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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 November 2021
The concept of ḥākimiyya (sovereignty), as understood by its leading proponents, refers to the notion that it is God, rather than humans, Who possesses the prerogative to make laws. A concomitant of this is that Muslims with political power and authority must recognise the supremacy of Islamic law. This notion, perhaps most notably articulated in modern times by Abū al-Aʿlā Mawdūdī, may be viewed as the rearticulation of ideas latent in the premodern Islamic juristic tradition, but whose modern incarnation as ḥākimiyya emerged in response to the legislative norms of the liberal colonial state. Despite its modern articulation, and against the views of several scholars, I argue that ḥākimiyya qua sovereignty finds its antecedents quite clearly in the Islamic scholarly tradition. Such an understanding leads into a discussion of how Islamic conceptions of sovereignty can help us reassess influential Western articulations of the concept. I also show that Mawdūdī's influential younger contemporary, the Islamist alim Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī Nadwī, upholds ḥākimiyya despite his critique of Mawdūdī and Sayyid Quṭb's conceptions of it. I conclude with a brief reflection on how our understanding of ḥākimiyya as sovereignty can help us provincialise Europe in global historical studies.
I would like to express my gratitude to Humeira Iqtidar and Oliver Scharbrodt for kindly inviting me to their workshop on the concept of ḥākimiyya held at Kings College London in September 2019. I am very grateful for the valuable feedback from the participants. More specifically, I would like to thank Humeira, Oliver, Omar Anchassi, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, Andrew March, Christopher Pooya Razavian, Muhammad Qasim Zaman and two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. Naturally, they are not responsible for any of my errors.
2 For dates, I generally first cite the Hijri followed by the Common Era, e.g. 1442/2020.
3 I use the term Islamist in this article to refer to Muslims associated with religiously inspired political movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamāʿat-e Islāmī in South Asia, and not groups such as IS and al-Qāʿida that I do not consider to belong to this category (as I hope to discuss in future work).
4 See Zaman, Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton, NJ, 2018), p. 161; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God in Modern Islamic Thought’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25, 3 (2015), p. 417.
5 See S. Quṭb, Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾān, 34th edition (Cairo, 2004), vol. 4, p. 1990. Quṭb is commenting on Q. 12:40. For a translation, see: Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, p. 139; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God’, p. 393f. Quṭb also highlights the concept of ḥākimiyya throughout later editions of his al-ʿAdāla al-Ijtimāʿiyya fī al-Islām (Social Justice in Islam) as well as Maʿālim fī al-Ṭarīq (Milestones) which was written towards the end of his life. For a diachronic study of the ʿAdāla that traces Mawdūdī's influence in later editions, see W. E. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam (New York, 1996). For an exploration of Mawdūdī's influence on Quṭb more generally, see O. Carré, Mystique et politique: Lecture révolutionnaire du Coran par Sayyid Qutb, Frère musulman radical (Paris, 1984). For a translation of the Maʿālim, see S. Qutb, Milestones, (ed.) A. B. al-Mehri (Birmingham, 2006). Ḥākimiyya is translated “sovereignty” throughout, though Mawdūdī is mentioned nowhere by name.
6 Zaman focuses on South Asia, but one can also find the ideas underlying ḥākimiyya, often without the use of this particular word, in writings of non-Islamist contemporaries of Mawdūdī and Quṭb. For example, the Saudi-based Mauritanian scholar, Muḥammad al-Amīn al-Shinqīṭī (d. 1393/1974), argues in a similar fashion to Mawdūdī—though he does not cite him or Quṭb—that legislating is a divine prerogative. See M. A. al-Shinqīṭī, Aḍwāʾ al-Bayān fī Īḍāḥ al-Qurʾān bi-l-Qurʾān (Beirut, 1995), vol. 3, pp. 259f. Further examples are given below.
