J – Hybrid Learning

JUSTICE

Batoota — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 19:09:21 +0000

JUSTICE. [This entry comprises two articles. The first discusses concepts of justice that inform Islamic political discourse and that, more broadly, suffuse the Islamic worldview; the second focuses on the notion of social justice in modern Islamic thought as developed in the writings of Sayyid Qutb and others.]
Concepts of Justice
It has been argued that if the Christian worldview is predominantly cast in terms of love, then the Islamic one is suffused by a discourse of justice. As one commentator has put it, “neither in the Qur’an nor in the Traditions are there measures to indicate what are the constituent elements of justice or how justice can be realized on Earth” (Khadduri, 1984, pp. 10-11). However, the ideas of paying one’s moral and fiscal debts and of tempering retribution with mercy are features that characterize both God and the just person. For an individual to be `adl (just) is, as the term implies, to be balanced, to engage in acts that are framed by an awareness, born of the pursuit of reason over passion, of the harm that may be done to the ties that bind individuals to one another and all believers into a single community. The Qur’an (6.152) thus enjoins one to “be just, even if it should be to a near kinsman” and demonstrates practical application when, for example, it recommends that contracts be written down in order to avoid subsequent doubt. It is, therefore, possible to see in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s own actions an implicit theory of justice that informs later interpretations and applications.
Central to the prophetic conception of justice are three features: relationships among men and toward God are reciprocal in nature, and justice exists where this reciprocity guides all interaction; justice is both a process and a result of equating otherwise dissimilar entities; and because relationships are highly contextual, justice is to be grasped through its multifarious enactments rather than as a single abstract principle.
Just individuals are those to whom power appropriately devolves, because they have regulated their ties with others according to balanced, reciprocal obligations. These reciprocal obligations reduce social chaos and facilitate ever-greater networks of indebtedness among those who develop their God-given reason to understand the divine word and the mundane world alike. Justice as the process of equating implies that reason and experience must be used to calculate similarities, a process that shows itself in qiyas (analogic reasoning), no less than in attending to the differences between men and women, Muslims and non-Muslims, and assigning each category to its respective domain. The contextual quality of justice shows itself in the quest for an understanding of the spheres within which each person or historical moment exists and the ways in which fundamental qualities and kaleidoscopic changes must be scrutinized and balanced.
The elements of Islamic justice were the source of contention among moral and political theorists from the outset of Islam. During his lifetime the Prophet governed in direct accord with divine precept. After his death disagreement centered on which line possessed the capacity to rule justly and which procedures for rule should hold sway. For Sunnis political justice lay in acknowledging legitimate authority through ijma` (community consensus); for the Shi’i it lay in the strict perpetuation of the line of legitimate succession. For the Sunni the ruler’s legitimacy was in theory hedged by the need for shura (consultation). The Sunni Umayyad dynasty, however, combined the doctrine of an elected caliph with the idea that the responsible believer is the one who does not fail to obey the legitimate successor to the Prophet. Others, known collectively as Qadiriyah, believed that each man is responsible for his own acts and that political justice lies not in compulsory obedience but in holding even the caliph responsible for his unjust acts.
Notwithstanding its claims for continuity, the model of the caliphate failed to provide specific guidance for a theory of the just sovereign. During the brief period in the eighth century when the `Abbasid dynasty favored them, the Mu’tazilah argued that divine justice is beyond human grasp but that human reason can best approximate divine justice through the exercise of reason and free will. Indeed, they argued, it is by such acts that one gains unity with that inner sense of justice toward which all men are naturally directed. Although the Mu’tazili emphasis on reason and unity brought them into conflict with more powerful opponents, the terms of the debate were set: to the legalists (including the later systematizer al-Shafi’i [767-820]) men choose to do justice or injustice through their adherence to the law; to al-Ash’ari (d. 935 or 936) men could do justice but could not create its very terms; to al-Tahawi (d. 933) and al-Baqillani (d. 1012) the very uses to which God’s created justice are put are themselves creative acts. By contrast, the Shi`i theorists of the Buyid and Fatimid dynasties of the tenth and eleventh centuries argued that, in the absence of an infallibly sinless imam, men may even defend themselves through taqiyah (dissimulation) against an unjust caliph-a practice that Sunnis regarded as little more than personal convenience. To both of these positions Sufi theorists, such as Ibn al’Arabi (1165-1240), countered that justice can be made manifest in this world not by creative acts of reason but only by engagement in ecstatic devotion.
As Islam spread into new territories and as contact with classical Western thought increased, Islamic thinkers had to consider the practical applications of justice in law and politics. The Virtuous City of al-Farabi (c. 878-c. 950) was to be characterized by the division and protection of all good things among the people; the Just City of Ibn Sina , (98o-1037) was constituted by a social contract among administrators, artisans, and guardians, the welfare of all being secured by a common fund of resources. As the demands of actual administration increased, specific content for these propositions developed. The concept of maslahah (public interest), as elaborated by al-Ghazali (1058-1111) and al-Tawfi (d. 1316), received legal force by calculating social consequence against individual interest; procedural justice lay in the qualities of the judge’s character, in the use of a council of adviser/assessors, in the use of advisory opinions by outside scholars, and in the increasing use of elaborate procedures for ascertaining the credibility of witnesses. The traditional absence of appellate structures reduced dependence on any fallible judge, although the accepted legitimacy of different schools of Islamic law and resident experts allowed local custom to inform the practice of daily justice.
Because justice was seen to pervade all domains of life, Islamic thinkers sought to unify political, legal, and social justice. In the face of Mongol invaders and Western crusaders, Ibn Taymiyah (1263-1328) sought to stem the decline of Islam by urging that despotic rulers must give way to a politicized shari `ah (the divine law) in which, for example, precedence would be given to family unity over emotion-laden repudiation, and just wars would be limited to defensive actions. From his initial emphasis on society as a fluctuating balance of religion and `asabiyah (social solidarity), Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), observing the decadence of fourteenthcentury Egypt, increasingly stressed procedural regularities and ta’zir (discretionary penalties) as a check on political injustice. Although he and others believed men were inherently unjust, their more secular political approach to issues of justice had to wait until later ages to achieve a more activist orientation.
The intrusion of Western colonialists, particularly in the nineteenth century, prompted two major strands of thought on the question of justice. Modernists sought to include institutions modeled after those of the West into their political systems, although traditionalists found Western approaches inconsistent with Islam. Jamal alDin al-Afghani (1838-1897) believed that the injustices of Muslim despots could be rectified by renewing the principle of consultation in the form of elective assemblies and by the political unity of all Muslims against Western powers. Like his predecessors he combined moral renewal through revitalized virtues with a political program that would insure fuller community participation. But when al-Afghani’s proposals failed to move Muslim tyrants or the populace at large, some, like his student Muhammad `Abduh (1849-1905), looked to Western procedural standards, which they did not regard as incompatible with Islam, for guidance. As a judge and grand mufti, `Abduh issued fatwas allowing, for example, the use of interest through postal bank accounts. He often spoke in terms of revelation and natural law as well as in terms of the compatibility of revelation with evolution and social reformation, but his equivocation and his deep concern with the moral transformation of society signaled precisely the dilemma faced by many of his era who were drawn to both Western and indigenous forms of injustice.
Many of the conflicts between modernists and traditionalists centered on the adoption of new legal codes. The very idea of a code was largely a Western one, but the process of codification forced many Muslims to consider which propositions they regarded as essential to Islam and which as dispensable accretions. Moreover, the process of adopting codes offered the opportunity for establishing a system for legal changes. Of central importance was the formulation of the Mecelle (Ar., Majallah; Civil Code), which was applied throughout Ottoman territories in the 1870s. Together with the short-lived Ottoman constitution of 1876, it marked the trend that culminated in Turkey’s unilateral disestablishment of Islam and its wholesale adoption of European codes. By contrast French colonial territories adopted French commercial and criminal law, but these countries retained relatively intact their Islamic family law practices until they achieved national independence. [See Mecelle. ]
Owing largely to the efforts in the late 1940s of the Egyptian jurist `Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895-1971), civil codes were drawn up for Egypt, Iraq, and Kuwait, with other countries drawing on elements of his work. In each instance the codes left it to shari ‘ah principles to fill in where the code was silent. In fact, more often than not Western substantive law filled in the whole of the civil law, and the sense of distinctive Islamic principles-of fault and liability, of intentionality in contracts or unconscionable agreements-was largely replaced by non-Muslim concepts.
By contrast, the strain between Western Islamic standards of justice has been most significantly tested in family law. Following independence in 1956, Tunisia took the more extreme position, formally abolishing polygamy and requiring all divorces to be pronounced by the judge. At the other extreme, Pakistan and the Gulf States continued highly traditional forms of Muslim family law, largely unaffected by outside forces. In between lay a vast array of compromises: from Morocco, where the code remains very close to Maliki principles but places increased discretion in the hands of the qadi (judge), to Malaysia, where ‘adat (local custom) grants wives a share of all marital assets at the time of divorce. [See Family Law.]
The struggles over appropriate laws of personal status have profoundly affected views of the nature of Islamic justice: as women became more educated and occupied a greater role in the economy, justice was conceived by many as requiring greater equalization, though not full equality, of men and women. At the same time the very forces that led to such liberalization contributed to the backlash against it: fundamentalists, from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran to the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, find the relations of men and women one of the domains where Western influence has distorted justice by rendering an imbalance among what they see as natural differences.
Similarly, in the criminal law the precepts of divine revelation have been read to imply hudud (invariant punishments) for listed offenses and ta`zir (discretionary punishments) for a broader range of infractions. Some of these penalties, though rarely applied, conflict with international human rights conventions, while others bespeak localized standards of justice-as when, for example, a learned man may be held to a higher standard of behavior than an unlettered one, because his acts are thought to have greater consequences for society. Recent attempts by the ministers of justice of Islamic nations to compose a uniform penal law has yielded a document none is likely to adopt, because each nation adheres to quite different standards of punishment. The very process of drawing up such a document reveals both the commonalities and the discrepancies wrought by different histories and attitudes. [See Criminal Law; Hudud.]
Issues of social justice have also taken very different paths. Although the language of distributive justice is broadly shared, neither modernists nor traditionalists have succeeded in capturing its terms for any universally accepted program. The combination of Islam and socialism in Algeria and Libya, for example, has resulted in the greater use of the central government for the redistribution of resources; moderate states, such as Indonesia and Jordan, have used public funds to reconstruct the educational system and provide greater security against disaster. But again, what is seen to be just depends far more on the political and economic circumstances of each country than uniformly adopted beliefs about Islamic justice. In this respect the intellectual history of the concept of justice replicates much of earlier history, for it is the local amalgam, proffered as distinctly Islamic, that both unites and separates Muslim nations.
One common concern is the nature of economic justice, exemplified by the permissibility of charging interest. Ribd, which is usually translated as “usury” but more accurately refers to any form of unjust enrichment, was historically avoided by various legal fictions. The rise of Islamic banking, however, has resulted in practices that are commensurate with modern economic institutions but are felt to conform to the prohibition on interest. This development is particularly important, because it is rare for Islamic conceptions of justice to be embraced in specific institutional enactments. [See Banks and Banking; Interest.]
As fundamentalist regimes have taken power in Iran, Sudan, and several Malaysian states-and as their influence expands in Pakistan, Algeria, and Jordan-the equation of shari`ah with justice has been no more fully consummated than at other times in Muslim history. Although formally preeminent, Islamic law is not, in fact, given unalloyed application in any of the Islamic republics. Moreover, justice-in the sense of receiving a fair share of the wealth of the state-has led to an emphasis on delivery of actual services rather than the imposition of formal law alone. Thus the terms of justice have been put into play once again, and the quest for new equivalences, contexts, and forms of reciprocal obligation have become embroiled in bureaucratic and party structures.
If justice is central to the way that Muslims think of themselves, it must also be noted that jawr (injustice) plays no less a role. Injustice is often felt rather than articulated, and Muslims tend to believe, like Montaigne, that institutions, far from eradicating injustice, often provide a forum for its elaboration. Justice, for most Muslims, can only be expected where face-to-face constraints allow reciprocity to work, whereas the state is seen as unreciprocity incarnate. Where international actions or local corruption lead to a felt sense of imbalance, the personal offense that is taken is profound. justice, to Muslims, is not, as Adam Smith had it for the West, the least of the virtues, because it is one that merely entails the avoidance of harm. Rather, justice is the most essential, if indeterminate, of virtues for Muslims, because it keeps open the quest for equivalence, a quest seen as central to both human nature and revealed orderliness in the world of reason and passion.
[See also Law, article on Legal Thought and jurisprudence.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abdul Mannan, Muhammad. Islamic Economics: Theory and Practice. London, 1986. Thorough analysis of the implementation of banking, trade, planning, and labor relations in accordance with revitalized Islamic concepts.
Antoun, Richard. Muslim Preacher in the Modern World. Princeton, 1989. Case study of a Jordanian preacher whose sermons exemplify popular justice.
Ewing, Katherine, ed. Share at and Ambiguity in South Asian Islam. Berkeley, 1988. Collection of essays showing the relation of various Muslim law codes to local customs and historical situations.
Iqbal, Munawar, ed. Distributive Justice and Need Fulfillment in an Islamic Economy. Islamabad, 1986. Essays by Muslim scholars on landownership and poverty law that could be practiced in accordance with Islamic precepts.
Kassem, Hammond. “The Idea of Justice in Islamic Philosophy.” Diogenes 79 (1972): 81-108.
Kerr, Malcolm H. Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad `Abduh and Rashid Ridd. Berkeley, 1966. Excellent analysis of the idealist tradition in Islamic jurisprudence as represented by two leading thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Khadduri, Majid. The Islamic Conception of Justice. Baltimore, 1984. The most comprehensive study of texts on Islamic justice, covering classical as well as modern writers.
Mahmood, Tahir. Family Law Reform in the Muslim World. Bombay, 1972. Carefully selected and translated excerpts from codes promulgated in almost every modern Muslim nation.
Mammeri, Mouloud. The Sleep of the Just. Translated by Len Ortzen. Boston, 1956. Algerian novel demonstrating the conflicted sense of identity and justice surrounding the life of an Arab living under colonialism.
Rosen, Lawrence. The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society. Cambridge, 1989. Study of a modern Islamic court in Morocco and its implementation of justice in the light of current social and cultural norms.
Yamani, Ahmad Zaki. Islamic Law and Islamic Issues. Jeddah, 1968. Insightful study of Islamic law as practiced in a traditional Islamic context by a scholar best known as Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister.
LAWRENCE ROSEN
see social justice also

JOUMBLATT, KAMAL

Batoota — Sun, 13 Jul 2014 13:28:20 +0000

JUMBLATT, KAMAL (Kamal Joumblatt, 191’7-1977), Lebanese politician, traditional Druze chieftain, leader and ideologue of the Left. Born in the mountain village of al-Mukhtarah, Jumblatt attended the Lazarist school of `Ayntirah and received his university education at the Sorbonne. He later studied law at the Jesuit Saint Joseph University in Beirut.

