FACETS OF FAITH - Malek Bennabi and Abul A'la Maududi

The blurb describes the book as a ‘comparative biography’. Comparison is always a natural function of reason. The purpose of any comparative study is to discover common areas among two or more similar subjects. Moving away from the traditional style of biography writing, Sherif uses this style to analyse the life of two different outstanding ‘scholar activists’ (in the author’s words ‘two titans of our time’ (p. xi)) not just from across the national frontiers but also across the continents. The book under review is not a biographical sketch in the ordinary sense, since it does not chronicle a birth-to-death narrative rather it takes the reader through both men’s life-journeys, with glimpses of the early formative phases of their lives, but focusing more on their scholarly contributions as well as their struggles and suffering in political activism. The immense expanse and multi-dimensional nature of both lives makes it almost impossible to squeeze them in the limited confine of a single volume.