Towards Understanding Islam is one of Mawlana Mawdudi’s most popular books. The Urdu original, written in 1932, was intended as a first introduction to Islam for students and laymen and soon became a popular reader. Over a million copies have so far appeared in many of the world’s languages, including Arabic, English, Persian, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Swahili, Turkish, Indonesian, Bengali, Hindi, Albanian, Bosnian and Georgian. Towards Understanding Islam is a religious text with a difference. It offers a simple exposition of the essential teachings of Islam: itz approach to life, the articles of its faith, its scheme of worship and prayers and the social order which it envisages. Its methodology is steeped in the Qur’an. Towards Understanding Islam is one of those books which have changed the lives of many and set them along the Islamic path.

A simple, comprehensive introduction to Islam by a noted Muslim of the 20th Century, Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi.

Nasr examines the life and thought of Mawlana Mawdudi, one of the first and most important Islamic ideological thinkers. Mawdudi was the first to develop a modern political Islamic ideology, and a plan for social action to realize his vision. The prolific writings and indefatigable efforts of Mawdudi's party, the Jamaat-i-Islami, first in India and later in Pakistan, have disseminated his ideas far and wide. His views have informed revivalism from Morocco to Malaysia. Nasr discerns the events that led Mawdudi to a revivalist perspective, and probes the structure of his thought, in order to gain fresh insights into the origins of Islamic revivalism. He argues that Islamic revivalism did not simply develop as a cultural rejection of the West, rather it was closely tied to questions of communal politics and its impact on identity formation, discourse of power in plural societies, and nationalism. Mawdudi's discourse, though aimed at the West, was motivated by Muslim-Hindu competition for power in British India. His aim, according to Nasr, was to put forth a view of Islam whose invigorated, pristine, and uncompromising outlook would galvanize Muslims into an ideologically uniform and hence politically indivisible community. In time, this view developed a life of its own and evolved into an all-encompassing perspective on society and politics, and has been a notable force in South Asia and Muslim life and thought across the Muslim world.

Mawlana Mawdudi was one of the most influential and important Islamic thinkers of the 20th century, whose brand of political Islam has won widespread acceptance in South and South East Asia as well as the Middle East. This book is the first to critically engage and assess his career and legacy. It includes coverage of his early life and influences, and examines his considerable influence in the contemporary Islamic world.

This book is designed to take people on the first steps in understanding Islam and the way that Muslims think and see the world. It grows out of extensive experience of teaching the course on which it is based. The arrangement of material builds a framework to understand Islam on its own terms rather than through an externally applied structure. Islam is linked to the essential guidance of God to all humankind from the beginning of creation. This is then traced through a series of steps such as a world-view, prophecy, revelation, history, belief and practice. The structure of a whole life based on Islam is explored together with Islam's approach to other faiths and Muslims in contemporary Britain and Europe.