Where Does an Erroneous Interpretation of the Deen Take Us?

position. Some of these arguments clearly indicated that, driven by a fiery zeal to counter me, my critics from the Jamaat completely forgot what the word ‘evidence’ means. Some of them went beyond all limits by indulging in mockery. Perhaps they thought that their lack of evidence against me could be made up in this way. I must clarify here that I do not say that the literature on and about the political interpretation of Islam has been deliberately written with the aim of promoting deviation in Islam. Rather, this has happened unconsciously. The dominance of a certain way of thinking led one of the principal pioneers of this literature, Maulana Maududi, in a certain direction. Motivated with a passion for serving the deen, and not with the intention of disfiguring its image, he sought to explain the entire deen in a particular manner. To this extent I see him as faultless. But after this, when his attention had been drawn to this state of affairs, it was necessary for him to ponder on it, instead of considering his writings to be the last word and ignoring any critiques of it. Making a mistake is not a mistake in itself. But it is certainly a big mistake if someone continues to insist on his position despite his error being pointed out to him. I am aware that for the author of this literature to acknowledge his mistakes may not have seemed a simple issue because there were several delicate matters involved. That is why before I published Taʿbir ki Ghalati, I repeatedly requested the leaders of the Jamaat-e-Islami for a very small thing. If they