7 On the notion of an “Islamic discursive tradition”, see Asad, T., ‘The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam’, Qui Parle, 17, 2 (2009 [1986]), p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 For more on such approaches, see D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000); Subrahmanyam, S., ‘Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia’, Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3 (1997), pp. 735–762CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Moyn and A. Sartori (eds.), Global Intellectual History (New York, 2013). For a critical review of Moyn and Sartori's work, see Subrahmanyam, S., ‘Global Intellectual History beyond Hegel and Marx’, History and Theory, 54, 1 (2015), 126–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 See M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford, 1998); idem, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003).
10 Muhammad Qasim Zaman describes Nadwī as “the most influential Indian religious scholar of his generation”. For more on him and the institution he headed, see M. Q. Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton, 2002), pp. 52, 160–170. For a detailed biographical study, see J. Hartung, Viele Wege und ein Ziel. Leben und Wirken von Sayyid Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali al-Hasani Nadwi (1914–1999) (Würzburg, 2004). I concur with Euben and Zaman in viewing Nadwī as an Islamist despite my disagreeing with their inclusion of a figure like Usāma Bin Lādin (d. 1432/2011) in this category. See R. L. Euben and M. Q. Zaman (eds.), Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden (Princeton, 2009), pp. 107–111.
11 For the suggestion that Nadwī was a Quṭbist, see D. Lav, Radical Islam and the Revival of Medieval Theology (Cambridge, 2012), p. 55: E. Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven, 1990), pp. 22–23, 27, and passim; Shepard, E., ‘Sayyid Qutb's Doctrine of “Jāhiliyya”’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 35, 4 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 533f.; S. Lacroix, ‘Ḥākimiyya’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, (eds.) K. Fleet, et al. (Leiden, 2017); J. Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York, 2010), pp. 213, 332, n. 57. Calvert presents Nadwī as the 1955 translator of the work of Mawdūdī's Four Basic Qur'anic Terms, a work that Nadwī would strongly criticise in 1978. In fact, the edition of Mawdūdī's work that I use later in this article claims to be the first to be translated into Arabic in the 1374/1955 preface to its first edition. The translator is a certain Muḥammad Kāẓim Sabbāq. My fifth edition was printed in 1391/1971 by Dār al-Qalam in Kuwait. There was another slightly older Nadwī, i.e. a graduate of Dār al-ʿUlūm Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ, involved in translating much of Mawdūdī's writings into Arabic, namely Masʿūd ʿĀlam Nadwī (d. 1373/1954). It is possible that the shared last appellation has been a source of confusion for scholars.
12 For a study of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership's rejection of Quṭbism since the late 1380s/1960s, see B. Zollner, The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology (Abingdon, 2009).
13 In a different context, the legal scholars Martin Loughlin and Stephen Tierney underline that sovereignty as a modern idea is “intrinsically political and legal” (emphasis added). See M. Loughlin and S. Tierney, ‘The Shibboleth of Sovereignty’, The Modern Law Review 81, 6 (2018), p. 999f. Loughlin and Tierney are specifically concerned with the sovereignty of the British state from the late nineteenth century to the present. This merging of the legal and the political can also be seen in Andrew March's assessment that “[t]he ultimate right to legislate is seen as the quintessential sovereign power from the ancient Roman constitution to Hobbes, Kant, and Austin”. See A. F. March, The Caliphate of Man: Popular Sovereignty in Modern Islamic Thought (Cambridge, MA, 2019), p. 243, n. 2. If we turn to the chief architect of the concept of sovereignty in early modern Europe, namely Jean Bodin, the key feature is again the political sovereign's ability to legislate. In his view, the power to legislate was “the principal mark of sovereign majesty” (le point principal de la maisesté souvereaine). See J. Bodin, Six Books of the Commonwealth, (ed.) M. J. Tooley (Oxford, 1955), p. 32. Invoking Bodin, the noted German legal scholar Dieter Grimm avers, “The most important characteristic of the sovereign is that he ‘makes law for the subject, abrogates law already made, and amends obsolete law’”. See D. Grimm, Sovereignty: The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept, (translated by) B. Cooper (New York, 2015), p. 20.