Elected to parliament for the first time in 1943 at the age of twenty-six, Jumblatt entered politics following the death of his brother-in-law, Hikmat Jumblatt, and assumed the three-century-old leadership of one of the two clans of the Druze community in Mount Lebanon, the other being the Arslani clan. (Kamal’s father, Fuad Jumblatt, was assassinated in 1921 in unclear circumstances.) At odds with an entire generation of notables, Jumblatt’s career deeply marked Lebanese politics. In 1949, he launched the Progressive Socialist Party. With its predominantly Druze power base, the party grew to become a loose coalition of deputies from different sectarian groups, mostly from Jumblatt’s electoral district in the Shouf (Shuf).
In 1952, Jumblatt, along with a number of influential politicians, including Camille Chamoun (Sham’un), played a central role in the opposition campaign against President Bechara al-Khoury (Bisharah al-Khuri), thus forcing his resignation. Jumblatt’s first political setback was his defeat in the 1957 parliamentary elections, believed to have been influenced by President Chamoun, who was Jumblatt’s Maronite rival in the Shouf For Jumblatt, this one-time electoral defeat was an intolerable challenge to his historical leadership of the Druze community. A year later, in 1958, Jumblatt was a leading instigator of the short-lived armed rebellion against Chamoun.
Prior to the 1958 crisis, Jumblatt had distanced himself from Arab nationalism, but by the late 1950s he began to draw closer to Arab nationalist politics. Under the regime of General Fouad Chehab (Fu’ad Shihab), who was elected president after the 1958 crisis, Jumblatt held several cabinet posts. Jumblatt held seven cabinet posts, the first in 1946-1947 and the last in 1969-1970.
But he never declared a truce with the political system, the governments he backed, or even the cabinets of which he was a member.
Beginning in the late 1960s. Jumblatt opted for unprecedented maximalism, as evidenced by his support for Palestinian militarism in Lebanon and a radical leftist platform. Jumblatt was instrumental in the prolongation of the six-month ministerial crisis in 1969, which ended only after the signing of the 1969 Cairo Agreement between the Lebanese government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In his capacity as minister of the interior in the cabinet formed after the 1969 crisis, Jumblatt legalized a number of radical and antisystem parties.
The high point of Jumblatt’s career came in the first half of the 1970s. In 1972, Jumblatt was the recipient of the Soviet Lenin Medal for Peace. A year later, he became secretary-general of a leftist, pro-PLO, Pan-Arab organization, the Arab Front for the Support of the Palestinian Revolution.
Jumblatt’s actual power peaked just before the outbreak of war in 1975-1976, when Jumblatt’s protege, and nominee for the premiership, Rashid al-Sulh, formed the last prewar cabinet. Jumblatt’s growing influence on the eve of the war was due not only to his leadership of the Left and his close alliance with the PLO, but also to his ability to mobilize Lebanon’s PanArab “street,” particularly in Beirut. This ability to inspire Arab nationalist protest undercut the power base of traditional Sunni leaders, thus upsetting the Maronite-Sunni confessional political balance, which had been in operation since independence in 1943
In the 1975-1976 war, Jumblatt initially sought a political settlement. In August 1975, the Jumblatt-led leftist coalition, known as the Lebanese National Movement, proposed an Interim Program for Democratic Reform calling for sweeping changes. In October 1975, a National Dialogue Committee was formed to discuss reform proposals and ways to end the war, but no agreement was forthcoming.
The stalemate was broken with the announcement by President Suleiman Frangiyeh (Sulayman Franjiyah) on 14 February 1976 of a Syrian-sponsored proposal known as the Constitutional Document. The proposal called for a more equitable confessional representation in government, but it reaffirmed the allocation of the top three government posts to Lebanon’s three largest communities (Maronite, Sunni, and ShN). The proposal greatly displeased Jumblatt, and his differences with Damascus, the main architect of the Constitutional Document, turned into open hostility.
By March 1976, when Jumblatt was publicly calling for a “military solution,” fighting spread to new areas, notably Mount Lebanon, where Palestinian forces launched large-scale offensives against Christian forces. In the fall of 1976 fighting escalated between Palestinian forces, backed by Jumblatt and the Left, and the Syrian army, backed by Christian and Muslim leaders. Hostilities ended when Syrian troops overran Palestinian strongholds and advanced toward Beirut. Jumblatt, the main loser in the war, retreated to his home village, where he was assassinated on 16 March 1977.
At the age of twenty-nine, Jumblatt’s son, Walid, succeeded his father as the leader of both the Jumblatti Druze clan and Lebanon’s Left. Walid also became the heir to his father’s controversial politics, in which, ironically, he had played not even a minor role.
[See also Druze; Lebanon.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by Kamal Jumblatt
Lubnan fi waqi’ ihi wa-murtajdh. 2d ed. Beirut, 1957. Revealing lecture delivered on to December 1956 at the Cenacle Libanais in which Jumblatt outlines his reading of Lebanese and Arab politics prior to the 1958 crisis and his embrace of Arab nationalism.
I Speak for Lebanon. Translated by Michael Pallis. London, 1982. Jumblatt’s critical reading of Lebanon’s confessional politics and his account of the internal and external dimensions of the 19751976 war, written after defeat. Published posthumously.
Ahadith `an al-hurriyah. 2d ed. Beirut, 1987. Collection of writings by Jumblatt.
Haqiqat al-thawrah al-Lubnaniyah. 2d ed. Beirut, 1987. Jumblatt’s account of the 1958 crisis.
Lubnan wa-Harb al-Taswiyah. 2d ed. Beirut, 1987. Collection of Jumblatt’s writings on the 1975-1976 war.
Rub` Barn min al-nidal. 2d ed. Beirut, 1987. Detailed account of Jumblatt’s political activities, with emphasis on the Progressive Socialist party.
Works on Kamal Jumblatt
Abu Izzedin, Nejla M. The Druzes: A New Study of Their History, Faith, and Society. Leiden, 1984. General work on the Druze. Betts, Robert B. The Druze. New Haven, 1988. Brief overview of the origins, social structure, and modern history of the Druze in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel.
El-Khazen, Farid. “Kamal Jumblatt, the Uncrowned Druze Prince of the Left.” Middle Eastern Studies 24 (April 1988): 178-205. Thorough assessment of Jumblatt’s chameleon politics, particularly his role in the 1975-1976 war.
Khalil, Khalil Ahmad. Kamal Junblat: Thawrat al-amir al-hadith. Beirut, 1984. Overview of Jumblatt’s political career and thought written by a party member.
Shtai, Faris. Al-Hizb al-Taqadumi al-Ishtiraki wa Dawruhu fi al-Siya-sah al-Lubnaniyah. 3 vols. Beirut, 1989. Comprehensive work on the Progressive Socialist Party and its role in Lebanese politics. Suleiman, Michael. Political Parties in Lebanon. Ithaca, N.Y., 1967. The best study in English on prewar political parties in Lebanon, including the Progressive Socialist party.
FARID EL-KHAZEN

JUDAISM AND ISLAM

Batoota — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 16:04:56 +0000

JUDAISM AND ISLAM. From Islam’s inception, it has had a varied and profound relationship with Judaism. In scripture and thought, in society and politics, in culture and intellectual life, the two religious civilizations have exemplified their relations. In modern times, these relations have reflected major historical dislocations. This article selectively surveys the history and range of contacts between Islam and Judaism, while emphasizing the modern period.

