Maidul Islam was nearly 13 when the Babri Masjid fell. Till then, the boy who grew up in an upper middle class secular Muslim family in Calcutta was like any other talented youngster - playing cricket, debating in school. But shaken by the 1992 demolition, he started reading Islamic literature. He was in college when the twin towers in New York fell. The attacks galvanised him to get deeper into the "tussle for hegemony between Islam and the West".

Maidul, now a political commentator and assistant professor in the political science department, Presidency University, is the author of Limits of Islamism: Jamaat-e-Islami in Contemporary India and Bangladesh. The new book looks at how global Islamist groups were influenced by the ideology of Abul A'la Maududi who founded the Jamaat-e-Islami in India in the early 1940s. Maududi, an Islamic radical, once proposed a blueprint of an "Islamic state" in India. This idea inspired many Islamist groups across the world to fight for the establishment of a united Islamic nation.

The 35-year-old cricket lover - who played at Oxford - chatted with Prasun Chaudhuri about the book. Excerpts:

Tell us about the book.

A:This book is an outcome of my doctoral thesis - a DPhil in politics - at the University of Oxford. The idea germinated at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, when I was studying the Islamist movement in India as part of my MPhil dissertation. I concentrated on the ideology of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH), founded as an offshoot of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) in the early 1940s. JI split into independent organisations in India, Pakistan, and Jammu and Kashmir following India's Partition and later as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh (JIB) after the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971.

I was fascinated by how JIH underwent an "ideological transformation" from working to make India an Islamist state to fighting for a secular state after Independence. On the other hand, the same JI evolved into radical groups in Bangladesh, Pakistan and J&K.

Q: But how relevant is JI in the global perspective?

A: It is extremely relevant in the current scenario when groups are proclaiming the establishment of a worldwide "Islamic state" or a caliphate. The Islamic ideology of Abul A'la Maududi - the founder of JI who shifted to Pakistan after Partition - greatly influenced several Islamist groups in various parts of the world as it provided the first clear definition of an "Islamic state".

Even though the political ideology of (Jamaati) Islamism, constructed by Maududi, did not directly address socio-economic issues, it proposed a middle path that neither followed socialism nor capitalism. Today's Islamists have taken this idea forward to propose an Islamic welfare state in which health, education and social security measures will be taken care of by the state. This "ideal economy", however, prohibits charging interest on loans but allows profiteering and renting while conducting business. It is a model of an interest-free welfare capitalism.

Q: Is this what President Nasser of Egypt envisaged?

A:No, not exactly. Many Arab nationalists like Nasser and Arab socialists like Saddam Hussein started as socialist reformers with a dream to unite the Arab world but ended up as authoritarian. When they failed to address injustice in society, and later when the USSR fell, Islamists came to the forefront to occupy the protest space.

Q: Many in the Left believe that the Islamists were used by America and its allies to crush progressive regimes in the Muslim world.

A:Yes, they argue many secularist forces were brought down by "imperialists". According to them, for instance, the Muslim Brotherhood was created in Egypt in the 1920s by the British colonialists (along with the Egyptian monarchy) to block the secular Wafd Party. The Taliban was created to counter secular and pro-socialists in Afghanistan. Can you believe that in the 1970s Afghanistan was so liberal that you could see women roaming freely in Western clothes as in any European country?

Q: Where does JI of India and Bangladesh figure in this anti-Western scheme?

A:India and Bangladesh together constitute 20 per cent of the world Muslim population. Jamaat has been a key player in politics - especially in Bangladesh. They formed the government along with the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 2001 but lost ground.

The parties went in different directions in these two nations. In India, it shares common ground with India's Left parties and opposes liberal economic policies or issues related to Indo-US relations. They lean towards the Left because they represent a Muslim population that is predominantly poor or economically backward.

The Jamaatis in Bangladesh hope to dominate in politics. Some Jamaati leaders and supporters are also in big business and are quite rich. Since they have business interests, they are not against neo-liberalism. Jamaat negates the cultural and political baggage of Western modernity such as secularism, socialism, nationalism, liberal capitalism, women's liberties. It differentiates between "modernisation" and "Westernisation".

Q: They are also against cartoons attacking Islam, and against writers such as Taslima Nasreen and Salman Rushdie...

A:Yes. Most Islamist and Muslim groups - including JIH or JIB - are united on this issue. Many Jamaat leaders believe that Rushdie and Nasreen are "Western agents". They do not find any difference between them and the cartoonists. They violently oppose blasphemy, atheism, live-in relationships and homosexuality under the rubric of "Western cultural globalisation".

However, political cartoons caricaturing Muslims and Islamic religion in the Western media are not new. Such lampooning was prevalent during the Iranian revolution (1979), the Gulf War (1990) and 9/11, followed by the Afgha-nistan war (2001). But the world didn't witness such violent pro-tests among sections of Muslims. This is happening now because Islamist authorities increasingly perceive such blasphemy as challenges to their religious identity. It arises out of an anxious belief that if today people who disobey religion cannot be suppressed, religious blasphemy might be a common social syndrome. In this respect, the Islamists would hardly pay any attention to the Quranic injunction that "there shall be no coercion in matters of faith".

Besides, such negative poli- tics or populism by the Islamists gives them easy publicity while justifying their acts of moral policing in the name of religion.

Q: Why has the Jamaati vote share fallen in Bangladesh?

A:They are extremely unpopular with a section of young and educated Bangladeshis. Many of their leaders had collaborated with Pakistanis perpetrating rape and murder of Bangladeshis during the war in 1971. Bangladesh also has a rich tradition of a liberal syncretic Islam propagated by Sufis and Bauls, as opposed to the rigid views of the JIB.

Q: How does the JI relate to the ISIS?

A:The ISIS is a rebel group propagating violence and recognised as terrorists by most Muslim-dominated nations. The JI in India and Bangladesh, at least in the last few years, have opposed and condemned terror.