14 This is not to say, of course, that the ideal upheld by the ʿulamāʾ was always realised in practice. But this is trivially true for the ideals that underlie all political systems.
15 See Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, p. 136; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God’, p. 389f. Emphasis added.
16 See Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, p. 139; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God’, p. 394.
17 I will address the views of Vali Reza Nasr, Muhammad Qasim Zaman, and Humeira Iqtidar presently. Other scholars who make such arguments include William Shepard, John Calvert, Shiraz Maher and Stéphane Lacroix; See Shepard, ‘Sayyid Qutb's Doctrine of “Jāhiliyya”’; Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism; S. Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (New York, 2016); Lacroix, ‘Ḥākimiyya’.
18 See Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, p. 139; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God’, p. 393f.
19 Nasr similarly portrays Nadwī as viewing Mawdūdī's thought as “a radical break with traditional norms”, a view I critique below when considering Nadwī's ideas. See: Nasr, Mawdudi, p. 59. I read Zaman as implying a similar idea, though Zaman does not state this as explicitly as Nasr does.
20 See Graham, W. A., ‘Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993), p. 499CrossRefGoogle Scholar (cited in Nasr, Mawdudi, pp. 6, 144, n. 17). The words in brackets are introduced by Nasr.
21 See Nasr, Mawdudi, passim. The term ‘ideology’ and its derivatives are used by Mawdūdī and some of his critics in very different senses. Mawdūdī wrote many of his political essays in the early and mid-twentieth century when ideologies and their representatives were considered serious and respectable participants in political discourse. This explains the pride with which Mawdūdī speaks of “the Islamic ideology”. By the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, however, the term ideology has come to be viewed as a pejorative in popular discourse, and has a mixed reputation in scholarly circles. In the 1380s/1960s, the American sociologist Daniel Bell published his influential classic, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, in which he argued that the grand post-enlightenment ideologies of the past century had become spent forces. For much of the second half of the twentieth century, the term ideology has often been a derogatory label in Western discourse, denoting inauthentic, narrow-minded doctrinaire thinking. This semantic shift needs to be borne in mind when reading Mawdūdī. Misreading his usage of ideology can be avoided by substituting it with other terms that may be viewed as synonyms for his notion, such as ‘worldview’, or ‘imaginary’ in the sociological sense. Alternatively, one can recognise that ‘ideology; need not function as a derogatory term, as has been persuasively argued by Michael Freeden. See Freeden, Ideology.
22 See Iqtidar, H., ‘Theorizing Popular Sovereignty in the Colony: Abul Aʿla Maududi's “Theodemocracy”’, The Review of Politics, 82, 4 (2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 603f, 609, 617.
23 Mawdūdī may be drawing on premodern inspiration for his view that the state has a role to play in fashioning pious subjects by promoting sound Islamic teachings, beyond its basic responsibility to provide minimal order in society. On this, see March, Caliphate, p. 30. Such a sentiment is readily found in premodern treatises on governance when they discuss the duties of the ruler. The preservation of the religion from deviation is the first duty listed in what is the seminal and perhaps best-known work of this genre. See A. Ḥ. al-Māwardī, al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya, (ed.) A. Jād (Cairo, 2006), p. 40. For the translation, see al-Māwardī, The Ordinances of Government (Reading, 1996), p. 16. This contrasts with Iqtidar's reading which views Mawdūdī's concerns with social engineering by means of the state to be a modern innovation. Such premodern antecedents strongly suggest otherwise, while the scale of social engineering possible with the modern state is undoubtedly new, and as Iqtidar highlights, a worry for Mawdūdī.
24 See Iqtidar, ‘Theorizing Popular Sovereignty’, passim. As she notes, Mawdūdī believes that an Islamic state would be less susceptible to totalitarian and fascistic impulses given that its pretensions to sovereignty are curtailed.
