Re: Greatest Scholar Javed Ghamdi : Salute
Ghamidi was born on April 18, 1951 in a peasant family of Kakazai tribe from Jiwan Shah near Sahiwal, Pakistan.His early education included a modern path (Matriculation from Islamia High School, Pakpattan in 1967), as well as a traditional path (Arabic and Persian languages, and the Qur’an with Mawlawi Nur Ahmad of Nang Pal). He later graduated from Government College, Lahore, with a BA Honours in English in 1972.Initially, he was more interested in literature and philosophy. Later on, he worked with renowned Islamic scholars like ***Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi and Amin Ahsan Islahi ***on various Islamic disciplines particularly exegesis and Islamic law.
Ghamidi’s father was a follower of Sufism. In the later years of his life, Ghamidi changed his opinion about Sufism. He wrote a criticism on Sufism in his book Burhan and also didn’t include it in his book Mizan, which is a comprehensive treatise on the contents of Islam.
Ghamidi worked closely with Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (سيد أبو الأعلى المودودي, alternative spelling Syed Maudoodi; often referred to as Maulana Maududi) (1903–1979) for about nine years before voicing his first differences of opinion, which led to his subsequent expulsion from Mawdudi’s political party, Jamaat-e-Islami in 1977. Later, he developed his own view of religion based on hermeneutics and ijtihad under the influence of his mentor, Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904–1997), a well-known exegete of the Indian sub-continent who is author of Tadabbur-i-Qur’an, a Tafsir (exegeses of Qur’an). Ghamidi’s critique of Mawdudi’s thought is an extension of Wahid al-Din Khan’s criticism of Mawdudi. Khan (1925- ) was amongst the first scholars from within the ranks of Jamaat-e-Islami to present a fully-fledged critique of Mawdudi’s understanding of religion. Khan’s contention is that Mawdudi has completely inverted the Qur’anic worldview. Ghamidi, for his part, agreed with Khan that the basic obligation in Islam is not the establishment of an Islamic world order but servitude to God, and that it is to help and guide humans in their effort to fulfill that obligation for which religion is revealed. Therefore, Islam never imposed the obligation on its individual adherents or on the Islamic state to be constantly in a state of war against the non-Islamic world. In fact, according to Ghamidi, even the formation of an Islamic state is not a basic religious obligation for Muslims