Jamaat-e-Islami

Jamaat-e-Islami (Urdu: جماعتِ اسلامی‎) is an Islamic movement founded in 1941 in British India by the Islamic theologian and socio-political philosopher, Abul Ala Maududi.[1] Along with the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, Jamaat-e-Islami was one of the original and most influential Islamist organisations,[2] and the first of its kind to develop "an ideology based on the modern revolutionary conception of Islam".[3]

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This article is about the religious organization. For the political party, see Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. For other uses, see Jamaat-e-Islami (disambiguation).
Jamaat e Islami
جماعتِ اسلامی
FoundedAurangabad, Hyderabad, British India
FounderSyed Abul Ala Maududi
TypeIslamic Organization
PurposeIslamic conservatism
Pan-Islamism
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The group split into separate independent organisations in India and Pakistan—Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind—following the Partition of India in 1947. Other groups related to or inspired by Jamaat-e-Islami developed in Bangladesh, Kashmir, Britain, and Afghanistan (see below). The Jamaat-e-Islami parties maintain ties internationally with other Muslim groups.[4]

Maududi was the creator and leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, actively working to prevent it.[5] Though he opposed the creation of Pakistan fearing the liberalism of its founders and the British-trained administrators, when it happened, he viewed it as a gradual step to the Islamization of its laws and constitution even though he had earlier condemned the Muslim League for the same approach. After the partition of India, the organisation became the spearhead of the movement to transform Pakistan from a Muslim homeland into an Islamic state. Madudi, like the traditionalist ulama, believed in the six canonical hadiths and the Quran, and also accepted much of the dogma of the four schools of fiqh. His efforts focused on transforming to a "theo-democracy" based on the Sharia which would enforce things like abolition of interest-bearing banks, sexual separation, veiling of women, hadd penalties for theft, adultery, and other crimes.[6] The promotion of Islamic state by Maududi and Jamaat-e Islami had broad popular support.[7]

Maududi created Jamaat-e-Islami with the objective of making post-colonial India (or a separate Muslim state if the Muslim League got its wish), an Islamic state.[8] Although this would be the result of an "Islamic revolution", the revolution was to be achieved not through a mass organising or a popular uprising but by what he called "Islamization from above", by winning over society's leaders through education and propaganda, and through putting the right people (Jamaat-e-Islami members) in positions of power.[9][10][11] incrementally and through legal means.[12][13]

Maududi believed politics was "an integral, inseparable part of the Islamic faith". Islamic ideology and non-Islamic ideologies (such as capitalism and socialism, liberalism or secularism) were mutually exclusive. The creation of an Islamic state would be not only be an act of piety but would be a cure for all of the many (seemingly non-religious) social and economic problems that Muslims faced.[10][11] Those working for an Islamic state would not stop at India or Pakistan but would effect a sweeping revolution among mankind, and control all aspects of the world's life.[14]

History

Maududi opposed British rule but also opposed both the anti-colonialist Muslim nationalist Muslim League's proposal for a separate Muslim state led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and the composite nationalism (muttahida qaumiyyat) idea of Jam'iyyat al-Ulama-ye Hind and Deobandi scholar Maulana Sayyid Hussain Ahmad Madani for a united independent India with separate institutional structures for Hindus and Muslims.[15]

At the time of the Indian independence movement, Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Isami actively worked to oppose the partition of India.[5] Maududi argued that the division of India violated the Islamic doctrine of the ummah and believed that the partition would separate Muslims by a temporal boundary.[5] As such, before the partition of colonial India happened, the Jamaat-e-Islami actively worked to prevent it.[5]

In his view Muslims were not one religious or communal group among many working to advance their social and economic interests, but a group "based upon principles and upon a theory" or ideology. A "righteous" party (or community) that had "a clearly defined ideology, allegiance to a single leader, obedience, and discipline",[16] would be able to transform the whole of India into Dar al-Islam.[16] Unlike the fascists and communists, once in power an Islamic state would not be oppressive or tyrannical, but instead just and benevolent to all, because its ideology was based on God's commands.[17][18]

In 1940, the Muslim League met in Lahore and passed the Lahore Resolution, calling for autonomous states in the Muslim majority areas of India. Maududi believed the nationalism in any form was un-Islamic, concerned with mundane interests of people and not Islam.[19] In response he launched his own party, Jamaat-e-Islami, founded on 26 August 1941, at Islamia Park, Lahore.[20] Seventy-five people attended the first meeting and became the first 75 members of the movement.