25 Ibid., p. 605f.
26 Ibid., p. 607f., citing A. A. Mawdūdī, Islām kā Naẓariyya Siyāsī (Bareilly, n.d.), p. 19f. For the Arabic translation, see A. A. al-Mawdūdī, Naẓariyyat al-Islām al-Siyāsiyya (Cairo, 1951), pp. 49–51. The verse in question translates:
God has made a promise to those among you who believe and do good deeds: He will make them vicegerents in the land (layastakhlifannahum fī al-arḍ), as He did for those who came before them; He will empower the religion He has chosen for them; He will grant them security to replace their fear. “They will worship Me and not join anything with Me.” Those who are defiant after that will be the rebels.
Adapted from: M. A. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an: A New Translation (Oxford, 2010).
27 Al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-Bayān fī Tafsīr Āy al-Qurʾān, (ed.) ʿA. M. al-Turkī (Giza, 2001), 17:345–348.
28 Al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, (ed.) M. Ṣ. Qamḥāwī (Beirut, 1992), 5:191.
29 Al-Māwardī, al-Nukat wa-l-ʿUyūn, (ed.) S. b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (Beirut, n.d.), 4:117–119.
30 Al-Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-Ishārāt, (ed.) I. al-Basyūnī (Cairo, 2000), 2: 620f.
31 Al-Baghawī, Maʿālim al-Tanzīl fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān, (ed.) M. al-Namir et al. (Riyadh, 1997), 6:57–9.
32 Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, (ed.) A. Q. ʿĀṭāʾ, 3rd edition (Beirut, 2003), 3:408–413.
33 Al-Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-Manthūr fī al-Tafsīr bi-l-Maʾthūr (Beirut, 2011), 6:215f.
34 Abū al-Suʿūd, Irshād al-ʿAql al-Salīm ilā Mazāyā al-Qurʾān al-Karīm (Beirut, n.d.), 6:190.
35 Al-Alūsī, Rūḥ al-Maʿānī fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm wa-l-Sabʿ al-Mathānī (Beirut, 1995), 9:393f.
36 ʿA. R. al-Saʿdī, Taysīr al-Karīm al-Mannān fī Tafsīr Kalām al-Raḥmān, (ed.) ʿA. R. al-Luwayḥiq (Beirut, 2000), p. 573.
37 M. Shafi‘, Ma'aariful-Quran, (translated by) M. I. Husain, (ed.) M. T. Usmani (Karachi, 2007), 6:450–55.
38 Al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 17:436.
39 Abū al-Suʿūd, Irshād, 6:190.
40 Shafi‘, Ma'aariful-Quran, 6:451.
41 Ibid., 6:453.
42 These are found in disparate chapters in different legal schools, usually under the heading Wujūb Naṣb al-Imām (the obligation of establishing a Caliph). For a representative discussion, see Wizārat al-Awqāf, al-Mawsūʿa al-Fiqhiyya (Kuwait, 1986), 6:215–233. For a classic statement of this, see al-Māwardī, al-Aḥkām, 15f. For its translation, see al-Māwardī, The Ordinances, p. 3. The obligatory nature of religio-political power in the ruler's capacity as vicegerent of the Prophet is expressed in the very opening sentence of the first substantive chapter of the work. In the English translation, the single Arabic sentence is divided across two sentences.
43 Iqtidar, ‘Theorizing Popular Sovereignty’, p. 616.
44 O. Anjum, Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge, 2012), p. 2.
45 See Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, p. 136; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God’, p. 389f.
46 On this, see March, Caliphate, pp. 18–22; W. Hallaq, The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity's Moral Predicament (New York, 2013), especially pp. 37–73.
