EDITOR'S PREFACE
Ours is an age of anxiety and restlessness. A change is imperceptibly
overtaking the world. The old order is disintegrating; the new one is, however, yet to
come. And history tells us that such ages of restlessness have also been periods of birth
for new movements and cultures. The world is in the grip of a tension and awaits a
twentieth-century renaissance of man.
A significant feature of the present
century is the new and wide-spread trend of Islam revival. After a long period of
stagnation the world of Islam is rising from its stupor. A new awakening has appeared on
the horizon; a new life is being infused into the community of Islam. This trend is
visible in every country and at every place and has within it the possibilities of its
becoming the harbinger of a new age.
But this revivalist trend can become
the messenger of a New only if is accompanied by an intellectual revolution-a thorough
appraisal of the intellectual and cultural heritage of Islam and its representation to the
world in the language of today. Thus the importance of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal and Maulana
Maududi as the authors of this new intellectual awakening is immense. Maulana Maududi is
the author of more than eighty books and pamphlets on Islam and has written more or less
on each and every aspect of Islamic culture. His writings have provided the present-day
revival of Islam with its intellectual foundations.
TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING ISLAM also is
one of his important book. It is an elementary study of Islam and a simple, understandable
and unsophisticated interpretation of the religion for the younger folk. It has not been
written in the brow-beaten style of theology books, through which the reader gets enmeshed
in a quagmire of legal quibbling and is unable to understand the real spirit and message
of Islam. The work is simple exposition of Islam, its approach to life, the articles of
faith, its worships and prayers and the scheme of life which it envisages. The method of
exposition used in the book is the same as adopted in the Qur'an itself and an attempt
has
been made to present in it a summary of the teachings of Islam. And as the book is
primarily for the students and younger people, the discussion has been made to burden the
mind of the reader with difficult or philosophic dissertations.
Originally the book was written in
1932 in Urdu and was intended as a test-book for students of the higher classes and the
general public. It filled an important gap and became a primer of Islam. Most of the
schools and colleges of the indo-Pakistan sub-continent adopted it as a text- book in
theology and made its study a part of their curricula. It has been translated into
Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Gujrati, Sindhi,
Tamil, Turkish, Japanese and French languages. Realizing its importance for the English-reading public, the late
Dr. Abdul Ghani translated it into English in 1940. But for a number of reasons, including
the fact that in the latest editions of the Urdu text the author had made certain
additions and alterations the need has long been felt for a new translation. I have made
an attempt to fulfill this need. The present translation is altogether a new one and only a
few pages of the earlier translation have been embodied in it, and these too with
necessary changes and alterations. The text on which it is based is that of the sixteenth
(revised) edition of the Risala-e-Diniyat.
Strictly speaking it is not a
literal world-for-word translation of the original text. I have tried to follow the
original as faithfully as possible, but have departed from a strictly literal rendering
wherever necessary in the interest of the language. I have also added explanatory notes
wherever necessary.
The learned author has, however,
been kind enough to go through the translation, which therefore has his approval and the
reader can rest assured that the translation is a faithful one.
I am grateful to all those friends
who have kindly helped me in the preparation of this book. I am particularly grateful to
khwaja Abdul wahid who went through the manuscript and gave me very helpful suggestions
and to my friend Mr. Ansar Azam who assisted me in the translation of Chapters 5 and
Chapters 6. My thanks are also due to Mr. Shahzad Muhammad who ungrudgingly typed form my
badly written manuscript again and again.
KHURSHID AHMAD
1,New Queens Road
Karachi
23rd March, 1959
