ME AND MAULANA: A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION OF WAHIDUDDIN KHAN - John M. Butt

HOW MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN RESCUED ISLAM FROM POLITICAL UTOPIANS Ammar Anwer H e tried to rescue his faith from the clutches of political utopians who read into Islam a complete political system. “The ideology behind present-day terrorism is that, Islam being a political system, it is the duty of all Muslims to establish Islamic rule in the world. This thinking was not prevalent during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. It is a later innovation which was developed in the last few centuries by a handful of people. Having become widespread in the Muslim world today, it is leading to present-day violence.”[i] Is Islam a political ideology or a religious belief system? This is a question that in the contemporary world continues to baffle many people across the globe. Of course, politics and religion are not mutually exclusive. Some religious beliefs do influence our politics, as they influence various other realms of human life. No one can entirely reduce the Abrahamic faiths to their soteriological aspects since almost all three of the major Abrahamic faiths carry within themselves some political pretensions. But can religion (in