47 This is based on a canonical hadith in which the Prophet states, “The ulama are the heirs of the Prophets”. See Sunan Abī Dāwūd, ‘Kitāb al-ʿIlm, Bāb al-Ḥathth ʿalā Ṭalab al-ʿIlm’, Sunnah.com, https://sunnah.com/abudawud/26, cited in March, Caliphate, p. 244, n. 8.
48 March, Caliphate, p. 21f.
49 P. Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh, 2004), p. 246.
50 N. Feldman, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (Princeton, 2008), p. 54f.
51 See K. A. El Fadl, ‘The Centrality of Sharīʿah to Government and Constitutionalism in Islam’, in Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity, (eds.) R. Grote and T. Roder (New York, 2012), p. 49. Cited in March, Caliphate, p. 19. I have very slightly modified the translation March and Abou El Fadl provide.
52 See M. Cook, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, 2014), especially pp. 270–282. Cook refers to this as a manifestation of “divine jealousy”. His work informs the discussion that follows.
53 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm (Riyadh, 1999), 2:131 (commenting on Q. 5:50). Cited in Cook, Ancient Religions, p. 273. It should be noted that, like Cook, Zaman also cites Ibn Kathīr and al-Ṭabarī in his discussion of medieval conceptions of sovereignty but considers passages other than those considered by Cook. See Zaman, Islam in Pakistan, p. 136f.; Zaman, ‘The Sovereignty of God’, p. 390f.
54 See Al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 8:466–8. Cited in M. Cook, ‘Early Medieval Christian and Muslim Attitudes to Pagan Law’, in Islam and Its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qurʾan, (eds.) C. Bakhos and M. Cook (Oxford, 2017), pp. 224f.
55 Cook, ‘Early Medieval Christian’, passim, and pp. 240–242.
56 Cook, Ancient Religions, p. 272f.
57 Y. Friedmann, Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (Montreal, 1971), pp. 33–34. Cited in Cook, Ancient Religions, p. 258.
58 See André Wink, Akbar (Oxford, 2009), pp. 92–95, especially 94f.
59 Cook, Ancient Religions, p. 274.
60 Cook, Ancient Religions, pp. 274–276, n. 146.
61 S. A. A. Maudūdī, The Islamic Law and Constitution, 2nd edition, (translated and edited by) K. Ahmad (Lahore, 1960), pp. 77–79.
62 R. Peters, Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History (New York, 1979), p. 81f. Cited in Cook, Ancient Religions, p. 281.
63 For a summary of this view, see Grimm, Sovereignty. For a nuanced reflection on the conventional history and its problems, see J. C. Lopez, et al., ‘Forum: In the Beginning There Was No Word (for it): Terms, Concepts, and Early Sovereignty’, International Studies Review 20, 3 (2018), pp. 489–519.
64 For an excellent recent discussion of the problems, including Eurocentrism, that bedevil the study of sovereignty, see Ayşe Zarakol's contribution in Lopez, et al., ‘Forum’.
65 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, p. 45.
66 H. J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1948), p. 243; H. J. Morgenthau and K. W. Thompson, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1997), p. 328.
67 Ibid.
68 See T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, 1993), p. 29; B. Nongbri, Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven, 2013), p. 18.
69 See W. B. Gallie, ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 56 (1955), pp. 167–198.
70 See Grimm, Sovereignty, pp. 14–17.
71 See the works of March, Feldman and Hallaq cited earlier.
72 On probabilism in Islamic law making, see Aron Zysow, The Economy of Certainty: An Introduction to the Typology of Islamic Legal Theory (Atlanta, 2014).
73 See, for example, Grimm, Sovereignty, pp. 81–98.
74 A. H. ʿA. al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī li-l-Islām: fī Mirʾāt Kitābāt al-Ustādh Abī al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī wa-l-Shahīd Sayyid Quṭb (Cairo, 1980), p. 68. For the English translation, see A. H. A. Nadwi, Appreciation and Interpretation of Religion in the Modern Age (Lucknow, 1982), p. 58. The title in English is somewhat misleading given that this is a book about the interpretation of Islam, and not religion in general. For the Urdu original, see A. H. ʿA. Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir maiṇ Dīn kī Tafhīm-o-Tashrīḥ (Lucknow, 1980), p. 60. I use all three texts in the present article, but depend more on the Urdu and Arabic versions, since these were languages that Nadwī knew well and his editorial oversight is indicated in both. See Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 12; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 11.
