that the consideration of a wider range of premodern Muslim voices draws our attention towards Hallaq’s model, destabilises Maududi’s Islamist grip on interpretations of Muslim history, and allows for a more thoroughly non-statist understanding of political Islam.