Islam’s formation, seen mainly through internal sources, revealed a prominent “Judaic dimension.” Some of the content of Islam’s revelations and the tradition emerging from this, as well as the actual relations between Muslims and Jews in Medina, constituted the beginning of the Muslim-Jewish encounter.
Muhammad’s revelations evinced ideas and stories, enjoined practices, and established institutions which had Judaic resonances and forms, including a profile of the Jews themselves. Notions of monotheism, revelation, prophecy, scripture, the next world, and God’s relationship with his creatures are, among others, central here. Institutions such as ritual worship and its directional orientation (salat, giblah) and fasting (sawm) seem to have had quasi-Judaic forms in Mecca before their later islamization in Medina. Prophet figures, such as Joseph (surah I2), Noah (surah, 7.59ff; I0.72ff.), Solomon (and the Queen of Sheba) (surah 27.15ff.), and Moses (surah 28.3ff.), to name but a few, though often somewhat different from their Judaic and biblical counterparts, prove in their very Qur’anic presence the hovering influence of that model.
Although there was a Judaic and biblical presence in Muhammad’s revelations, it did not always represent canonical Judaism and the Bible, as much earlier Western scholarship presumed. It is likely that a melange of ancient Near Eastern traditions, which, though in part Judaic, represent a synthesis of many related cultural strands (including, obviously, the Christian), was reflected in early Islam. These cultural interactions are highly complex and are amenable to many interpretations.
One main Qur’anic conception of the Jews does have a Torah and biblical form close to a canonical Jewish depiction, but it also deviates from that biblical form in a way which indicates the early Islamic self-definition in regard to the (Jewish) other: the Jews (Banu Isra’il, or “Israelites”) in covenant with God, repeatedly violating the covenant and Torah, opposing the prophets and thereby incurring divine wrath. This coincides with the original biblical conception. The Bible also foresaw ultimate redemption of the Jewish people (Deuteronomy 30.iff.). The Qur’an omits Jewish redemption with an implicit supercessionist view of Islam in regard to Judaism (Qur’an 2.83ff.).
The Qur’anic and other early Islamic portrayals of the Jews also reflect the situation in contemporary Medina. A complex relationship between the Prophet and the Jewish tribes there (al-Yahud, or “the Jews”) is revealed in (sometimes oblique) references to Jewish machinations against Muslims and alliances with the Munafiqun (“Hypocrites”; opponents of Muhammad). This gave substance to the Qur’an’s more abstract depictions of the historical Banu Isra’il rebellion against prophecy. Reported Jewish rejection of Muhammad’s teachings in Medina seemed a living example of the ancient problem.
Contrary to-perhaps in dialectical tension with-this rather polemical (and political) portrayal is a Qur’anic respect for the Jews and Judaism. This is shown in the notion of the ahl al-kitdb (“people of the book”), which, while referring also to Christians (and Sabians) seems often to incorporate the Jews as its main example. The “book,” so revered as an ideal type, is here firmly attached to the Jews and their tradition. This is in spite of the Qur’anic claim of the corruption of the Jewish book and other wrongdoing of the ahl al-kitdb.
In the field, relations between Islam and Judaism worsened, culminating in a series of Muslim campaigns against the Jewish tribes and a final Muslim victory. These campaigns were interwoven with the long series of Muslim campaigns against the Meccans, in a sort of “point-counterpoint” fashion. Thus the early battle dramas of Badr (624), Uhud (625), the Ditch (627), and alHudaybiyah (628) had an alter ego in the Muslim trials with the Jewish tribes of Banu Qaynuqa`, Banu Nadir, and Banu Qurayzah.
The resolution came with the Muslim defeat of the Jews of Khaybar (628), among whom were the Banu Nadir expelled by the Muslims from Medina. Here a clear conception of the practical relationship between Islam and Judaism emerged. This meant the Jews would live as a protected minority, paying, in return, a special tax. A model for later arrangements was thus established. The full institution of dhimmah (protection), covering Jews, Christians, and other scriptuaries, gradually evolved in accordance with Muhammad’s revelations and events on the ground. Derived from the later so-called Pact of `Umar (in various seventh- and eighthcentury rescensions), this institution governed the traditional Islamic-Jewish relationship throughout the medieval era, until its dissolution in the modern period.
The foundation of Islamic-Jewish relations established during Islam’s formative period remained in place and gave direction to subsequent developments. The span between 632 (Muhammad’s death) and the beginning of Islam’s modern period (late eighteenth century) saw an extension and development of this foundation. The great Jewish communities of Babylonia, Palestine, Egypt, and the Levant came under Islamic sway (seventh century), as did smaller and less venerable ones. Living administratively as “protected peoples”
(dhimmis), the Jews then interacted with Muslims in various ways.
The cultural and intellectual interchange was profound. In theology, exegesis, philosophy, law, mysticism, and poetry, Jews and Muslims contributed to and learned from one another. The Judaic component in Islam, for example, was augmented by works of Jewish and quasi-Jewish prophetic stories (Qisas al-Anbiyd’ and Isrd’iliydt), which, while sometimes proscribed by Islam for theological reasons, still achieved a massive presence in Islamic texts, particularly in the tafsir (exegetical) tradition and in popular folklore and Sufism. The Islamic philosophical tradition, on the other hand, aided the Jews in establishing their own philosophical learning. Maimonides’ debt to Muslim philosphers and theologians, for example, was very great. And the existence of the Muslim al-Tabrizi’s (thirteenth century) commentary on a portion of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed is a sign of great interest in the other direction. Maimonides’ son, Abraham, was a proponent of a so-called Jewish Sufism, which utilized the framework and technical terminology of the Islamic mystical tradition. Examples in these areas can be multiplied many times.
The classical Islamic depictions of Judaism and the Jews found in the Qur’an and other early sources were later augmented and elaborated by Muslim scholars working in various disciplines. Their discussion sometimes reflected the more polemical as well as the positive side of the classical portrayal, and severe and straightforward vilification of the Jews was not typical. The Muslim intellectuals, rather, either commented on the sources in a neutral manner or generally elaborated on the earlier depictions in such a way as to make of the Jews a kind of “warning model” to Muslims of a people who had strayed and been chastised by God. Such discussions were usually detached, abstract, and not applied to the actual Jewish communities living within the Islamic fold. This was an important difference between the medieval and certain twentieth-century Islamic interpretations of the early sources on the Jews.
The life of Jewish communities in the Muslim world throughout this long period was governed by the elaborate laws of dhimmah. Itself derived from traditional hierarchical conceptions of Islamic spiritual finality and superiority to the other faiths, the dhimmah idea and practice mainly imposed practical regulations and restrictions as a way of implementing these notions of difference. Thus were the Jews (and other ahl al-kitdb) subject to certain legal, economic, occupational, dress, and other restrictions. Although this created a legal status and feeling of inferiority for the Jews in Muslim countries, they could often be autonomous in their internal communal fife while also interacting with the majority culture. Harsh treatment, although certainly not unknown, was also not the rule but the exception. In later centuries, the situation of Jews (and other minorities) deteriorated generally, but this occurred unevenly in different times and places. These developments reflected a difficult period of relative political and economic decline in parts of the Islamic world. The dawn of the modern era witnessed an exacerbation of the general Islamic situation and a radical change in the Jewish position.
The late eighteenth century is usually held to be the beginning of the modern history of the Islamic Middle East. After a long period of growing Western economic and political involvement in the area, Napoleon’s entrance (1798) and brief stay with his army in Egypt presaged an era of great Western influence and domination. The general changes wrought by this situation profoundly affected the life of the dhimmis in general and the Jews in particular. The institution of dhimmah eventually virtually disappeared and, with a few pockets of exception, the great ancient Jewish communities of the Islamic Middle East and North Africa went with it. Islamic-Jewish relations in the Middle East then took a form very different from anything previously known. The chronology of this period of change is from the nineteenth century onward.
In the nineteenth century, until World War I, the Western powers, France and Britain in particular, consolidated their presence in the Middle East. One prominent feature of this presence in some regions was a Western policy of equal rights for minorities, a direct challenge to the institution of dhimmah. Some indigenous Muslim powers responded to this in legislation, if not always in its implementation. Thus the Ottomans, in a two-stage legislation in 1839 and 1856, in principle provided a framework for a total equalization of dhimmis and Muslims. In spite of the less than total acceptance and application of these laws throughout the realm, they did reflect real changes being effected in other ways by the powers. Dhimmis were being liberated according to new Western ideas. By the end of World War I, this had to a great extent been completed.
The period between the two world wars saw a continuation of the Western powers’ presence in the Islamic Middle East. This encouraged stronger nationalist sentiment among indigenous peoples. The Jews, by no means uniformly Zionist, did in places respond positively to that movement, as their Muslim (and Christian) neighbors promoted their own new nationalist ideologies. The period 1929 to 1939 saw an exacerbation of Muslim-Jewish tensions in various places in response to the worsening conflict in Palestine. The World War II period witnessed a continuation of the troubles in the midst of the complex politics of that time.
In the postwar period, the tensions of previous years rose to new heights, with the intensification of the Palestine problem. Anti-Jewish disturbances occurred, for example, in November 1945 in several Arab countries, with greater or lesser severity. With the UN partition resolution of 29 November 1947, the situation became more acute, and in subsequent months more disturbances took place. Within twenty years the vast majority of the Jews in Arab countries had left, going mainly to Israel and, to a lesser extent, Europe and North America. North Africa, Turkey, and Iran were less affected, but gradually they too saw a diminution of their Jewish population. With Middle Eastern Jewry now concentrated in Israel, Islamic-Jewish relations in the Middle East (and elsewhere) were subsequently to be colored by the politics of the Arab-Israel dispute. Aside from the natural tensions which ensued here, a very prominent and original aspect of the new relations was an innovative Islamic thought concerning Judaism and Zionism.
Though derived from the traditional ideas concerning the Jews and Judaism, the new thought also represented a sharp departure from that foundation. The differences can be found in the existential import of the new thought as well as in certain new conceptions and formulations. Like much of modern Islamic thought, this genre too is a direct response to some aspect of Islam’s situation in the world. Unlike the majority of premodern Islamic discussions of the Jews, which have a more historical conception of Judaism and an academic way of discussing it, here the subject was given a practical and emotional significance which it had not had for centuries, if ever. At the same time, Judaism was given an essential nature-derived from sacred sources but removed from history-which might help to explain the new historical development. Old myths became new realities, giving rise to new concepts.
The beginning of this thought might be located in its earliest form in certain Islamic Arabic publications of the late 1930s. Prominent here was the Egyptian journal Al fat#. Loosely linked with more populist Islamic trends rather than with the official `ulama’ (community of religious scholars), Al fat# published many articles and editorials on the intensifying Palestine problem. This was a still early and fluid stage of that problem’s development, before the creation of Israel and the Jewish exodus from Muslim countries. There was as yet no clear doctrinal line or framework story; there was, rather, a continuous commentary, from an Islamic perspective, on the developing situation. Three points, however, were clearly made and reiterated: (I) fear of a gradual judaization (tahwid) of Palestine and a displacement of indigenous peoples; (a) concern over the security of Islamic sacred sites; and (3) most plaintively, an appeal to the Jews of Arab and Muslim lands not to abjure the centuries-old symbiosis of Muslims and Jews, Islam and Judaism, in favor of the new “un-Jewish” Zionism. Zionism was held to be as bad for the well-being of the Jews themselves as it was for its Muslim and Arab opponents.
Subsequent to Israeli statehood, a framework story emerged which informed almost all the wide variety of new intellectual trends: the new Jewish phenomenon of national movement and nation-state was held to be a recapitulation of the rebellious behavior of the ancient Israelites and the Jews of Muhammad’s time. The traditional stories here became interpretative models through which contemporary problems were given meaning. Tales of Muhammad’s trials with the alleged machinations of Medinan Jews, for example, were abstracted and read into modern Israel’s national character. Or, sometimes, modern Israel was little mentioned but present by implication. Either way, past and present were mixed so as to create an eternal present. The timebound traditional presentation of Jewish stories was here effaced; and an ahistoricity ensued which rendered stories universal in their applicability to historical events.
Examples of this approach abound in the voluminous new (Arabic) Islamic literature on Judaism as seen through the prism of modern events. From al-Azhar and other `ulama’ to Islamist fundamentalists to Muslim intellectuals writing from an Islamic perspective, many minds have attempted to wrestle with this aspect of Islam’s situation in this way. The large, two-volume proceedings of the 1968 al-Azhar Conference (Cairo, 1970) provide one interesting example of this line of thought. Written as responses of Muslim religious scholars to the shocking Israeli victory in June 1967, the papers in these volumes seek guidance in the early sources in confronting this modern catastrophe. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood’s publications, Al-da’wah and Ali`tisam, in the late 1970s elaborated on and applied this reasoning to President Anwar el-Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem. In a proliferation of articles, these magazines argued not only that Sadat’s initiative was wrong in an Islamic sense, but that, if a peace agreement ensued, the Israeli Jews would cause offense to Islam in Egypt and would attempt to subvert the foundations of faith as their ancestors had done in Medina of the Prophet. Consonant with the new possibility of official Israeli Jewish presence in Egypt, and expressing a particular fundamentalist concern with internal Islamic moral values, the emphasis is on Jewish Israel as a cultural challenge within Muslim Egypt. This special angle in Sunni revivalist and fundamentalist circles can be traced back at least as far as the Egyptian Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), whose long essay “Our Struggle with the Jews” (early 1950s) was seminal. On the other hand, with President Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and the subsequent Camp David Agreements, certain Islamic circles (particularly in al-Azhar) proclaimed support for a peaceful settlement, based on their own interpretations of Qur’anic verses. Noticeable here were a more pragmatic view and an absence of the common modern framework story of the Jews. Also, as might have been expected, Palestinian Islamic circles produced their own brands of thought on these issues, partaking of the larger themes created elsewhere, while providing a local Palestinian Islamic nationalist flavor. Especially striking here are the publications of Hamas, the Palestinian fundamentalist movement.
Jewish responses to their new situation in regard to Islam were not equal, quantitatively or qualitatively, to those of Islam. But they do exist, mostly unstudied, and deserving of serious research.
The Islamic attempts ideologically to confront the collapse and disappearance of the institution of dhimmah, the emigration of the Jewish communities from the Islamic Near East, and their reconstitution in Israel, considered illegitimate in some quarters, constitute part of a more general Islamic search for early exemplars which would provide a gloss on Islam’s modern situation. Of necessity, this approach usually could not include the great medieval models of Islamic-Jewish cultural and intellectual interaction, even when calling for a return to the practices and ethos of that era. In removing this interaction by dismantling the legal, social, and political structures which supported it, history has altered Islamic-Jewish relations in an unprecedented way.
[See also Arab-Israeli Conflict; Dhimmi; MuslimJewish Dialogue; and People of the Book.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ashtor, Eliyahu. The Jews in Moslem Spain. 2 vols. Jerusalem, 1960-1966 (Hebrew); Philadelphia, 1973-1979 (English). The basic work on the subject.
Chouraqui, Andre N. Between East and West: A History of the Jews of North Africa. Translated by Michael M. Bernet. Philadelphia, 1968. Good survey written for a general audience.
Fischel, Walter J. Jews in the Economic and Political Life of Mediaeval Islam (1937). London, 1968. Standard general work.
Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 2, The Community. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971. One of four superb volumes, particularly accessible to the general reader.
Landau, Jacob. Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt. New York and London, 1969. Standard general work.
Laskier, Michael. The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862-1962. Albany, N.Y., 1983. Standard general work.
Lewis, Bernard. The Jews of Islam. Princeton, 1984. Standard work on the history of Jews in the Muslim world from Islam’s beginnings to the latter half of the twentieth century. Particularly good on intellectual and cultural aspects.
Maimonides, Moses. Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by Shlomo Pines. Chicago, 1963. The standard translation of this classic work. The translator’s introduction and notes give much information about Islamic influence on Maimonides.
Nettler, Ronald L., ed. Studies in Muslim Jewish Relations. Vol. I. Reading, U.K., 1993. The first volume in a projected series of annual volumes. Contains a variety of articles on the subject.
Newby, Gordon D. “Tafsir Israiliyat: The Development of Qur’an Commentary in Early Islam in its Relationships to Judaeo-Christian Traditions of Scriptural Commentaries.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47 (1979): 685-697. Excellent study of this aspect of Islamic-Jewish cultural interchange.
Nissim, Rejwan. The Jews of Iraq: Three Thousand Years of History and Culture. London, 1985. Good survey for the general reader. Peters, F. E. The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam. Princeton, 1982. Excellent study of the beliefs and other features held in common by the three religions. Special emphasis is given to the ancient Near Eastern background.
Stillman, Norman A. The Jews of Arab Lands: A History and Source Book. Philadelphia, 1979. Introductory survey of Jewish history in Arab lands and a much longer section of translated representative texts concerning various aspects of history. Covers the period from Islam’s beginnings to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Stillman, Norman A. The Jews of Arab Lands in Modern Times. Philadelphia, 1991. Following the same format as the earlier volume (survey essay and translated sources), this book covers the period from the late nineteenth century to the late 1960s.
Tritton, A. S. The Caliphs and Their Non-Muslim Subjects: A Critical Study of the Covenant of `Umar. London, 1970. Still the standard work on the subject. A very good overview, though somewhat dated in some of its details.
RONALD L. NETTLER

JORDAN

Batoota — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:22:37 +0000

JORDAN. The modern state of Jordan first emerged in 1921 as the Emirate of Transjordan. Until the end of World War I this area had been part of greater Syria under Ottoman rule. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 the Allied Powers divided the Middle East into spheres of influence, with Transjordan and Palestine under British mandate and trusteeship. In 1946 Transjordan achieved independence to become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with Prince Abdullah ibn al-Hussein its first monarch (1921-1951).