75 A PDF of the obituary (henceforth, Nadwī, ‘Mawdūdī Obituary’) is available at https://archive.org/details/nadwimawdudiobituary/mode/2up (accessed 5 April 2020).
76 Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 11; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 10.
77 Nadwī, ‘Mawdūdī Obituary’; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 12; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 11. Nadwī further notes that Mawdūdī encouraged him to similarly critique his other works. The Arabic edition I have been using does not contain the ‘Foreword to the Second Edition’ found in the Urdu and English editions to which I have had access.
78 See M. Q. Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age: Religious Authority and Internal Criticism (Cambridge, 2012).
79 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 68; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 58; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 60.
80 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, pp. 67, 84f.; Nadwi, Appreciation, pp. 57f., 67f.; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, pp. 59f., 64f. For the original, see S. A. A. Mawdūdī, Qurʾān kī Chār Bunyādī Iṣṭilāḥaiṇ: Ilāh, Rabb, ʿIbādat awr Dīn (Lahore, n.d.), p. 36f. This book is available in English and Arabic translation. See S. A. A. Maududi, Four Basic Qur'anic Terms, (trans.) Abu Asad (Lahore, n.d.), p. 28; A. A. al-Mawdūdī, al-Muṣṭalaḥāt al-Arbaʿa fī al-Qurʾān, 5th edition (Kuwait, 1971), p. 31f. The Arabic text was first published in 1374/1955 and was very likely read by Quṭb not long thereafter. As noted by its Arabic publisher in a prefatory note (p. 3), the original treatise was written in 1360/1941 in Lahore.
81 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 69f.; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 59; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 63f.
82 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 71f.; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 60; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 65. My translation follows Nadwī's Urdu translation of Quṭb. Nadwī translates the Arabic ḥukm Allāh into the Urdu Khudā kī ḥākimiyyat, which although not strictly literal, is in keeping with the tenor of Quṭb's argument. For the Arabic original, see Quṭb, Fī Ẓilāl al-Qurʾān, 4:1963f.
83 On the MB response, see n. 12 above. For a broader history of Quṭb's activities during this period, see Calvert, Sayyid Qutb.
84 This hadith is narrated in the Musnad of Aḥmad (d. 241/855). See Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, (eds.) Sh. eds. al-Arnaʾūṭ et al. (Beirut, 2001), 39:39–44. The modern editors deem the report to be fairly strong in its attribution to the Prophet (ḥasan). It is also found in the short collection of legal hadiths compiled by Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449), who also deems the hadith ḥasan. See Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Bulūgh al-Marām min Adillat al-Aḥkām, (ed.) S. al-Zuhayrī (Riyadh, 2003), p. 450.
85 Aḥmad, Musnad, 17:355. This version of the hadith is deemed weak by the editors, but still may be taken as an indication of the concept's presence in Islamic discourses relatively early.
86 Ibn Baṭṭāl, Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, 1:112–14. I am indebted to the website Islamweb.net for this and the following reference: ‘al-Riyāʾ bayn al-Shirk al-Akbar wa-l-Aṣghar’, Islamweb.net Fatwā Portal, 16 March 2017, https://www.islamweb.net/ar/fatwa/348361/الرياء-بين-الشرك-الأكبر-والأصغر (accessed 5 April 2020). Also see the discussion by al-Ghazzālī (d. 505/1111) of the concept of lesser shirk drawing on one of the aforementioned hadiths in A. Ḥ. al-Ghazzālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (Jeddah, 2011), 6:324f. and 348.
