Mawlana Amin Ahsan Islahi ki Nasri Khidmat

The book under review may be regarded as a critical study of Amīn Ahsan Islāhī’s prose writings in Urdu. The preface to the volume is characterized by lightness of touch from the beginning to the end. It is evident from even a cursory reading of the book that the author has done justice to Islāhī’s intellectual and religious contributions to Urdu prose literature. It is common knowledge among the initiated that both Abū al-A‘lā Mawdūdī and Amīn Ahsan Islāhī belong to Mawlānā Shiblī’s school of thought in prose. Mawdūdī  was fortunate to have some valuable work done on his prose writings but Islāhī’s prose writings could not boast such luck. They say it is never too late to make amends.

Mr. Usmani’s thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter deals with Islāhī’s life, personality and character. It also enlightens the reader about Islāhī’s religious, political and literary background and, at the same time, gives a bird’s eye-view of Islāhī’s prose writings in Urdu to boot. The second chapter dilates on Islāhī’s full–length books, lectures and essays. The third chapter discusses Islāhī’s letter writing, preface-writing, reviewing, translation works and editorial writing. Linguistically speaking, the fourth and the fifth chapters belong to the domain of stylistics. Roughly speaking, stylistics is a branch of linguistics that aims at studying the style (manner of writing contrasted with what is actually written by the common man) of written language and how it is used to create certain effects. In the fourth chapter, the author makes a general assessment of the salient features of Islāhī’s prose style. The fifth chapter goes a long way towards establishing Islāhī’s place as a stylist apart in the company of stalwarts like ‘Abd al-Mājid al-Daryābādī and Abū al-A‘alā Mawdūdī. All the three greats have this distinction in common that they chose to write literary prose even though they were religious scholars. Though comparisons are odious, it would be in the fitness of things if a terse comparison is made between Islāhī and Mawdūdī. Both had a lot in common. Both chose to steer clear of orthodoxy. Their prose-style was robust. Both were great orators. It is rightly asserted that Shiblī’s school of thought reached the acme of success in the prose of the scholarly duo that, in no uncertain terms, contributed a great deal to the promotion of prose literature in Urdu. These analogies notwithstanding, there is a discrete feature that serves to set them apart from each other. Islāhī’s prose is characterized by intellectualism and scholarship while Mawdūdī’s is marked by fluency and eloquence. But despite all that, it sometimes gets pretty baffling for one to draw a dividing –line between their prose–styles.

Then the worthy research scholar sets out to break down Islāhī’s prose into three distinct phases. The first phase deals with Islāhī’s writings until 1941 – the year Islāhī joined the Jamā‘at-e Islāmī. During this phase, Islāhī  wrote under the influence of Shiblī and Abū al-Kalām Āzād. He also sat at the great H@amīd al-Dīn Farāhī’s feet during those years, which also left a conspicuous mark on his writings.

The second phase begins with Islāhī’s formal association with the Jamā‘at-e Islāmī and it lasted till he parted ways with it in 1958. During the second phase, an instructive and didactic tendency came to the fore as Islāhī was required to write with a view to grooming Jamā‘at’s activists.

The third phase saw Islāhī  coming into his own. During the third phase which covers his writings from 1958 to 1997 (the year he breathed his last); Islāhī wrote a monumental commentary on the Holy Qur’ān: The Tadaabbur-i Qur’ān in nine volumes. Travelogues and essay writing also stood out in this phase. 

All in all, Islāhī made valuable contributions to prose in Urdu and that his prose style lives on. There is an exhaustive bibliography of his prose writing at the end along with a comprehensive list of source books that came in handy during the composition of the research paper under consideration. Notes and references at the end of each chapter do serve to enhance the intrinsic value of the treatise as a whole.

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