Abstract

Drawing upon certain concepts of contemporary hermeneutics,linguistics and philosophy of language, this study undertakesMawdudi’s hermeneutical approach to the Qur’an lopsidedly orientedby his commitment with the political ideology of fundamentalist type.In the perspectives of certain pragmatic and stylistic themes, this paperreviews Mawdudi’s interpretation of the Qur’anic symbols being thebuilding blocks of his political thought. It argues that there is a widegap between the semantic givenness of the Qur’anic meanings and theirpragmatic interpretations of Mawdudian type owing to the ideology ofthe universal political dominion of Muslims being the telos of Islam.Through the application of certain pragmatic concepts like deixis,presupposition, implicature and felicity etc. as well as the stylisticdevices like simplicity/decoration, decisiveness/vagueness,succinctness/long-windedness and objectivity/subjectivity, this papertends to establish that Mawdudi’s political approach toward theteleology of Islam and his hermeneutic approach toward the Qur’anicsymbols sound infelicitous