his call for all Muslims to join together to form
a single umma (community) of believers modeled
after that of Muhammad and his Companions in
the seventh century. Ideally this Islamic state was
to be one that transcended all national, ethnic, and
racial boundaries, governed only by God’s law, the
sharia. Mawdudi was careful to say that he was not
calling for the creation of a theocracy on the model
of the medieval papacy in Europe. Rather, his
Islamic state was to be a “theo-democracy” gov-
erned by a collective polity united in faith, acting
as God’s caliph on earth. The Jamaat-i Islam was to
be the elite vanguard that would bring his utopian
vision to fruition, and its participation in Pakistani
politics was directed to this end. Women and non-
Muslims, however, held secondary or marginal
status in Mawdudi’s eyes, and he came to see Hin-
dus, Sikhs, and Ahmadis as enemies of his cause.
Although his movement has not engaged in overt
militancy, his ideology is thought to have con-
tributed to the radical jihadist doctrines of Sayyid
Qutb and a number of radical Islamic movements
that first emerged in the 1970s and 1980s.
See also chishti sUFi order; colonialism;
islamism; reneWal and revival movements.
Further reading: Charles J. Adams, “Mawdudi and the
Islamic State.” In Voices of Islamic Resurgence, edited by
John L. Esposito, 99–133 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1983); Abu Ala Maududi, Towards Understanding
Islam. Translated by Khurshid Ahmed (Chicago: Kazi
Publications, 1992); Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, “Mawdudi
and the Jamaat-i Islami: The Origins, Theory, and
Practice of Islamic Revivalism.” In Pioneers of Islamic
Revival, 2d ed., edited by Ali Rahnema, 98–124 (Lon-
don: Zed Books, 2005).
mawlid (Arabic: birthday; anniversary)
At the center of popular Muslim devotional-
ism from North Africa to Southeast Asia and in
Muslim diaspora communities is the mawlid, or
celebration of the birth or death anniversary of a
holy person (wali, shaykh, pir). Other words used
for this kind of popular celebration are variants
such as mulid (Egypt), mulud (North Africa),
milad or id-i milad (Middle East, Pakistan, India,
Bangladesh); mevlid and mevlut (Turkey); as well
as alternate terms like mawsim (or musim, literally
“season”; North Africa), urs (literally “wedding,”
referring to the saint’s mystical union with God;
Pakistan, India, Bangladesh), hawliyya (Sudan
and East Africa), hol (Malaysia), and zarda (Tuni-
sia). They may occur at almost any time of the
year, except during ramadan. The most widely
celebrated mawlid is that of Muhammad the
Prophet (d. 632), which occurs on the 12th day
of Rabi al-Awwal, the third month on the Muslim
lunar calendar. Mawlids have been celebrated
since the 13th century, closely coinciding with the
spread of Sufi brotherhoods (sing. tariqa) and the
establishment of non-Arab dynasties that sought
legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects by patron-
izing popular saints and their shrines. Mawlids
and the customs associated with them have been
judged to be illicit innovations (sing. bidaa) by lit-
erally minded Muslims—above all by proponents
of Wahhabism, who have prohibited them in Saudi
Arabia and protested or violently attacked their
celebration elsewhere.
Mawlids are usually centered at the shrine
or tomb of the holy person who is honored by
the holiday, or, as is the case with celebration of
Muhammad’s birthday (mawlid al-nabi, mawlid
al-rasul), at a shrine containing his relics, or
dedicated to one of his descendants, such as the
mosque of Husayn near al-azhar Mosque in Cairo.
The celebration may be a modest affair, confined
to the neighborhood of the shrine, but the mawl-
ids of the most famous saints now draw a million
or more from great distances, who consider their
journey to the shrine a pilgrimage (ziyara). Such
celebrations may last up to a week or more, with
the climax occurring on the eve of the last day.
Though formal prayer is customarily performed
at these shrines, celebrants engage in a wide range
of activities. These include decorating the shrine,
circumambulating the saint’s tomb, leaving votiveK 464 mawlid