This step put an end to the state of war. This event is referred to in the history of Islam as Sulh-e-Hudaybiyya. This peace treaty diverted the field of encounter between Islam and its rivals from the

ultimately the numerical power alone sufficed for the victory of Islam. According to Imam al-Zuhari, Sulh-e-Hudaybiyya was the greatest victory in the history of Islam. Prior to this whenever Muslims and their

would go in, without fail, to enter into the fold of Islam. That is why after a mere two years of Sulh-e-Hudaybiyya such large number of people entered the fold of Islam as had never happened before (Al-Bidayah

form of recognition is praise and glory. That is why this position is called the muqam-e-mahmood. This verse on muqam-e-mahmood was revealed in the second stage of the Makkan period at a time when Islam had

clarify why I think that the writings of Maulana Abul Ala Maududi (d. 1979), the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami and proponent of a distinctly political interpretation of Islam, are problematic. The political

be above criticism’. As long as I used this right in order to criticize others, people in the Jamaat-e-Islami circles heartily congratulated me. But the moment I used this very same right to criticize Maulana

obeying it—this is the ‘state’. This is also the understanding of the term deen. And the true deen (deen-e haq) is that human beings abandon slaving for, and obedience to, other people, their own egos and all

political light. Thus, discussing the nature of the mission of the prophets in his book Tajdeed-oIhya-e Deen (‘The Renewal and Revival of the Deen’) Maulana Maududi wrote: The highest goal of the mission

Jamaat-e-Islami had to say in reply to my book, it seems like a wrestler entering into an empty wrestling-ring and beginning an imaginary wrestling match. All the arguments raised by the Jamaat-e-Islami

movements in the name of ‘Divine Government’ (Hukumat-e Ilahiya), the ‘Islamic System’ (Islami Nizam) and the ‘Enforcement of the Shariah’ (Nifaz-e Shariah) turned out to be completely counterproductive