The Political Interpretation of Islam

restricted validity into a general, eternal principle. When the daʿi made his statement, he was not wrong, but when it was interpreted by his later followers as a general principle, it was, of course, wrongly understood. Sometimes, this sort of error goes beyond this, so that what was meant to be relevant in a particular context is wrongly interpreted as general in application. Sometimes, the daʿi is so heavily influenced by his own thought that he begins to see the particular aspect of the deen which he had felt it necessary to stress as actually being the deen in its entirety. Accordingly, he begins to explain the whole of the deen in the light of this one aspect alone. He does not remain content with stressing the importance of this aspect in itself, but goes beyond, to make this aspect a question of the whole of the deen. He begins to see the causes of everything—whether beneficial or baneful—as lying in this one aspect alone. When a person reaches this level, his blunder reaches its peak. At this juncture, something that was just one part of the deen (and in some cases, simply a relative part) becomes, in his view, the ‘total deen’ or the ‘essential deen’. This is just like how the importance of the economic factor was transformed into Marxism—and we know that, despite focusing on a necessary value or aspect of life, the underlying basis of Marxism is fallacious. This point can be further understood with the help of an analogy. Consider the case of two people. One of them looks at an object that is yellow in colour. The