In 1948 the United Nations partitioned Palestine, and the Arab-Israeli War began. The portion of Palestine under Arab control at the end of the war merged with Jordan. After King Abdullah’s assassination in 1951 his son, King Talal ibn Abdullah, ruled for nearly a year and then abdicated in favor of his son, King Hussein ibn Talal, who has remained in power since then.
In 1967 Israeli forces occupied the West Bank of Jordan. Following sustained occupation, in July 1988 Jordan formally severed legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, and in 1989 ordered a parliamentary election involving only residents of the East Bank.
Jordan occupies nearly 57,354 square miles, more than two-thirds of it semiarid. Nearly 93 percent of the land under cultivation depends on annual rainfall, and only 8.6 percent receives more than the 7.8 annual inches required for cultivation. Because agriculture’s contribution to the national economy fluctuates with rainfall, Jordan relies on food imports to meet its basic needs.
Continuous population growth has steadily increased this dependence and aggravated the budget deficit. In 1921 Jordan’s population was estimated between 200,000 and 400,000 (a rough estimate because of the mobility of the bedouin segment). By September 1991 it had increased to an estimated 3.5 million, an annual increase rate of 3.4 percent. Rapid population growth in Jordan during the second half of the twentieth century is in part the result of political upheavals in the Middle East. Palestinian refugees settled on the East Bank of Jordan in two waves, first after the partition of Palestine in 1948 and later after the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank. A third influx occurred with the return from Kuwait of more than 300,000 Palestinians and Jordanians during the 1990-1991 Gulf War.
Islam is the dominant religion in Jordan, and 95 percent of the population are Sunni Muslim. Another I percent of the population consists of Druze and Baha’is; Christians comprise the remaining 4 percent. Before the twentieth century most residents of Jordan were farmers and small merchants residing in villages and towns.
Around the turn of the century, groups such as the Shishans, Circassians, and Armenians came from the Baltic States and the Caucasus to escape political and religious turmoil, maintaining their languages and other ethnic traits. During the same period, individuals or families from neighboring Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Egypt arrived in increasing numbers.
Political parties began to emerge in Jordan after its creation as a modern state in 1921. During the 1920S and 1930s a few national secular political parties called for independence from Britain but failed because of British influence on the government and a lack of political awareness among the native population. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, modern secular and religio-political ideologies entered Jordan from neighboring Arab countries. Jordanian students who had attended higher academic institutions in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon were influenced by these active and organized movements and led them in Jordan. Political awareness was spurred by the continuing threats of Western colonialism. The creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent military and political humiliations of Arab forces radicalized the political atmosphere.
Two basic types of organized Islamic religious movements exist in Jordan. The first focuses on political goals, and the second on religious revival. Among the first, some parties have legal status, but others do not. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood, registered as a socioreligious philanthropic organization, organizes and functions freely because it has openly declared support of the king and Hashemite family rule. By contrast, the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami), the Islamic Holy War Party (Jama’at al-Jihad al-Islami), Hamas, Muhammad’s Army (Jaysh Muhammad), and the Muslim Youth movement (Harakat Shabab al-Nafir al-Islami) have no legal status. These parties, with the exception of Hamas, have called for the overthrow of ruling Arab regimes and their replacement by Islamic governments. The second type of organized religious Islamic movements, which focus only on religious objectives, includes Sufi orders, the Jama’at al-Tabligh and Jama’at al-Sulufiyah.
The most active and dominant Islamic political party is the Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt and spread into Palestine in 1946 and thence into Jordan. One major factor that contributed to the Muslim Brotherhood’s credibility and visibility was its participation in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. Its open support of King Abdullah also helped. The king backed the movement because he shared its Islamic beliefs and values. Royal favor has continued with King Hussein. This harmonious relationship was confirmed when both the regime and the party became targets of criticism and attacks by various Arab regimes and secular Pan-Arab movements, especially in the 1950s, and late 1960s. The Muslim Brotherhood reacted by attacking all secular political parties as the “enemy of God.” In 1954 an assassination attempt on the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was attributed to followers of the party in Egypt. When many of the leadership were arrested and jailed, some took refuge in Jordan, including the son-inlaw of the movement’s founder Hasan al-Banna’, Said Ramadan, who has maintained an active role.
In 1957 the Jordanian government imposed martial law, and secular political parties were not permitted to function. As a result, for nearly three decades the Muslim Brotherhood was able to build support at all societal levels without much competition. In 1989 martial law was lifted and political freedom granted to all parties, but the Muslim Brotherhood had consolidated its position, especially after 1967.
The impact of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and Israeli occupation of Arab territories fueled the political comeback of various Islamic movements in Jordan. The Muslim Brotherhood’s slogan was “Islam is the solution,” and its members criticized the government but not the king. They pressed for reforms based on the shari’ah and Islamic values to stamp out corruption and eliminate Western influence. The party carried that message to all societal levels with its five-point agenda: (1) to develop a national educational program and curriculum based on and shaped by Islamic teaching and values and compatible with modern times; (2) to develop the Islamic world economically and to ensure a just distribution of wealth; (3) to establish unity among different Islamic governments and coordinate policy and functions to maintain strong links among all Muslims; (4) to establish a social policy encouraging economic charities in order to eradicate poverty, ignorance, and diseases; and (5) to develop and promote Islam as a base for a universal civilization (al-Kilani, 1990, p. 58).
The Muslim Brotherhood’s reform agenda was put to the test when King Hussein asked Mazhar Badran, a leading figure in the movement, to form a cabinet in January 1991. Five Muslim Brotherhood members headed important cabinet ministries, including education, social services, and justice. Among the important reforms introduced by the newly appointed minister of Education, Abdullah al-`Agaliya, were segregation by gender in the workplace and in schools, revisions of textbooks, appointments of Muslim Brotherhood members to key positions in the ministry and, in some cases, replacement of women in strategic positions by men.
Over the past four decades the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has built and operated nearly two hundred private Islamic elementary and secondary schools, as well as Qur’anic teaching centers, funded entirely by private donations. Independent of government support, it has also launched a program to open hospitals and health care clinics nationwide to provide services based on the individual’s ability to pay. Through its control of a broad range of organizations and institutions that provide services to the public, the Muslim Brotherhood is transmitting its religio-political message and widening its support among the masses.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has more political power than its counterparts in many other Arab countries. This was reflected in the national parliamentary election of 1989, which gave the Islamists around 40 percent of the seats in the lower house. The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan are highly educated, many holding doctorates from American universities. Furthermore, many of the leaders come from prominent families with tribal backgrounds where patronage plays an important role. The traditional tribal segment of the Jordanian population still dominates the social and political structure of the society.
The parliamentary elections of November 1993 demonstrated the continuing strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, which remained the largest single organized bloc. However, it did not win as many seats as in 1989, reflecting both more restrictive election laws and changes in public views as a result of experiences with Islamists in positions of responsibility. The Muslim Brotherhood has been registered since the 195os as a religious charitable organization. In response to the election law of 1993, the Muslim Brotherhood, in cooperation with other independent Islamist individuals and political groups, created a political party under the name “Islamic National Action Front.” The new Islamic Action Front was licensed in February 1993. This strategy allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to remain politically influential but not directly involved in partisan politics.
Another Islamic movement with a political agenda, the Islamic Liberation Party (Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami), has not been legalized. Its founder, Shaykh Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, was born in Palestine in igio. Educated at al-Azhar during the 1940s, al-Nabhani studied the forces that led to the disintegration of the Islamic empire at the beginning of the twelfth century and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. He identified the key forces as Western influence and domination, and the separation of church and state in the Islamic world (Ubaydat, 1989, p. 245). While pursuing his studies he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, but he withdrew in 1952 to establish the Islamic Liberation Party. After the partition of Palestine in 1948, alNabhani submitted an official request to the Jordanian government to operate legally within the political system, but this was denied. Continual pressure by the government, harsh treatment, and imprisonment forced many party leaders to leave Jordan. Al-Nabhani fled to Syria in 1953 and then to Lebanon, where he lived until his death in 1974.
Ideologically the Islamic Liberation Party maintains that Islam is not only a religion, but that it defines and includes every other aspect of fife. With this view the party urges Muslims to replace current governments with an Islamic caliphate, by force if necessary. The Islamic Liberation Party’s ideology rejects all participation in social, economic, or religious charitable activities because they distract from the main objective-the creation of the Islamic state.
Because the leadership thought that its ideology would appeal to the masses and be accepted rapidly, it sought to expedite its objectives by wresting authority from the hands of corrupt regimes. This led to several unsuccessful attempts to take over regimes: in Jordan in 1969, in Egypt in 1973, and in Iraq in 1973, as well as in Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan.
Hamas, another secretly organized Islamic religiopolitical movement, developed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. This organization played an important role in the intifadah that began in 1988. It has publicly declared no other political interest than the liberation of Palestine from its Israeli occupiers, nor has it conducted any political activities on the East Bank of Jordan.
Other nonlegal religio-political Islamic groups, less popular than the Islamic Liberation Party, include the Islamic Holy War Party, Muhammad’s Army, and the Islamic Youth Organization. During the past few years these groups were involved, according to the government, in more than one attempt to overthrow the regime in Jordan, and some of their members were arrested. Two prominent members of parliament, elected in 1989, were detained for alleged connections with banned Islamic organizations and were accused of being financially supported by the Islamic regime in Iran. Convicted by a military court on 29 September 1992, they were given twenty-year jail sentences. A few days later, despite his public support of the court decision, King Hussein pardoned several hundred prison inmates including both men, who resumed their seats in parliament. One of them, Layth Shubaylat, has since denied the government accusation and any link to banned Islamic movements. He contends that he was framed by the Jordanian government because he was chairing a parliamentary judicial committee charged with investigating the misuse of public funds and corruption. The committee’s inquiries revealed that high government officials, including previous prime ministers, were involved in unlawful activities (personal interview with Shubaylat, 18 July 1993). Another factor in the case may have been the Islamic National Front’s opposition to Jordanian government participation in the Palestinian peace negotiations that began in Madrid in 1991.
The organized religious Islamic groups that have no political agenda include the Sufi orders and the groups Jama’at al-Tabligh and Jama’at al-Sulufiyah. The orders, which spread into Jordan from various neighboring countries during the past four or five decades, emphasize individual spiritual and religious conduct and relationship to God the creator. All Sufi orders disregard materialistic values, which they believe corrupt people. They call for a return to the straight path of God and religious conduct. Sufi orders that practice in Jordan include the Shadhiliyah al-Yashrutiyah, Kllaniyah, Qadiriyah, Rifa’Iyah, Nagshbandiyah, Burhaniyah, Taymlyah, and Quluuyah. They recruit from all socioeconomic strata in both urban and rural communities. Members gather on a regular basis to recite religious songs and verses from the Qur’an; a major effect of their activities is heightened awareness of Islam.
The Jama’at al-Tabligh (or Tabligh! Jama’at), which began in India, emphasizes spreading God’s word and Islam. Members are required to devote an hour a day or one full day a month to preaching God’s word. The Jama’at al-Sulufiyah calls for a return to the Qur’an and sunnah as well as the practices of the early centuries of Islam. Despite consensus on general objectives, its followers disagree on the means of attaining them. This disagreement has led to much ideological fragmentation of thought in the movement.
Political Islam in Jordan bears certain similarities to its counterparts in neighboring Islamic countries. The political and religious ideologies of the various Islamic movements have been influenced and shaped by Islamic thought and philosophy. All share the same objective: the replacement of the present ruling regime by an Islamic government based on the Qur’an and the shari’ah. The rise, spread, and success of political Islam as reflected in the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is attributed to the same forces that influenced political Islam in other countries in the Middle East.
External as well as internal political, economic, and sociological forces have fed this process. The negative image of Islam in Western societies began with the Crusades and continued with European colonialism in the Middle East between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This negative image, perpetuated by Orientalists, novelists, journalists, and recently the mass media, was seldom balanced by an account of the positive values of Islam and its contribution to Western civilization. More recently the failure of the West to differentiate between Islam and political Islam has led to the perception that Islam itself is a threat to Western values and national interest. Western governments fail to understand that political Islam includes both moderate and radical groups. Islamic protest movements reject Western ways of life and interference in the internal affairs of Arab Islamic society, but this interference is usually conducted through the vehicle of local authoritarian and corrupt regimes. The hostile Western attitude toward Muslims has stimulated a similar attitude among members of various Islamic movements toward the Western world and further contributed to the rise of political Islam.
On the Jordanian national scene, internal political and sociological forces played an important role in the spread and growth of political Islam. First, the continuing Palestinian-Israeli struggle and the failure of Arab governments to stop further Israeli territorial expansion, particularly after the 1967 war, increased the influence of political Islam in the region at the expense of various Pan-Arab national movements. Second, the economic, political, and sociological impacts of the oil boom of the 197os and 198os were both negative and positive. It widened the gap between the rich and poor and changed the pattern of consumption by the rich, whose way of life was viewed with envy and hostility by the unemployed and the poor. Islamic movements have capitalized on the economic situation and championed the cause of the poor by referring to the unjust distribution of wealth. The oil boom also directed a flow of financial contributions by individuals and governments to various Islamic movements in the region. Third, government corruption, the misuse of public funds, and the inability of the regime to create jobs for the unemployed, especially college graduates, provided fertile ground for Islamic movements to recruit members. Furthermore, broad grassroots support is found among Palestinians in refugee camps in Jordan.
The success or failure of political Islam in Jordan will depend on three factors: changes in Western attitudes toward Islam; a just and peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli problem; and political, economic, and social reforms in Jordan.
[See also Hamas; Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami; Jihad Organizations; Muslim Brotherhood, article on Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan; and Tablighi Jama’at.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antoun, Richard. Muslim Preacher in the Modern World: A Jordanian Case Study in Comparative Perspective. Princeton, 1989. Government of Jordan, Ministry of Information. Facts about Jordan (Sheet no. 1-9). Amman, September 1991.
Kilani, Musa Zayd al-. Al-harakdt al-Islamiyah ft al-Urdun. Amman, 1990.
Madi, Munib, and Sulayman Musa. Tdrikh al-Urdun ft al-qarn al`ishrin. Amman, 1959.
Muhafazah, `All. Tarikh al-Urdun al-mu’asir. Amman, 1973.
Sa’dani, `Isam al-. “Al-harakah al-wataniyah al-Urduniyah, 19211946.” Ph.D. diss., St. Joseph University, Beirut, 1991.
Satloff, Robert B. They Cannot Stop Our Tongues: Islamic Activism in Jordan. Washington, D.C., 1986.
`Ubaydat, Mahmud Salim. Athar al -jama’at al-Islamiyah al-maydant khilald al-qarn al-`ishrin. Amman, 1989.
HANI FAKHOURI

JINNAH, MOHAMMAD ALI

Batoota — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 13:57:05 +0000

JINNAH, MOHAMMAD ALI (1876-1948), Quaid-i-Azam (“Great Leader”) and first governor-general of Pakistan. Born in Karachi, the eldest child of well-to-do Khojas, young Jinnah was sent to London in 1893 and apprenticed to a British managing agency. He was bored by business, however, and turned to the study of law at Lincoln’s Inn and also aspired to acting. Jinnah helped the ” grand old man” of India’s National Congress, Parsi Dadabhai Naoroji, win a seat in the and with Dadabhai’s joined the Indian National Congress in 19o6. By then a successful Bombay barrister, Jinnah also joined the Muslim League in 1913 and was instrumental in drafting the jointly adopted Congress-League Lucknow Pact of 1916. As the brightest ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah seemed destined to lead a united Indian dominion after World War I, but Mohandas K. Gandhi returned from South Africa to revolutionize the Congress Party and become its postwar leader. Jinnah tried his best to dissuade Congress from following Gandhi’s “dangerous” and “radical” lead, but he failed in 1919 and withdrew.

