Murder in the Name of Allah — Page 26
11. Murder in the Name of Allah. Prophet. At the crossroads, from north to south and east to west, it was the last stronghold of Mughal - predominantly Muslim - culture in India. . In a state where the population was overwhelmingly Hindu (more than 80 per cent) and Muslims were a small minority (just 10 per cent), the ruler though without effective power, still recalled the past glory of. Mughal rule. It was an unreal world. The court, with its Paigah nobility, chamberlains, household troops, brocade sherwanis, ceremonial dastar (turban), bugloos (buckle) and gorgeous jewellery, was a reminder of the. Delhi Court before it was ravaged by Nadir Shah (1739). There were. Arab mercenaries with gilded daggers and long muskets and the regular army with all the paraphernalia of modern warfare. The rajas and maharajahs some of them reigning over areas larger than the Hindu states of British India - occupied the highest places of honour in the. Nizam's government and were part of a surreal picture of Muslim tolerance and Hindu loyalty. . Though the Hyderabadi culture was recognisably Indian based, it was largely Muslim in shape. 'Social organisation was still feudal, but not in any sense primitive. It was highly cultivated with a grace of manner, and, above all, a tolerance and mutual respect which could speak volumes to our generation if we could listen. 12. It was in this Hyderabad that the young Maududi's personality was formed. ¹³ Sensitive and impressionable, he started his journalistic career in 1918 by joining the editorial staff of the Medina (Bijnore). After working as editor of the Taj (Jabalpur) he took over the editorship of AlJamiyat (Delhi) in 1925. The shuddi movement was at its height and, as mentioned earlier, at this time the young editor of Al-Jamiyat started writing his articles. They were obviously written under the pressure of his day-to-day work and they were all completed within six months. 14. Maududi began to write these articles 'more as a nationalist than a religious zealot', but on further study of Islamic literature - as much as he could read in six months and without Islamic schooling - he became a religious revivalist. 15 Both his articles in Al-Jihad fil Islam and the overall evolution of his own thought were very much piecemeal. He started writing the book as a nationalist Indian¹6 and, as such, his aim was to prove to the Indian Hindus, and especially to Gandhiji, that Islam was not a religion of violence. In a speech at Jami Masjid, Delhi, the great Indian. Muslim leader, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jowhar, said he wished that a. Muslim would write a book pointing out that Islam had nothing to do with violence. Young Maududi was among the audience and decided to take 26