Where Does an Erroneous Interpretation of the Deen Take Us?

and complete. So, he opined that all the mujaddids who have appeared till now have all been partial mujaddids. In his words, ‘The stage of the complete mujaddid is empty till now.’ Revealingly, on the very first page of the Maulana’s book Tajdeed-o-Ihya-e Deen, the following words were once printed: ‘A Critical View of the Achievements of the Mujaddids of the Ummah’, but now these words have been deleted from the book. In this book, the Maulana termed all the mujaddids who have appeared till now, without exception, as ‘partial mujaddids’. The matter does not rest here, however. There is more to it. The Maulana wrote that a mujaddid is basically meant to do the kind of work that a prophet does. According to him, the fundamental difference between a mujaddid and a prophet is that the latter receives divine revelation, while the former does not. A mujaddid, therefore, does not have the same status as a prophet. Now, if one accepts as valid the political and revolutionary interpretation of the deen, then one would also have to accept that, like the mujaddids, there are—God forbid—‘partial prophets’, on the one hand, and ‘complete prophets’, on the other! This is because we know that the most of the prophets were not successful in bringing about a political revolution in their lands. The fact of the matter is that, in practical terms and with some differences, most of the prophets did the sort of work that was done by the so-called ‘partial mujaddids’. In the Maulana’s words, ‘The efforts of some of them