Mahzarnama (The Memorandum) — Page 18
18 Mahzarnama direction (in prayer) as we do, and partakes from the animal slaughtered by us, then such a one is a Muslim concerning whom there is a covenant of Allah and His Messenger; so you must not seek to hoodwink Allah in the matter of this Covenant. [ Bukhari, Kitabus-Salat, Baab Fazl Istiqbal il-Qibla ] 2 Our spiritual master, Hadhrat Muhammad sa , has done us all a tremendous favour by spelling out this definition in such comprehensive and unambiguous terms, and thereby laying the foundation of the international unification of the Islamic World. It is incumbent upon every Muslim government to accord explicit recognition to this cohesive foundation in its respective Constitution. Failure to do so would perpetuate disunity among the followers of Islam and their trials and tribulations would continue unabated. During the last fourteen centuries, various religious divines have, from time to time, issued various edicts of disbelief on the basis of their self-styled definitions. It created such a horrifying situation that there was not a single century in which these so- called definitions spared the saints, the deeply religious divines, and pious mystics without holding their adherence to Islam as strongly suspect. One cannot present even a single Islamic sect whose ‘disbelief' is not fully affirmed by at least a few of the other Islamic sects. The Status of the Edicts of Disbelief A question that naturally arises in this context is: What is the status, or worth, of such edicts of disbelief? Can any religious scholar, in his individual capacity or as a representative of his own sect, be entitled to issue an edict of disbelief against another 2 This translation of the Hadith was taken from the booklet authored by Maulana Abul’A‘ala Maudoodi, A Critique of Constitutional Proposals, pp. 14-15, (Urdu).