Jinnah then focused on his legal practice and served as an independent Muslim member, elected from Bombay, on the Viceroy’s legislative council in Calcutta and New Delhi. In 193o he sailed back to London to attend the first Round Table Conference on Indian Constitutional Reforms, just when Allamah Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was presiding over the Muslim League in Allahabad. The latter called for “a consolidated NorthWest Indian Muslim state” for the first time from any League platform, a decade prior to the Lahore “Pakistan Resolution.” Jinnah and Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto managed in London to win separate provincial status for their home province of Sind, which in 1935 became the only Muslim-majority province of British India (Eastern Bengal and Assam having been reunited with West Bengal in 191o). Liaquat Ali Khan (1896-1951) lured Jinnah back from London to become permanent president of the Muslim League. But Congress won most of the provincial contests in 1937 and refused to admit any League leaders to its provincial cabinets. Outraged by Congress arrogance, Jinnah now appealed to India’s Muslim masses, transforming himself at his League’s Lucknow session of 1937 into their Quaid-i-Azam. By March 1940, when the League met in Lahore, Jinnah insisted that British India’s Muslims were no longer a “minority,” but a “nation.” The Lahore Resolution’s demand for a separate, single Pakistan became his sole platform and a goal to which he devoted the rest of his life and fast-failing energies. He survived long enough to preside over his Dew nation’s birth in mid-August 1947, but expired of lung cancer before he could bring to fruition his fondest dream of firmly establishing in Pakistan a secular and democratic polity free of corruption and internal conflicts.
[See also All-India Muslim League; Pakistan; and the biography of Iqbal.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hasan, Khalid Shamsul, ed. Quaid-i-Azam’s Unrealised Dream. Karachi, 1991.
Mujahid, Sharif. Quaid-i Azam Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation. Karachi, 1981.
Pirzada, Syed Sharifuddin, ed. The Collected Works of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (19o6-1921). Vol. 1. Karachi, 1984. Saiyid, Matlubul Hasan. Mohammad Ali Jinnah (A Political Study). Lahore, 1945.
Wolpert, Stanley A. Jinnah of Pakistan. New York, 1984. Standard biography of Jinnah.
STANLEY WOLPERT

JERUSALEM

Batoota — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 10:22:24 +0000

JERUSALEM. One of Islam’s three holiest cities, Jerusalem was originally an old Canaanite settlement where David, king of Israel, built his capital and his son Solomon, the Temple. Generally called simply “the Holy” (al-Quds) by the Muslims, Jerusalem is not mentioned by name in the Qur’an, but the Muslim tradition unanimously sees a reference to it in the allusion in surah 17.1 where Muhammad was borne by night from Mecca to “the distant shrine” (al-masjid al-aqsa). Muslim armies took Jerusalem without resistance in 635 CE and immediately set to refurbishing its chief holy place, the neglected Temple mount of the “noble sanctuary” (al-Hram al-sharif). They first built at its southern end their congregational mosque (al-Aqsa), and, by 692, had completed at its center the splendid shrine called the “Dome of the Rock,” revered both as the terminus of the Night journey and the biblical site of Abraham’s sacrifice and Solomon’s Temple.

Excavations of extensive buildings south of the Haram suggest that the Umayyads may have had ambitious political plans for Jerusalem, which they apparently aborted when Damascus became the new capital of the “Abode of Islam.” The city’s history was generally uneventful until the Crusades, and Christians and Jews (Jerusalem was filled with Christians and Christian holy places and the Jews had been permitted by the Muslims to return to the city for the first time since their ban by the Romans in 135 CE) may have outnumbered the Muslims. The Egyptian ruler al-Hakim bi-amr Allah had the Christians’ Holy Sepulcher Church burned down in 1009, one of the events that provoked the Europeans’ invasion of Palestine and their occupation of Jerusalem in 1099. The Latin Christian interregnum in Jerusalem lasted a scant century before Salah al-Din (Saladin) drove them out in 1187, long enough, however, for the Crusaders to convert the Dome of the Rock into a church and (al-Aqsa), into the headquarters of the Knights Templars.
Under Salah al-Din, the Muslim holy places were restored to their original use, and it was he, aided by popular preachers, who raised Muslim appreciation of what was, after Mecca and Medina, the third holiest city in Islam. The Frankish Crusade appears to have taken the Muslims by surprise, but, thereafter, they were well aware of European intentions toward Jerusalem. In the centuries after the Crusades, the level of hostility between the Muslims and the indigenous Christian population, and particularly the European pilgrims who continued to visit the city (and whose accounts graphically document life there) rose appreciably. Salah al-Din also wished to make Jerusalem a safely Sunni city; the Shi’is were regarded as far more subversive enemies than the Christians. His goal was realized under the Mamluks, his family’s successors in Egypt and Palestine. From their accession in 1250 they invested heavily in Jerusalem; many of the Sunni law schools (madrasahs) and convents (khanaqahs) they constructed around the northern and western margins of the Haram still retain some of their expensive elegance, though they are now empty of the students and Sufis who used to inhabit them.
The Ottomans, who inherited the city in 1517 from the Mamluks, continued their predecessors’ generous support of the holy city. The walls that still set off the “Old City” today were built by the Ottomans, somewhat uselessly, perhaps, since the greatest threat to the city came from abroad, not in the form of armed warriors. The might of the Ottomans was tested and broken in the Balkans during the seventeenth to nineteenth century; consequently, their control of their own affairs in their own dominions was progressively eroded. Even before the Crusades, the Christians of Jerusalem, the Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, had learned the benefit of invoking the protection of the more powerful of their coreligionists; somewhat later, the European powers learned what benefits might accrue to them from manipulating those invocations.
The disintegration of Ottoman sovereignty was nowhere more evident than in Palestine and Jerusalem in the nineteenth century. The city began to fill up with European consulates, European missionaries, and, finally, European archaeological missions, many of them instruments of national policy and all of them far beyond the reach of the Ottoman authorities in what was by then an exceedingly poor city. Even the Jews, always the least considerable and most wretched of Jerusalem’s medieval population, discovered that they too had powerful friends and benefactors in Europe. With the aid of those benefactors, the Montefiores and Rothschilds chief among them, the lot of the Jews of Jerusalem im proved, and their numbers began to spiral upward. By 1900 there were 35,000 (Muslims and Christians each 10,000) out of a total population of 55,000.
Turkey joined Germany in its unsuccessful war against the Allies in 1914; in December 1917 Jerusalem fell, without harm, to General Edmund Allenby and a British
Expeditionary Army. It rested under the uneasy control of British governors during the entire Mandate period (1922-1948). When the British withdrew in 1948, the Jordanians hastened to occupy the Old City, despite the United Nations’ recommendations for internationalization. It remained a part of Jordan until the 1967 war, when the Israelis took it after fierce fighting. The whole city has since been integrated into the State of Israel, and declared its capital, though in June 1967 the Israeli minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, acknowledged the entire Haram al-Sharif to be the possession of the Muslims. The policy has remained in force to this day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ben-Arieh, Yehoshua. Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century: The Old City. New York, 1984. Charts in detail the rapid and radical changes to Jerusalem in the nineteenth century.
Benvenisti, Meron. Jerusalem: The Torn City. Jerusalem, 1976. Generally balanced account of the fate of Jerusalem, its Muslim population, and its Muslim holy places, after 1967.
Burgoyne, Michael. The Architecture of Islamic Jerusalem. Jerusalem, 1976. Inventory of the chief Islamic monuments of the city. Busse, Heribert. “The Sanctity of Jerusalem in Islam.” Judaism 17 (1968): 441-468.
Goitein, S. D. “al-Kuds: Part A. History.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 5, pp. 322-339. Leiden, 1960-. Succinct yet detailed account of the history of Muslim Jerusalem.
Grabar, Oleg. “al-Kuds: Part B. The Monuments.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 5, pp. 339-344. Leiden, 1960-. The best brief survey of the monuments of Muslim Jerusalem.
Peters, F. E. Jerusalem: The Holy City in the Eyes of Chroniclers, Visitors, Pilgrims, and Prophets from the Days of Abraham to the Beginning of Modern Times. Princeton, 1985. Broad collection of sources on the city, its visitors, and their impressions, from the earliest days to the 1830s.
Peters, F. E. Jerusalem and Mecca: The Typology of the Holy City in the Near East. New York, 1987. Comparative study of two of Islam’s holiest cities.
Peters, F. E. The Distant Shrine: The Islamic Centuries in Jerusalem. New York, 1993. Shaping of the city of Jerusalem from the seventh to the nineteenth century.
Silberman, Neil Asher. Digging for God and Country: Exploration, Archeology, and the Secret Struggle for the Holy Land, 1799-1917. New York, 1982. Informative and entertaining account of the archaeological “invasion” of Jerusalem in the nineteenth century.
Tibawi, A. L. Jerusalem: Its Place in Islamic and Arabic History. Beirut, 1969. Muslim’s account of the importance of Jerusalem.
F. E. PETERS

JAMIYATUL `ULAMA’-I PAKISTAN

Batoota — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 08:40:26 +0000

JAMIYATUL `ULAMA’-I PAKISTAN. The party of Pakistan’s Barelwi `ulama’ the Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Pakistan was formed in Karachi in 1948 at the behest of Mawlanas `Abdulhamid Bada’uni, Sayyid Muhammad Ahmad Qadiri, and `Allamah Ahmad Sa’id Kazimi. After the Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam, it has been the largest `ulama’ party of Pakistan. The Jam`iyat follows the Barelwi school of Islamic thought, also known as the ahl-i sunnat wa jamacat (“people of the custom and community”), a term that reflects their claim to represent the true faith.

