A Comparison

contrary, against all American expectations, they brought about a new revolution in Japan. They created a new history for their nation. They unleashed a wave of progress so strong that even America could not hold it back. They placed Japan among the leading nations of the world. This is the secret of progress in the modern world. Success belongs to those who can turn unfavourable conditions into favourable ones, who can transform hostile plans into an advantage, who can turn a “no” into a “yes.” Only people with this ability succeed in today’s competitive world. Those who fail in this test have no fate other than to be consigned to irrelevance, protesting against others— protests that no one is even there to hear. In this regard, just as the secular section of our country has failed, the Islamist section has also fallen short. For instance, Akbar Allahabadi (1846–1921), a renowned Urdu poet and satirist of British India, and Abul Ala Maududi (1903–1979), a prominent Muslim theologian and founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, viewed the educational institutions of the British era as slaughterhouses and sought to keep an entire generation away from them. This was an utterly meaningless and foolish stance. What these religious leaders should have done was to create awareness among Muslim youth so that they would take knowledge from English institutions while setting aside their cultural influence. However, owing to a limited