Maududi saw his group as a vanguard of Islamic revolution following the footsteps of early Muslims who gathered in Medina to found the first "Islamic state".[10][11] Members uttered the Shahada, the traditional statement of conversion to Islam, when they joined, implying to some that Jama'ati felt they had been less-than-true Muslims before joining.[21] Jamaat-e-Islami was and is strictly and hierarchically organised in a pyramid-like structure. All supporters work toward the common goal of establishing an ideological Islamic society, particularly through educational and social work, under the leadership of the emir.[22][23] Being a vanguard party, not all supporters could be members, only the elite. Below members were/are "affiliates", and "sympathizers" beneath them. The party leader is called an ameer (commander).[24]

Maududi sought to educate the elite of the Muslim community in the principles of Islam and correct "their erroneous ways of thinking" both because he believed societies were influenced from the top down.[25]

During the years before the partition of India, Jamaat-e-Islami stood aloof from the intense political fights of the time in India, concentrating on "training and organising" and refining and strengthening the structure of Jamaat-e-Islami.[26]

Groups associated with Jamaat-e-Islami

See also

References
  1. van der Veer P. and Munshi S. (eds.) Media, War, and Terrorism: Responses from the Middle East and Asia. Psychology Press, 2004, p. 138. ISBN 9780415331401.
  2. Roy, Olivier (1994). The Failure of Political Islam. Harvard University Press. pp. 35.
  3. "Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Islamic Assembly Jamaat-e-Islami-e-Pakistan (JIP)". Globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
  4. Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, 2010: p.171
  5. Oh, Irene (2007). The Rights of God: Islam, Human Rights, and Comparative Ethics. Georgetown University Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-58901-463-3. In the debate over whether Muslims should establish their own state, separate from a Hindu India, Maududi initially argued against such a creation and asserted that the establishment of a political Muslim state defined by borders violated the idea of the universal umma. Citizenship and national borders, which would characterize the new Muslim state, contradicted the notion that Muslims should not be separated by one another by these temporal boundaries. In this milieu, Maududi founded the organization Jama'at-i Islamic. ... The Jama'at for its first few years worked actively to prevent the partition, but once partition became inevitable, it established offices in both Pakistan and India.
  6. Ruthven, Malise (2000). Islam in the World (2nd ed.). Penguin. pp. 329–1.
  7. Adams, Charles J (1983). "Mawdudi and the Islamic State". In Esposito, John L. (ed.). Voices of Resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press. pp. 106–7.
  8. Adams, Charles J. (1983). "Maududi and the Islamic State". In Esposito, John L. (ed.). Voices of Resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 105.
  9. Mortimer, Edward (1982). Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam. Vintage Books. p. 204.
  10. Kepel, Gilles (2002). Jihad: on the Trail of Political Islam. Belknap Press. p. 34.
  11. Nasr, S.V.R. (1994). The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jamaat-i Islami of Pakistan. I.B.Tauris. p. 7. ISBN 9780520083691.
  12. Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, 2010: p.122
  13. Nasr, S.V.R. (1994). The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: the Jamaat-i Islami of Pakistan. I.B.Tauris. p. 8.
  14. Adams, Charles J (1983). "Mawdudi and the Islamic State". In Esposito, John (ed.). Voices of Resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press. pp. 105.
  15. Malik, Jamal. Islam in South Asia: A Short History. BRILL. p. 370.
  16. Adams, Maududi and the Islamic State, 1983: p.104
  17. Mortimer, Edward (1982). Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam. Vintage Books. p. 204.
  18. Charles J. Adams (1966), "The Ideology of Mawlana Maududi" in D.E. Smith (ed.) South Asian Politics and Religion (Princeton) pp.375, 381–90.
  19. Adams, Charles J (1983). "Mawdudi and the Islamic State". In Esposito, John (ed.). Voices of Resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press. pp. 104–5.
  20. Historical Dictionary of Islamic Fundamentalism, 2012:pli
  21. Nasr, Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism, 1996: p.110
  22. Kepel G. Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam. I.B.Tauris, 2006 p.34 ISBN 1845112571, 9781845112578.
  23. Encyclopedia of Islam & the Muslim World, Richard C. Martín, Granite Hill Publishers, 2004, p.371
  24. Adel G. H. et al. (eds.) Muslim Organisations in the Twentieth Century: Selected Entries from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam. EWI Press, 2012 p.70 ISBN 1908433094, 9781908433091.
  25. Adams, Charles J. (1983). "Maududi and the Islamic State". In Esposito, John L. (ed.). Voices of Resurgent Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 102.
  26. Adams, "Maududi and the Islamic State", 1983: p.105-6
  27. Historical Dictionary of Islamic Fundamentalism, 2012:p.223
  28. "Jama'at-e-Islami Jammu & Kashmir". Official website. Archived from the original on 5 December 2014. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
  29. Kepel, Gilles (2002). Jihad: on the trail of Political Islam. Belknap. p. 141.
  30. Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, 2010: p.173
  31. Saikal, Amin (2012). Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival. I.B.Tauris. p. 214. ISBN 9781780761220. Retrieved 2 November 2014.
  32. Roy, Olivier (1992). Islam and resistance in Afghanistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-521-39700-1.
  33. Glynn, Sarah (1 January 2015). Class, Ethnicity and Religion in the Bengali East End: A Political History. Manchester University Press. pp. 188–. ISBN 978-1-84779-958-6.
  34. "UK Islamic Mission conference". August 1994 Vol. II, No. 8, p. 6/7. British Muslims Monthly Survey. Retrieved 8 March 2014.
  35. "Abul A'ala Maududi Forum - Sri Lanka". 26 May 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2014.
  36. Roy, Olivier; Sfeir, Antoine; King, Dr. John, eds. (2007). "Britain". The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism. Columbia University Press. p. 93. ISBN 9780231146401. Retrieved 5 February 2015.
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