The Barelwls trace their origin to the teachings of Ahmad Riga Khan Barelwi (1856-1921), a scion of a notable `ulama’ family of Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, who had strong ties to the Qadiriyah Sufi order. The Barelwls, unlike other `ulama’ groups of the period or the Islamic movements that surfaced later, were not interested in promoting a puritanical interpretation of orthodoxy. Instead, they emerged to counter the impact of the Deobandl and Ahl-i Hadith traditions, both of which had sought to cleanse Islamic practices of cultural accretions and Sufism. The Barelwls adhered to the Hanafi school of law but aimed to preserve the place of Sufism and the popular customs associated with it in the life and thought of Indian Muslims. The Barelwls also accord the `ulama’ and $ufi pirs a central role as community leaders, vested with authority to intercede with God on behalf of the faithful.
By the turn of the century the Barelwi school had developed a strong following in northern India, relating popular Sufi practices to an orthodox reading of Islam. In Punjab too, where the Qadiriyah order has traditionally wielded much power, the Barelwls found a base, especially after the founding of the Darul Hizb-i Ahnaf (Congregation of the Hanafi Parties) in Lahore in the 1920s. They had little influence in the other four provinces that after 1947 became Pakistan-East Bengal, Sind, and the predominantly Deobandl North-West Frontier and Baluchistan. Throughout the struggle for partition, the Barelwls supported the Muslim League and were especially effective in bolstering the League’s position in Punjab. In 1946 this support was formalized when Barelwi `ulama’ from across India congregated in Benares to endorse Pakistan openly and to provide it with religious legitimacy.
Given this background, many Barelwls migrated to Pakistan in 1947, establishing a base in Sind among the refugee (muhajir) community. With a following in rural Punjab and urban Sind, Barelwls emerged as an important national force on the religious scene, second only to the Deobandis. The rivalry between the two for power and prominence, and the Barelwis’ desire to defend their flock from challenges by the Deobandis, soon led to the creation of a Barelwi `ulama’ party.
The Pakistani Deobandis had broken away from the pro-Congress Deobandi Party, Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Hind, to support the Muslim League and the demand for partition. In 1945 they had formed the Jam`iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam, whose contribution to the creation of the country was quickly rewarded with government patronage. The Barelwis viewed the privileged status of Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam with envy and concern, especially as Islam came to dominate national political discourse. Against this background in 1948, the Barelwi `ulama’ formed the Jam`iyatul `Ulama’-i Pakistan. The Jam’iyat was initially an `ulama’ forum designed to voice the interests of Barelwis; it had no plans for direct political activity. Between 1947 and 1958, the Jam’iyat actively participated in the debates among various Islamic parties and the government over the nature of the state of Pakistan and the necessity of an Islamic constitution for the country. Beyond this, it did not envisage a role for itself in national politics.
By the late 1960s, however, the Jam’iyat had become fully embroiled in politics under the force of three factors. The first was the increasing prominence of the Jamllyatul `Ulama’-i Islam and other Islamic parties such as the Jama`at-i Islami in the religious and political arenas from 1958 onward. Recall that the Barelwis had emerged in the first place to check the growth of puritanical interpretations of orthodoxy; thus it was not unexpected that the Jam`iyat would mobilize its resources to offset the influence of Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam and the Jama’at-i Islami. The Jam’iyat challenged the Jama’at-i Islami in forty-two constituencies in the national elections of 1970, defeating their opponents in several contests and dividing the religious vote in others to the advantage of secular parties. The rivalry between the two also stemmed from the fact that both had courted the Muhajir community of Sind since 1947
Second, the Jam’iyat was made aware of the power and potential of Islam in the political arena by revivalist groups in general, and the Jama’at-i Islami in particular. The Jam’iyat was not immune to the attraction of political power; moreover, it did not wish to leave the growing religious vote to be dominated by revivalist parties or the Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam. The decision to participate in the national elections of 1970, the first for the Jam`iyat, was taken after the Jama`at-i Islami flaunted the electoral potential of Islamic symbolisms by introducing its campaign with the Yaum-i Shaukat-i Islam (Day of Islam’s Glory), which was held throughout Pakistan in May 1970.
Third, the Jam`iyat became interested in politics in response to the challenge of the secularist regime (19581969) of Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan to the place of Islam in Pakistani society. The Ayub regime sought to roll back the gains made by religious parties during the preceding decade, proposed a modernist view of Islam with the aim of depoliticizing the Islamic parties, and finally sought to extend the power of the state into the domain of the `ulama’ The Jam`iyat was opposed to Ayub’s modernist agenda but was especially perturbed by the government’s appropriation of religious endowments and takeover of the management of religious shrines; both actions affected Barelwis and their allies in the Sufi establishment directly. The Jam’iyat was also opposed to the government’s attempts to seize control of its mosques. In response to Ayub Khan’s policies, the Jam`iyat became more directly involved in politics in the 1960s to protect the Barelwis’ interests. By the mid-1960s, under the leadership of Mawlana Shah Ahmad Nurani, the Jam’iyat became a vociferous actor in the political arena; it now included lay members and leaders and addressed issues of national concern. In 1970, for instance, it launched a strong campaign to counter Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Following the secession of Bangladesh and the rise of the populist Zulfiqar ‘Ali Bhutto to power, the Jam’iyat, along with other Islamic parties, became even more actively involved in politics. The secularist and left-of-center politics of the Bhutto government allowed the Islamic parties to assume the leadership of the opposition. The Jam`iyat coordinated its activities closely with those of other Islamic parties in the antigovernment Nizam-i Mustafa (Order of the Prophet) movement, which undermined the Bhutto regime. In fact, Nurani was chosen by the movement to succeed Bhutto as prime minister. Later the Jam’iyat also lent support to the military regime of General Muhammad Zia ulHaq, who took over the reins of power in 1977.
True to its founding ideals, the Jam’iyat was also the first Islamic party to distance itself from the Zia regime and its puritanical view of Islam. The party was not, however, able to escape the impact of the increasingly strict adherence to orthodoxy that swept across Pakistan in the I98os. By the end of that decade, elements within the Jam`iyat had moved close to the doctrinal positions of Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam and the Jama’at-i Islam!. More significantly, the party suffered as a consequence of its direct involvement in politics. Clashes over policy decisions since 1969 divided the Jam’iyat into factions. One faction led by Nurani decided to stay away from the Islam! Jumhuri Ittihad (IJI or Islamic Democratic Alliance), which was formed by the pro-Zia parties to challenge Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party, and instead allied itself with an offshoot of Jam`iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam to form the Islamic Democratic Front. The other faction under the leadership of Mawlana `Abdussattar Niyazi decided to remain with IJI.
Since 1986, the Jam’iyat, like other Islamic parties, has lost much of its support because of the proliferation of self-styled Sunni parties throughout Pakistan, and because of the meteoric rise of the ethnic party Muhajir Qaumi Mahaz (MQM or Muhajir National Movement) in the urban centers of Sind. In the 1970 elections the party received 8.2 percent of the popular vote and won seven seats in the National Assembly, but in the 1990 elections its share of the vote had fallen to 1.47 percent, winning only four seats. Despite this setback, the party continues to operate as an important force on the religious scene and wields significant power in the political arena from its stronghold in rural Punjab. The party’s student wing, Anjuman-i Tulaba-i Islam (Association of Islamic Students), established in the I98os, now controls numerous campuses in Punjab.
[See also Barelwis; Deobandis; Jama’at-i Islam!; Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Islam; Pakistan; Qadiriyah]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbott, Freeland. Islam and Pakistan. Ithaca, N.Y., 1968. Good summary of interactions between various Islamic groups in Pakistan. Afzal, Rafique. Political Parties in Pakistan, 1947-1958. Islamabad, 1976. Concise account of party politics in Pakistan in the 19471958 period.
Ahmad, `Abdul-Ghafur. Phir Marshal La A-Giyd (Then Came the Martial Law). Lahore, 1988. Good account of the politics of the Islamic parties in the 1970s.
Ahmad, Mumtaz. “Islam and the State: The Case of Pakistan.” In The Religious Challenge to the State, edited by Matthew Moen and Lowell Gustafson, pp. 239-267. Philadelphia, 1992. Good account of the issues before Islamic parties during the Ayub, Bhutto, and Zia regimes.
Binder, Leonard. Religion and Politics in Pakistan. Berkeley, 1961.
The standard work on religion and politics in Pakistan in the 19471956 period.
Ewing, Katherine. “The Politics of Sufism: Redefining the Saints of Pakistan.” Journal of Asian Studies 42.2 (February 1983): 251-268. Authoritative outline of the changing political issues surrounding Sufism in Pakistan.
Gilmartin, David. Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. Berkeley, 1988. Contains a good account of the activities of the Barelwis in the Punjab between the two world wars.
Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton, 1982. Contains an excellent sketch of the Barelwi tradition.
SEYYED VALI REZA NASR
NOTE: may contact to revise this article

JAM’IYATUL `ULAMA’-I- ISLAM

Batoota — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 17:10:34 +0000

JAM’IYATUL `ULAMA’-I ISLAM. The origins of the Jamclyatul `Ulama’-i Islam (JUI, Society of Muslim `Ulama’) can be traced to the Deoband movement in prepartition India and to the `ulama’ who consitituted the Jam’iyatul `Ulama-i Hind (Society of Indian `Ulama’). Such `ulama’ have been typically characterized as “Indian nationalists,” because during the latter days of British India they were unalterably opposed to British imperialism, supported the aims and policies of the Indian National Congress, and opposed the Muslim League’s struggle for an independent Pakistan. Consequently, following the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 and the creation of Pakistan, the political significance of the JUI was limited, and its leadership was held suspect by successive Pakistani regimes that condemned the JUI’s role in the independence struggle as anti-Pakistan. Indeed, until the late 1960s the JUI remained almost wholly a religious organization with little if any political significance.

This situation changed during the so-called “Disturbances” of 1968-1969 that led ultimately to the resignation of General Muhammad Ayub Khan and to the holding of general elections in 1970. During the ferment of 1969 the JUI split into two factions-a Karachi-based faction under the leadership of Maulana Ihtishamul Haqq Thanvi (later named Jam’iyatul `Ulama’-i Pakistan, Thanvi Group), and a larger and far more politically active faction led by Maulana Mufti Mahmud and Maulana Ghaus Hazarvi and based in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The latter faction (the MuftiHazarvi Group, hereafter JUI) actively participated in the 1970 general elections as a populist-oriented party, appealing to activist Islamic sentiment. The JUI’s program called for the establishment of an Islamic constitution in accordance with the recommendations of the
Board of `Ulama’ as presented to the Basic Principles Committee Of 1954, which had called for the adoption of the shari`ah as the basis of Pakistan’s consitutional structure. The JUI also called for the end of “capitalist exploitation” and for the establishment of a program of Islamic social welfare including free education, health care, and the introduction of minimum-wage legislation.
The combination of such populist rhetoric, the prestige of the `ulama’ and the JUI’s effective control of relevant mosques led to success at the polls. In the 1970 general election the JUI swept the electoral districts of southern NWFP and entered into a coalition with the National Awami Party (NAP) to form provincial governments in NWFP and Baluchistan. The subsequent naming of Maulana Mufti Mahmud as chief minister of the NWFP (1971-1973) marked the first and only time in Pakistan’s history that an Islam-based party has headed a provincial government.
During Mufti Mahmud’s short-lived tenure his government managed to introduce three laws designed to promote Islam in the province. The first established prohibition of alcohol; the second introduced an Islamic law of pre-emption (i.e., regarding inheritance of land); and the third mandated the enforced observance of the Ramadan fast. These laws have remained on the books in NWFP and have significantly influenced the course of the islamization process in Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s. The JUI-NAP government of NWFP resigned in early 1973 in protest over Zulfiqar ‘Ali Bhutto’s perceived persecution of NAP leaders. In the 1977 general elections the JUI allied itself with the antiBhutto coalition, the Pakistan National Alliance. Subsequently the party cooperated, at times reluctantly, with the regime of Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988), and it tacitly supported the IJM (Islamic Democratic Alliance) government of Nawaz Sharif (1990-1992). The JUI maintains a small but loyal and enthusiastic following in the southern region of NWFP and the Pathan-majority areas of Baluchistan. In the 1988 and 1990 general elections it gained seven and six seats respectively in the National Assembly.
During the past decade, under the leadership of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, son of the late Mufti Mahmud, the JUI has become increasingly associated with Islamic orthodoxy. In their religious views JUI members are often criticized by their opponents as “uncompromisingly rigid,” insisting on the strict enforcement of the shari`ah as interpreted by the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence. In addition, it is often charged that the JUI is anti-Shi’i. The Jul did support Iraq during the IranIraq war, but it joined the TNFJ (Tahrlk-i Nifaz-i Filth-i Ja’fariyah, the most prominent Pakistani ShN group) in its condemnation of the United States’ role in the Gulf War. Also, Jul `ulama’ are often characterized as opposed to innovation in matters Islamic and as favoring a strict social and moral code, especially with respect to gender relations. Indeed, Jul `ulama’ often draw the ire of Pakistan’s feminist organizations.
Politically, the Jul has been at the forefront of the attempt to implement far-reaching Islamic reforms. This is evidenced by the formulation and introduction in 1985, by the Jul Senators Maulana Sami’ul Haqq and Qazi `Abdullatif, of the so-called “Shariat Bill.” The Jul version of this bill proposed that the shari’ah wholly replace Pakistan’s secular constitution. `Ulama’ associated with the Jul have also been very active in proposing petitions before the Federal Shariat Court calling for significant changes in Pakistan’s social and moral practices to bring them more into keeping with Islamic norms. Generally, Jul members were displeased with what they viewed as the slow pace of Islamic reform under President Zia, and they have been even less pleased with successor regimes.
The 1993 general election proved disappointing to the Jul. The party contested the election under the banner of the newly created Islami Jumhuri Mahaz (Islamic Democratic Association, IJM) and entered into an “electoral arrangement” with the Pakistan People’s Party. However, even after intensive electoral campaigning, the IJM was only able to gain 2.3 percent of the popular vote and four seats. Despite such electoral disappointment, the Jul remains a potent social and political force in the NWFP and Baluchistan. Indeed, the party has deepened its populist image and style. But more important, it has maintained its control over the largest number of mosques and madrasahs in Pakistan, and therefore has the strongest base among the madrasah student body in the state.
[See also Pakistan.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahmad, Mumtaz. “The Politics of War: Islamic Fundamentalisms in Pakistan.” In Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis, edited by J. P. Piscatori, pp. 155-185. Chicago, 1991.
Kennedy, Charles H. “Repugnancy to Islam-Who Decides? Islam and Legal Reform in Pakistan.” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 41 (1992): 769-787.
CHARLES H. KENNEDY
NOTE: If JUI disagree with this article ,we will welcome and replace the article with the provided one.contact

JAMAAT-e- ISLAMI

Batoota — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:28:06 +0000

JAMAAT-I ISLAMI. An Islamic revivalist party in Pakistan, Jama’at-i Islami (the Islamic Organization/ Party) is one of the oldest Islamic movements and has been influential in the development of Islamic revivalism across the Muslim world in general and Pakistan in particular. It was founded in Lahore on 26 August 1941, mainly through the efforts of Mawland Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (d. 1979), an Islamic thinker and activist who had dedicated his life to the revival of Islam in India. Mawdfidi had been involved since 1938 with the struggle to reverse the decline of the Muslim community. He had opposed accommodating the Congress Party, believing that Hindu rule behind the veneer of secular nationalism would spell the end of Islam in India. He had been equally if not more vehemently opposed to the Muslim League, which he believed to be a secularist entity, completely ill-equipped to respond to the imperatives before the Muslim community. The Jama’at was in large measure created to rival the Muslim

