Arguments from the Quran and Hadith

Arguments From the Quran and the Hadith deen to mean the essence of the deen or the basic teachings of the deen of Islam, and not the complete commandments of the deen, the deen in its totality. They take aqim ud-deen or iqamat-e deen not to mean establishing the entire shariah system, but, rather, as adopting fully that part of the deen that is incumbent on every person and in all circumstances, fully abiding by which a person becomes a Muslim in God’s eyes. The translation of the term aqim ud-deen or iqamat-e deen as ‘establish the deen’—which is how proponents of the political interpretation of Islam render it—is not in itself incorrect. But it creates a sort of misunderstanding. When people whose minds are shaped by a political interpretation of Islam consider the phrase ‘establish the deen’, they take it as a commandment to do something—to establish the dominance of the deen or to enforce it, or, in other words, to establish the Divine Government. The fact, however, is that this is not the meaning of the phrase aqim ud-deen in this Quranic verse. A better rendering is ‘to maintain the deen’ or to ‘keep the deen established’. That is why Urdu translators of the Quran have taken the phrase in this sense. They do not take to mean ‘establish the deen’ (in Urdu: deen qaim karo), but, rather, in the sense that I take it— to ‘maintain the deen’ or to ‘keep it established’ (in Urdu: deen qaim rakho). This, for instance, is how well-known South Asian Quranic scholars, such as Shah Abdul Qadir, Shah Rafiuddin, Shaikh Abdul Haq Haqqani, Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, Deputy Nazir