Response from Maulana Sadruddin Islahi

Rampur–12 November 1962

Respected Brother,

Assalamu Alaykum wa Rahmatullah,

I received your Post card several days ago, and I apologize for the delay in responding.

Despite your request, I have not been able to change my viewpoint, and I still find what I had written to the Ameer of the Jamaat on this matter to be entirely reasonable.

As far as I am concerned, you should acknowledge that I have presented my views and reasoning on the issue under discussion with complete clarity. Any further debate or counter-argument would not be of any benefit. I remain just as convinced of the validity of my views as I was before. However, if you do not find any significant weight in them, then naturally, the discussion should come to an end. I have already shared the full extent of my knowledge and understanding; if any part of it proves useful to you, that is good—otherwise, you are free to disregard it.

Recently, I was quite disappointed to learn that a letter addressed to me by the Ameer of the Jamaat, which I had placed inside an envelope along with your second piece of writing, inadvertently reached you. This likely happened because I forgot to remove that letter while returning your writing.

In this regard, it might not have occurred to you that keeping someone else’s letter is inappropriate. Reading it—and then neither returning it to the concerned person nor informing them—would be even more so. In any case, I now request you to return that letter to me kindly.

You had taken back your second brief writing with the promise of revising it and sending it again. I am still waiting for that promise to be fulfilled.

Wassalam,

Sadruddin

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Azamgarh–November 15, 1962

Respected Maulana Sadruddin Sahib,

Peace be upon you.

I received your letter dated November 12, 1962. You wrote:

“I have presented my thoughts and arguments on the matter in full clarity, so further debate or rebuttal would be unproductive.”

With regret, I must say that this is not a response to the main issue for which I felt the need to write to you. I was inquiring about a statement you previously conveyed to me through the Amir Jamaat, yet instead of addressing this, you shifted your stance and introduced a new point.

The issue at hand was my expectation that you would reconsider my commentary on your work. Instead, I received a letter from the Ameer of the Jamaat, dated October 13, informing me that, in your view, the tone and style of my commentary were inappropriate, and therefore, you chose not to respond.

In this context, I sent you a letter dated October 20, where I highlighted a specific section of my commentary as an example and asked you to identify the particular aspect of its tone or style that rendered my work unworthy of your attention.

In response, I had expected you to analyze the referenced part of my commentary and point out any fault in its tone or style that justified your unwillingness to engage with it. Instead, your reply merely stated, “You have already said all that needed to be said; there is no further need to say anything.”

What is even more surprising is that, while you wrote nothing about the actual issue, you took a legalistic stance regarding Amir Jamaat’s letter, devoting seven lines to this matter. Your objection is akin to a scenario where I accuse someone of behaving inappropriately towards me, which he denies. Later, if a signed document of his on the matter were to come into my possession, I might present it as evidence of my claim. In response, rather than acknowledging his error or addressing the core issue, he would argue, “You had no right to read my private letter.” Such statements usually reveal one’s own weaknesses rather than discredit the other person.

I am genuinely puzzled by your approach: I presented clear, conclusive points in my brief commentary, yet you offered no response and, instead of addressing the core issue, deflected with other unrelated points. Is your conscience truly satisfied that adopting such a stance absolves you before God and humanity? I wish you would consider that this is not a matter you can simply dismiss and assume it is resolved. It will return to confront you eventually; will you remain silent then as well?

Sincerely,

Wahiduddin

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No reply was received from Maulana Sadruddin to this letter. I then expressed my disappointment in a letter to Mr. Jalaluddin Ansar (resident of Rampur). In response, I received a letter from Mr. Ansar dated December 11, 1962, which contained the following words:

“I conveyed your message to Maulana Sadruddin. He replied that he did not consider your previous letter to require a response, which is why he did not reply. However, he mentioned that he had requested two items from you, which you did not send.”

The two items in question were the letter from Maulana Abul Lais Nadwi to Maulana Sadruddin and my detailed commentary on Maulana Sadruddin’s response. I did not send the latter because Maulana Sadruddin was unwilling to agree to my condition that he would provide his feedback on it after reviewing it.

After this response, I understood that Maulana Sadruddin was unwilling to comment further on my commentary. In other words, the phase of mutual understanding had ended, and I had to decide for myself what course of action to take.

I spent a few days reflecting on this issue and ultimately concluded that I would likely have to publish my book. Accordingly, I sent Maulana Sadruddin the following letter:

Azamgarh–January 6, 1963

Respected Sir,

Peace be upon you.

It has been some time since I sent you a letter, to which I have not received a response. In any case, I am now considering publishing my work as a book. I intend to include your response and my detailed commentary on it so that readers can see both perspectives and determine the correct view for themselves. The proposed table of contents for the book would be as follows:

• Background
• Error in Interpretation
• Consequences
• Doubts
• The Correct Understanding of Religion
• A Brief Overview of Error in Interpretation by Maulana Sadruddin Islahi
• Commentary on Maulana Sadruddin Islahi’s Response
• Obstacles to Accepting the Truth

In this regard, I wish to inform you that my work has changed significantly in terms of structure and reasoning, and your response is based on the earlier version from April 1962, written ten months ago. If I publish your response along with my revised work, it may seem disjointed and, in many places, insufficient or irrelevant from your perspective. Therefore, I request that you make any necessary revisions to your response to align it with my current work.

I kindly request that you let me know if you agree with this proposal so that I may send my complete work in its current form for you to review and, based on that, you may prepare your response.

Sincerely,

Wahiduddin

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