League for the leadership of the Pakistan movement, especially after the Lahore Resolution of 194o that committed the League to creating a separate Muslim state.
Mawdfidi’s call for the creation of a new Muslim organization that would better address the predicament facing Muslims was supported by a number of young ‘ulama’ who joined him in Lahore to form the new organization. The most notable of these were Mawldnds Sayyid Abulhasan ‘Ali Nadvi of Nadvatul-`Ulama’ and Muhammad Manzfir Nu’mani, a Deobandi. Mawdudi was elected by the founding body of seventy-five members as the Jama’at’s first amir (president), a title he held until 1972. The party’s constitution was also ratified in that opening session. Soon after its creation, the party established its headquarters in Pathankut, a hamlet in East.Punjab. The seclusion of Pathankut permitted the Jama’at to consolidate and to create a community (ummah), which had been a principal objective behind its creation. Between 1941 and 1947, the Jama’at spread its message across India through its widely distributed literature, rallies, conventions, and public sessions.
Structure and Ideology. The Jama’at has closely followed the teachings of Mawdfidl, which emphasize the exoteric dimensions of faith, disparage traditional Islam, rationalize faith, and predicate eschatology and salvation on social action. The Jama’at views Islam as a holistic ideology analogous to Western ideologies such as Marxism. It promises a utopian order to be constructed in the temporal realm; and it encourages Muslims to embark upon an Islamic revolution, shaping society and politics in accordance with the precepts of the faith as interpreted by Mawdfidi.
According to the Jama`at’s founding constitution, revised and amended since 1941, the party consists of members (arkan, sg. rukn) and a periphery of sympathizers (muttafiqs and hamdards), all of whom provide it with a cadre of workers (karkun). Members alone, however, may hold office in the party. In 1947 the Jama`at had 385 members; in 1989 this figure stood at 5,723, and the party also boasted 305,792 official affiliates. The Jama`at is guided by the amir in consultation with the Shfird (consultative assembly). The internal affairs of the party are supervised by the office of the qayyim (secretary-general). In later years, this structure was reproduced at all levels of the party from the nation to village, creating an all-encompassing pyramidal structure of authority. Since the 1960s the party has also developed a women’s wing, as well as semi-autonomous organizations such as publication houses and unions–especially a student union, Islami Jam’iyat-i Tulaba (Islamic Society of Students)-to extend the purview of its activities [see Youth Movements].
The Jama’at’s structure from inception has been that of an ummah, a virtuous Muslim community. Its creation both signaled the “rebirth” of Islam and provided Indian Muslims with an organizational model in their drive to assert their political rights and cultural demands. Party discipline has always been rigorous, and members are expected to reform all aspects of their lives to conform to standards set by the party. Emphasis therefore rests on quality rather than numbers. The Jama’at has not been a mass party, but a community which aims at absorbing society as a whole. It has sought to do this by compelling society to change in accordance with its teachings. In political terms, the Jama’at’s organizational model has performed the function of a vanguard party in the struggle for Islamic revolution.
History and Politics. Following the partition of India, the Jama’at divided into three separate units for India, Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistan. Mawdudl, along with the bulk of the original party leaders and members, left India for Pakistan and established the headquarters of the Jama’at-i Islam! of Pakistan in Lahore. Soon afterward the party abandoned the relative isolationism of its Pathankut days and became fully immersed in Pakistani politics. Its political vision continued to be guided by Mawdudi’s religious exegesis.
Pakistani politics meanwhile proved receptive to the Jama`at, and the party soon found a niche in the political arena that expanded over time. Pakistan’s particularly arduous experiences with nation-building and consolidation of the state in the subsequent years, the deep-seated cleavages in its polity, the uneasy coexistence between democracy and military rule, and civil war and secession by the majority of its population made the emotional power of Islam increasingly more appealing and its promise of unity ever more poignant.
The Jama’at’s political agenda was premised on a program of training a vanguard “Islamic elite,” who would oversee the revival of Islam on a national level and would mobilize the masses using religious symbols and ideals. The party organized a tightly knit network of activists and sympathizers who not only propagated Mawdudi’s views but also enabled the party to project power in the political arena. Mawdfid! and the Jama`at quickly closed ranks with the `ulama’ and other self styled religious movements in pressing the newly formed state for an Islamic constitution. The party’s ideas and policy positions featured prominently in the ongoing debates between the government and the religious alliance from 1947 to 1956, most notably in the Objectives Resolution of 1949. Jama`at’s activism in these years culminated in an open confrontation with the government over the role of religion in politics.
No sooner had the state declared its independence than the Jama`at forbade the citizenry to take an oath of allegiance to the state unless it became Islamic. The government was troubled by the Jama`at’s challenge to its legitimacy, especially when such challenges involved foreign relations. In 1948, while observing a cease-fire with India, Pakistan had resumed support for insurgency in Kashmir, which was largely spearheaded by armed paramilitary units dispatched from Pakistan. The fighters had harped on the theme of jihad to justify their uprising and to gather new recruits and material support for their cause. Mawdudl, challenging the legitimacy of the declaration of a jihad in Kashmir, argued that vigilante groups could not declare jihad, nor could the government surreptitiously support a jihad when observing a cease-fire. Jihad had to be properly declared by a central government to justify a legitimate and ongoing war. Mawdud! thus asserted that the government should either formally go to war with India over Kashmir, or abide by the terms of the cease-fire to which it had agreed. India understandably found Mawdudi’s opinion of considerable political value, which led Pakistani authorities to accuse the Jama`at of pro-Indian sympathies and anti-Pakistan activities. Several Jama`at leaders, including Mawdudl, were incarcerated, and the party was declared a seditious entity on par with communist organizations.
Mawdudi’s arguments not only placed the government on the defensive by questioning the wisdom of its policy of cessation of conflict with India over Kashmir, but also revealed its susceptibility to criticism from the religious quarter. The entire episode moreover confirmed the JamYat’s place in the ongoing sociopolitical and constitutional debates in Pakistan, and increased the government’s sensitivity to religious activism. The government, however, was unable to dismantle the Jama’at or to extirpate Islam from the political arena. Even while in prison, Mawdud! continued his activities and successfully mobilized the `ulama’ and various other religious groups to press the Constituent Assembly to move Pakistan toward islamization.
Following Mawdudi’s release from prison in 1950, the Jama’at’s activities were further intensified, producing a formidable religious alliance that effectively anchored national constitutional debates in Islam. In 1951 the Jama`at became directly active in politics by taking part in the Punjab elections. It was, however, the antiAhmadiyah agitations in Punjab in 1953-1954 that catapulted the Jama`at to the forefront of Pakistani politics.
In 1953, agitators organized and led by the `ulama’ and religious activists demanded the dismissal of Zafaru’llah Khan, Pakistan’s Ahmadi foreign minister, and the relegation of the Ahmadiyah to the status of a nonMuslim minority. These measures, the agitators argued, would serve as litmus tests for the government’s commitment to Islam. Although the agitations were led by the `ulama’ and religious groups such as the Anjumani Ahrar, the Jama’at’s role proved critical in providing convincing justification for them, especially in the form of a book, Qadiyani mas’alah (The Ahmadiyah Question). In fact, the government viewed the Jama`at’s support for the agitations as more alarming and invidious than the provocative activities of the Ahrar. As a result, once the government clamped down on the agitations, Mawdudi and a number of prominent Jama’at leaders were apprehended and put on trial. Mawdudi was convicted of sedition and sentenced to death. That sentence was later commuted and was eventually reversed by the country’s supreme court. [See also Ahmadiyah.]
By pitting the Jama’at against the state over a popular cause, the anti-Ahmadiyah issue enhanced the party’s political standing. Moreover, the agitations placed Islam more squarely at the center of the constitutional debates regarding the nature of the Pakistani state, all to the Jama`at’s advantage. As a result, it used its growing power to exert renewed pressure on the government, this time regarding the issue of the constitution of 1956.
Since 1947 the Jama’at and its allies had successfully anchored constitutional debates in a concern for the Islamicity of the state. In the aftermath of the anti-Ahmadiyah disturbances, and with the religiously inclined Chaudhri Muhammad `Ali as prime minister, the Constitutional Assembly began to accommodate the religious activists to an increasing extent. Consequently, with the promulgation of the constitution of 1956, the Jama’at and its allies among the `ulama’ claimed victory and accepted the new constitution as an Islamic one.
This paved the way for the Jama’at to become more directly involved in politics. In 1957, despite opposition within the party, Mawdudi directed the Jama’at to recognize the legitimacy of the state by declaring that it would participate in the national elections of 1958 as a full-fledged party. The constitutional victory was, however, short lived, for the armed forces of Pakistan under the command of General Muhammad Ayub Khan (d. 1969), with a modernizing agenda that disparaged the encroachment of religion into politics, took over power in 1958.
Over the following decade the political establishment became dominated by an authoritarian and bureaucratic elite who actively promoted religious modernism as a way of retarding the drive for the islamization of the country. Advocates of religious revival and an Islamic state were increasingly pressed into retreat. The Jama’at’s offices were closed down, its leaders were excoriated in government-sponsored publications, and its activities, networks, and operations were restricted. Mawdudi himself was imprisoned twice during Ayub Khan’s rule.
Unable to advocate freely the cause of Islam in the political arena, the Jama’at became more concerned with the removal of Ayub Khan and the restoration of a political climate that would be conducive to religio-political activism. The party’s experiences with Ayub Khan’s government forced it to look for new allies outside the circle of religious revivalists. Consequently, the Jama’at joined the alliance of political parties that advocated restoration of democracy and an end to Ayub Khan’s hegemony in Pakistan, going so far as to support the candidacy of Fatimah Jinnah in the presidential elections of 1965. The Ayub era politicized the Jama’at further, transforming it into a consummate political party.
The result of this transformation was clear in the Jama’at’s policies in the post-Ayub period. In 1970 it participated in national elections with the aim of capturing power. Those hopes were dashed when the party won only four seats in the National Assembly and four seats in various provincial assemblies. In 1971 the Jama’at responded to the advent of civil war in East Pakistan by mobilizing its resources in support of the central government and by joining the attempt to prevent East Pakistan from seceding as Bangladesh.
The secession of East Pakistan and the rise of Zulfiqar ‘Ali Bhutto (d. 1979) to power in 1971 intensified the Jama’at’s political activism. The socialist content of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party’s political program was particularly instrumental in prompting the Jama`at into action. Viewing Bhutto’s populism as a direct challenge to the Islamic basis of Pakistan and to its own place in the country’s political order, the party directly confronted the government on numerous political issues, notably during the movement against recognition of Bangladesh in 1972-1974 and the anti-Ahmadiyah disturbances of 1974
Throughout the Bhutto years the Jama’at spearheaded a political movement that consciously appealed to religious sentiments in order to weaken the Bhutto regime. While the opposition to Ayub had brought religious groups into an alliance for democracy, opposition to Bhutto took shape under the banner of religion. The Jama’at’s religio-political program proved instrumental in giving shape to this alliance-the Nizam-i Mustafa (Order of the Prophet) movement-and in managing its nationwide agitations. The struggle against Bhutto greatly bolstered the Jama`at’s popular standing. In the elections of 1977, widely believed to have been rigged to favor Bhutto, the Jama’at won nine of the thirty-six seats won by the opposition. During the subsequent antigovernment protests the party’s popularity soared further. It was the Jama’at and the movement it led that eventually undermined the Bhutto government and in 1977 provoked a military coup d’etat.
The cause of the Islamic opposition, now enjoying wide popularity, could not be ignored by the martiallaw administration of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq (d. 1988), who in his search for legitimacy was quick to appease the Nizam-i Mustafa movement. Zia’s elevenyear rule from 1977 to 1988 was therefore a period of unprecedented success and political influence for the Jama’at. During the Zia period the Jama’at, once a dissident party outside the pale of mainstream politics, became a political and ideological force at the helm of power. Jama’at leaders occupied important government offices, including cabinet posts, and the party’s views were reflected in government programs. The party played a direct role in the islamization of the country, as well as in articulating state policy, especially concerning the Afghan jihad and the position of the federal state on provincialist and ethnic demands.
The rise in the fortunes of the Jama’at during the Zia period, however, turned out to be a pyrrhic victory; for despite its influence at the top, the party failed to expand its social base, nor was it able to exercise political influence outside the channels provided by the government. As a result, in the national elections of 1985 it won only ten seats in the National Assembly and thirteen in the provincial assemblies. Unable to utilize its newly found prominence to advance its own political position or to distinguish its programs from those of the government, the Jama’at became an instrument of government policy-making and was, therefore, effectively coopted by the regime.
The Jama`at’s experience with the Zia regime not only dealt a blow to the party’s morale and prestige, but also rendered it politically vulnerable. As Zia gradually fell out of favor with the masses, so did the Jama’at witness a turn in its political fortunes. The party’s predicament manifested itself in its modest showings in Pakistan’s national elections of 1988, 1990 and 1993. In the first two it participated as part of the Islami Jumhuri Ittihad (IJI or Islamic Democratic Alliance), a coalition of Islamic and right-of-center parties that emerged following Zia’s death to challenge the Pakistan Peoples’ Party. In the elections of 1988 the Jama’at won eight seats in the national assembly and thirteen in the provincial assemblies; in the elections of 1990 the Jama’at’s tally of seats stood at eight and twenty, respectively. In the 1993 elections the Jama’at contested alone, winning only three seats to the national assembly and six to provincial assemblies.
Yet, despite its limited electoral showings, by the end of the Zia period it was apparent that the Jama`at had become a powerful political force with significant social and cultural influence, derived mainly from its organizational structure and ability to manipulate the religious factor in Pakistan’s political balance. While unable to increase its political prowess in the Pakistani parliament, the Jama’at remains an important political party capable of influencing the course of politics through the use of its organizational muscle. The Jama’at’s political stature is reflected in the power which it has wielded in the IJI between 1988 and 1993.
Continuity and Change in Party Structure. During its five decades of existence the Jama’at has gone through a number of purges and reorganizations as well as periods of uncertainty and redirection-none more significant than the transition from one leader to another. The Jama’at has been led by three amirs and has passed through two succession periods: from Sayyid Abu al-A’la Mawdudi (1941-1972) to Miyan Tufail Muhammad (1972-1987), and then to Qazi Husain Ahmad (since 1987); each such period has engendered a reorientation of the party.
Of equal importance are changes in the social base of the Jama’at. The party has at one point or another been associated with various constituencies or ethnic groups, notably the urban middle classes, the petit-bourgeoisie, the Muhajirs (those who performed hijrah or migrated from India to Pakistan in 1947), the Punjabis, and more recently the Pathans. In its concern for the islamization of the state, the party has eschewed populist politics and sought to establish a base among the intelligentsia. Although it has failed to inculcate support among any one social class or to gain a large following, it relies on the power of discipline and organization rather than the power of numbers.
The party has, however, compensated for its restricted social base by developing ties with students, Pakistan’s future politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectual leaders. It is its success with students that best explains the Jama’at’s incremental rise in importance in the bureaucracy and the civil service. This strategy also manifests Mawdudi’s doctrine of islamizing the state from within and above: revolution through education and conversion rather than by coercion.
[See also Pakistan and the biography of Mawdudi.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbott, Freeland. “The Jamaaat-i-Islami of Pakistan.” Middle East Journal 11.1 (Winter 1957): 37-51. Good account of the Jama`at’s activities up to 1957.
Adams, Charles J. “The Ideology of Mawlana Maududi.” In South Asian Politics and Religion, edited by Donald E. Smith, pp. 371397. Princeton, 1966. A standard work on Mawdudi’s ideology. Adams, Charles J. “Maududi and the Islamic State.” In Voices of Resurgent Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, pp. 99-133. New York, 1983. Overview of the Jama’at’s ideology.
Ahmad, `Abdul-Ghafur. Phir Marshal Ld A-Giya (Then Came the Martial Law). Lahore, 1988. Good account of the Jama’at’s politics during the Zia years.
Ahmad, Israr. Tahrik-i Jama’at-i Islami: Ek Tahqiqi Mutala’ah (The Movement of Jama’at-i Islami: A Critical Study). Lahore, 1966. Critical history of the Jamaat by a former member.
Ahmad, Mumtaz. “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat.” In Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, pp. 457530. Chicago, 1991. Good history of the Jamaat.
Bahadur, Kalim. The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan. New Delhi, 1977. Useful account of Jama`at’s politics through the 1970s.
Binder, Leonard. Religion and Politics in Pakistan. Berkeley, 1961. Excellent account of the Jama`at’s politics in the 1947-1956 period. Dastur-i Jama’at-i Islami, Pakistan (Constitution of Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan). Lahore, 1989. The Jama`at’s constitution, which governs the party’s operation.
Hasan, Masudul. Sayyid Abul A’ala Maududi and His Thought. 2 vols. Lahore, 1984. Detailed history of the Jama’at.
Ijtima` Se Ijtima` Tak, 1963-1974: Rudad-i Jama’at-i Islami, Pakistan (From Convention to Convention, 1963-1974: Proceedings of the Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan). Lahore, 1989. Official report on the JamYat’s activities in the 1963-1974 period.
Ijtima` Se Ijtima` Tak, 1974-1983: Ruddd-i Jama`at-i Islami, Pakistan (From Convention to Convention, 1974-1983: Proceedings of the Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan). Lahore, 1989. Official report on the Jama`at’s activities in the 1974-1983 period.
Ilahi, Chaudhr-1 Rahmat. Pakistan Men Jama’at-i Islami Ka Kirdar (The Jama’at-i Islarni’s Activities in Pakistan). Lahore, 1990 Official account of the Jama’at’s history.
Kennedy, Charles H. “Islamization and Legal Reform in Pakistan, 1979-89.” Pacific Affairs 63.1 (Spring 1990): 62-77. Provides insights into the Jama`at’s politics during the Zia period.
Munir, Muhammad. From Jinnah to Zia. Lahore, 1979. Critical examination of the role of Islamic parties in Pakistan’s history. Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza. “Islamic Opposition to the Islamic State: The Jama’at-i Islami 1977-1988.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24.4 (November 1992): 261-283. Account of the Jama`at’s politics during the Zia period.
Nast, Seyyed Vali Reza. “Students, Islam, and Politics: Islami Jami’at-i Talaba in Pakistan.” Middle East Journal 46.1 (Winter 1992) 59-76. Examination of the history and politics of the Jama’at’s student wing.
Rudad-i Jama’at-i Islami (Proceedings of the Jama’at-i Islami). 7 vols. Lahore, 1938-1991. Official historical chronicle of the Jama’at. Shahpuri, Abad. Tankh-i Jama’at-i Islami (History of the Jama’at-i Islam). Lahore, 1989. Official history of the Jama’at’s early years.
SEYYED VALI REZA NASR