87 Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Tafsīr Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, (comp.) Ṭ. Abū Muʿādh (Riyadh, 2001), 2:676. The passage is also cited in ʿA. al-Ghufaylī, Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī wa-Atharuhū fi Tawḍīḥ ʿAqīdat al-Salaf (Riyadh, 1998), p. 391.
88 Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, Laṭāʾif al-Maʿārif fī-mā li-l-Mawāsim min Waẓāʾif, (ed.) Y. al-Sawās (Beirut, 1999), p. 142. Emphasis added.
89 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, pp. 67, 84; Nadwi, Appreciation, pp. 57, 67; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, pp. 59f., 74f.
90 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 85; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 67f.; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, pp. 74–76.
91 The verses he cites are: 21:25, 51, 54; 11:25–26, 50, 61, 84; 26: 69, 82; 19: 41–42; 29: 16–17, 25; 12: 37–40. See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 86f.; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 69; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 77f.
92 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 93f.; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 74f.; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 84f. His concern is arguably undermined somewhat by its late articulation. Mawdūdī published these remarks as early as 1360/1941, and Nadwī associated with him for more than three decades before publishing this critique.
93 Ḥākimiyya is widely recognised as a neologism. Recently, however, Shiraz Maher (Salafi-Jihadism, pp. 171, 241, n. 2), purportedly drawing on a translation of the classic treatise of al-Māwardī on governance, al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya, has asserted that the term was used by the premodern scholar. According to worldcat.org, the translation of the work he references does not appear to exist, and the page he cites does not correspond with either of the two English translations of which I am aware. An electronic search of the original Arabic edition of the work available on al-Barnāmaj al-Shāmila confirms my suspicion that the modern word ḥākimiyya does not occur in al-Māwardī's text.
94 Of course, the legitimation of violence in certain contexts does not necessitate that the form of political power that Nadwī would advocate would be authoritarian or totalitarian.
95 See Nasr, Mawdudi, pp. 58–65. Nasr's distinctive use of the label “traditional” is indebted to his father, Seyyed Hossein Nasr's influential work on Traditionalism as indicated in the older Nasr's frequent citation in the footnotes of the younger Nasr's work. Interestingly, Mark Sedgwick has argued that the older Nasr's conception of Traditionalism is a modern invention. See M. Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2004). On Nadwī's Islamism, see n. 10 above.
96 This is the translation of the section heading as found in the Urdu and Arabic versions of the work. The English version partially mistranslates it.
97 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, pp. 134–136; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, pp. 107109; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 92f.
98 See al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, p. 141; Nadwi, Appreciation, p. 96; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, p. 113.
99 For his remarks to this effect, see al-Nadwī, al-Tafsīr al-Siyāsī, pp. 77–83; Nadwī, ʿAṣr-e Ḥāżir, pp. 68–74; Nadwi, Appreciation, pp. 62–66.
100 On securitisation, see Brown, K. E., ‘Contesting the Securitization of British Muslims’, Interventions, 12, 2 (2010), pp. 171–182CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Cesari, Why the West Fears Islam: An Exploration of Muslims in Liberal Democracies (New York, 2013), pp. 83–105. On muscular liberalism, see Joppke, C., ‘The Retreat is Real—but What Is the Alternative? Multiculturalism, Muscular Liberalism, and Islam’, Constellations 21 (2014), pp. 286–295CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dobbernack, Jan, ‘The Missing Politics of Muscular Liberalism’, Identities, 25, 4 (2018), pp. 377–396CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
101 Anjum, Politics, pp. xii-xiii. Emphasis in original.
102 I continue to use the expression “Muslim world” despite Cemil Aydın's recent interventions, because his work focuses on the usage of the term in the modern period and disregards the premodern usage of terms like “umma” and “dār al-Islām” found in the Qur'an, hadith and/or juristic literature, for which the modern expression, “Muslim world” functions as a largely congruent rendering. For his main statement of his position, see: C. Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA, 2017).