Towards Understanding Islam offers a simple exposition of the essential teachings of Islam; its approach to life, the articles of its faith, its scheme of worship and the social order, which it envisages. Its methodology is steeped in the Qur'an. This book has changed the lives of many and set them on the Islamic path.
Towards Understanding Islam is one of Sayyid Abul A'la Maudoodi's most popular books. The Urdu original, written in 1932 and published in 1937, was intended as a first introduction to Islam for students and laymen and soon became a popular reader. Over 2 million copies have so far appeared in many of the world's languages including: Arabic English, Persian, German, French, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Swahili, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, Bosnian, Malay, Indonesian, Spanish, Bangla, Hindi, Kanri, and Malayalam etc.
Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi (1903-1979), one of the chief architects of contemporary Islamic resurgence, was the most outstanding Islamic thinker and writer of time. He devoted his entire life to expounding the meaning and message of Islam and to organizing a collective movement to establish the Islamic order. In this struggle, he had to pass through all kinds of suffering. Between 1948 and 1967, he was put behind bars on four occasions, 'spending of five years in different prisons of Pakistan. In 1953, a Martial Law Court sentenced him to death for writing an article on finality of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), this sentence being later commuted to life imprisonment. He authored more than one hundred works on Islam, both scholarly and popular His writing has been translated into major languages of the world.