JAMA’AT AL-ISLAMIYAH, AL

Batoota — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 16:12:56 +0000

JAMA’AT AL-ISLAMIYAH, AL-. A broad range of Islamic organizations in Egypt use the name alJama’at al-Islamiyah (Islamic Groups). These groups operate primarily through independent mosques and student unions on university campuses and appeal primarily to Egyptian youths. There does not appear to be any single leadership uniting the various groups; rather, they represent the general trend in Egyptian society toward Islamic resurgence. However, since the mid-1980s an increasing number of clashes have occurred in Upper Egypt between government forces and more politically militant groups acting under the banner of al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah. The self-proclaimed leader of these groups is Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman (Umar ‘Abd alRahman), a blind preacher from al-Fayyum who lived in exile in the United States in the early 1990s. The use of the term al-Jama`at al-Islamiyah originated in the early 1970s under the new government of President Anwar Sadat. Sadat released members of alIkhwan al-Muslimun (the Muslim Brotherhood) who had been imprisoned under President Gamal Abdel Nasser and officially permitted new Islamic organizations to form under the umbrella of al-Jama’at alIslamiyah. This move to reconstruct the conservative religious sectors of society was an early sign of Sadat’s intention to shift Egypt’s political course. Through the 1970s, as Sadat developed his plans to restructure the Egyptian political economy, these Islamic groups served as an important counterbalance to the old Nasserist constituency and other groups further to the left. While the regime reduced government programs and encouraged general privatization, the number of private (ahh) mosques in the country doubled in one decade from twenty thousand to forty thousand. These private mosques and the many Islamic organizations associated with them began to play an important role in large urban areas, including Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, and Suez in Lower Egypt, and Asyut, alFayyum, and al-Minya in Upper Egypt. Continued rural migration to these cities, combined with the government’s restructuring policy, exacerbated social and economic tensions and led to a growing sense of urban alienation. While the government reduced its social welfare programs, the activities of al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah provided a social safety net at private mosques, with centers for food and clothing distribution as well as for the study of the Qur’an. These mosques also had new independent sources of funding in the form of private remittances from members’ relatives who migrated to work in the Arab Gulf countries during the oil-boom years. An additional factor affecting the growth of the movement was the expansion of the country’s university system, especially in Upper Egypt where new campuses were founded in the 1970s in al-Minya, al-Fayyum, Sohag, Qina, and Aswan. Students at these schools and the older university in Asyut organized unions and fraternities under the name of al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah. By the late 1970s, as Sadat faced growing opposition at home for signing the Camp David peace treaty with Israel, there were a number of independent religious leaders associated with al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah who became very popular for their outspoken criticism of the Sadat regime. Prominent among these were Shaykh Ahmad al-Mahallawi at Qd’id Ibrahim Mosque in Alexandria and Shaykh Hafiz Salamah of al-Shuhada’ Mosque in Suez and al-Nur Mosque in Cairo. Just before his assassination in 1981, Sadat made public attacks on both Shaykh Mahallawi and Shaykh Salamah. Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman was also critical of the regime and was later charged with having links to the Jihad group that carried out Sadat’s assassination, but was not found guilty. In the government crackdown on public opposition both before and after Sadat’s assassination, each of these religious leaders experienced state censorship and imprisonment. It is difficult to generalize about the ideology, practices, and aims of the various al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah organizations. In general, they advocate stronger Islamic rule and oppose non-Islamic practices in Egyptian society. They call for the adoption of shari`ah, the Islamic legal code, as the official law of the state, and they oppose attempts by the government to control and supervise the work of mosques and religious groups through the shaykh of al-Azhar and the Ministry of Awqaf. More than other al-Jama’at leaders, Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman has denounced the official religious institutions of the state and has even been critical of entry by moderates in the Ikhwan into electoral party politics. After the Iranian revolution he identified closely with its Islamic government and urged his followers to confront the Egyptian government directly for its non-Islamic practices. The Egyptian government and official media have attempted to link Shaykh Omar with the clandestine and subversive Jihad group, but he has always denied the connection. The main difference between his activities and those of Jihad is that he openly sought to mobilize popular resistance to the government through his public preaching and the organizing of large conferences in cities along the Nile river. By the summer of 1988 there were an increasing number of clashes in al-Fayyum, alMinya, and other cities in Asyut province between the local police and his followers as they left mosques after the Friday sermons. Cities and universities throughout the area experienced increasing repression by the state as the government closed mosques, disrupted student union elections, and banned all activities under the name al-Jama’at al-Islamiyah. As tensions rose there were reports of house-to-house police searches, mass arrests in the thousands, and an increasing number of killings in many cities of Upper Egypt. In 1988 and 1989 Shaykh Omar was arrested and detained on at least two occasions. During his imprisonment, his followers staged large protests that led to further confrontations with the police; there were also demonstrations of support reported in the Cairo suburbs of Imbabah and `Ayn Shams, indicating his broad following and the shared identity of al-Jama’at organizations around Egypt. As the clashes between the government and al-Jama’at continued, Shaykh Omar left the country, reportedly first to Afghanistan and Pakistan and then to the United States. Following Shaykh Omar’s exile the level of conflict between al-Jama’at followers and the government increased, with military troops, armored cars, and helicopters deployed to several cities. The nature of the confrontation also assumed three new forms. First, the political assassinations of People’s Assembly speaker Rif at al-Mahjub in October 1990 and of liberal author Faraj Fawdah in June 1992, were blamed on al-Jama`at and said to have been ordered by Shaykh Omar. Attacks on prominent officials continued, such as the attempted assassination of Prime Minister `Atif Sidqi, in November 1993. Second, in 1991 violent sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians erupted in several cities of Upper Egypt, notably Dayrut; the government claimed these were instigated by members of al-Jama’at, but they mainly resulted from old social rivalries. Third, by late 1992 extremist elements in al-Jama`at claimed responsibility for at least two attacks on foreign tourists visiting pharaonic monuments in Upper Egypt. The government claimed the al-Jama`at were pursuing a new strategy to disrupt the tourist trade and thus damage the national economy. These attacks on foreign tourists continued into 1993 In the summer of 1992 the government passed a strict new antiterrorism law limiting al-Jama’at’s activities, and in the fall it announced that all mosques and prayer leaders would be put under state control. In August 1992 the government claimed to have arrested twentyfive leaders of al-Jama’at, including two forei
gn citizens-a Sudanese and Jordanian-at an organizational meeting in Alexandria. The government has always maintained that al-Jama`at is foreign-inspired, primarily by Iranians and Sudanese, and it now claimed to have exposed this international connection. Despite these arrests, however, al-Jama’at will probably remain a significant factor in Egyptian society; it has wide appeal among the youth and university students and seems to have established popular roots in several parts of the country. It is also unlikely that the Egyptian government will be able to establish state control over the thousands of independent mosques that have served as the base of the movement. Many Egyptian political analysts see the government’s conflict with al-Jama’at continuing and perhaps intensifying, and indeed from June 1993 the government has shed an earlier hesitation to carry out the execution of Islamists convicted in military tribunals. It is unlikely, however, that al-Jama’at will be able to seize power from the present ruling elite in Egypt, not only because the elite is shielded by a powerful security apparatus and the army, backed by the “silent majority” of the middle classes and intelligentsia, but also because al-Jama’at ultimately lacks the organizational strength and cohesion necessary to assume popular leadership. [See also Egypt; Fundamentalism; Muslim Brotherhood, article on Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Organization of the Islamic Jihad; and the biography of Abdel Rahman.] BIBLIOGRAPHY Ansari, Hamied. “The Islamic Militants in Egyptian Politics.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16 (1984): 123-144. Ayubi, Nazih N. “The Politics of Militant Islamic Movements in the Middle East.” Journal of International Affairs 36 (Fall 1982-Winter 1983): 271-283. Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Daily Reports: Near East and South Asia. New Canaan, Conn., 1980-1992. Summary of Arab newspapers and radio broadcasts. Ibrahim, Saad Eddin. “Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Islamic Groups: Methodological Note and Preliminary Findings.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 12 (1980): 423-453. Kupferschmidt, Uri M. “Reformist and Militant Islam in Urban and Rural Egypt.” Middle Eastern Studies 23 (October 1987): 403-418. McDermott, Anthony. “Mubarak’s Egypt: The Challenge of the Militant Tendency.” The World Today 42.1o (October 1986). Sayyid Ahmad, Muhammad. “Egypt: The Islamic Issue.” Foreign Policy, no. 69 (Winter 1987-1988): 22-39. Sonbol, Amira El Azhary. “Egypt.” In The Politics of Islamic Revivalism: Diversity and Unity, edited by Shireen Hunter, pp. 23-38. Bloomington, 1988. IBRAHIM IBRAHIM