This is a guest post by Raziq
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There is a common misconception that the roots of radical Islamism stem from grievances in the Middle East i.e. Israel/Palestine. This is actually not true. The Indian Sub-continent is just as responsible for radical Islamism as the Middle East is thanks to one man in particular, largely ignored in the Western media, Maulana Mawdudi. In this article I will be looking at Mawdudi’s personality and ideology.
Mawdudi was the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), an Islamist party in the Indian sub-continent (the counterpart of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt). In the early part of his life he was a newspaper editor. He had no theological grounding as a scholar, rather he was a self-taught man with a passion for political authority. He was a key influence on many Islamist ideologues.
According to historian Philip Jenkins: