Islamists program in most of the Muslims societies – especially those societies where Islamists are influential-revolves around Islamizing the law. In other words, Islamists think that making Sharia the normative, penal and civil law of the land will give birth to a political system which could be called Islamic, writes Umer Farooq.
Revivalist political thought has a very long history in our region. This originated with the basic premise that the basis reason for Muslim decline in India was their drift away from following the principles of Islam and answers for the revival of Muslim political power in the sub-continent has to be found from within the teachings of Islam.
There were other trends which identified Muslim decline as a problem, but believed that the answers to the problem has to be found in the modern education and modern way of life that the Western colonial powers brought with them to the Muslim lands.
It is not that those who were advocating Islamic Sharia as an answer to Muslims problems were not accepting influence from the modern education and western political thought that the colonialists brought with them to India. This was the time when revivalists started to present Islam as a political system under the influence of western thought that perceived and developed systems in every walks of life after the advent of Industrialization in British society. It was during British colonial era that the Indian Poet-philosopher, Sir Muhammad Iqbal started to favor parliamentary democracy as an alternative to medieval concept of religious scholar— well versed in Islamic Sharia—acting as a lawgiver in Muslim society.
Iqbal, however, situated his conception of Islamic polity within the framework of Nation-state.
Although there are no intellectual links between the two, Iqbal was followed by Maududi, a traditionalist religious scholar, who started presenting Islam as a distinct political system. His approach was legalistic but he was advocating enforcing Islamic principles within the model of modern nation-state.
The project to define the contours of an Islamic state started right after the downfall of Mughal Empire in the Indian sub-continent. During British period, this intellectual project took a definite shape as the Islamic scholars started to define the concept of Islamic state in the light of their interpretations of Quran, Sunna and Fiqh (Islamic law).
These interpretations were taking place in a colonial environment and under the influence of Western education and philosophies.
At the time of independence, religious scholars started to define two principles as the key features of an Islamic state—one is that Quran and Sunna and complex network of Fiqhs are to be the only source of law in the Islamic state, and second that some kind of consultations with those who are being ruled is an essential requirement of governance in an Islamic state.
Quran and Sunna as a sole source of law have been conservatively adhered to in Islamic literature since the creation of Pakistan. However, Pakistani ulemas have changed their position with regards to the kind of political system an Islamic state should have according to changing directions of winds at the time. Sometimes, they supported parliamentary system while at other times they advocated highly centralized presidential system.
Islamists program in most of the Muslims societies – especially those societies where Islamists are influential-revolves around Islamizing the law. In other words, Islamists think that making Sharia the normative, penal and civil law of the land will give birth to a political system which could be called Islamic.
The whole political activity is directed towards the objective of introducing Islamic sharia as the public policy and normative, civil and penal law in the society.
The basic point about revivalist political thought of this era is that it wanted to use the nation-state model as the preferred model for its operations. They were not advocating transnational political or militant ideologies as their central idea at this point of time. For instance Maududi strongly opposed the idea of sending guerilla fighters into Indian administered Kashmir while Pakistani nation-state was still in any kind of written documented agreements with India in late 1940s.
Maududi himself was a very non-violent type of person, but the ideology he was advocating carried the germs of modern day militancy, which we see in different parts of South Asia, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has been described as the father of modern day Islamic fundamentalist movements, most of which turned towards militancy in connivance with the adventurist states—in case of Pakistan and as a result of state repression—in case of Egypt and other northern African Muslim societies.
Jamat-e-Islami—Maududi’s political party—didn’t indulge in any insurgency or militancy against Pakistani state, but many of its disgruntled core supporters did join the militant groups including Pakistani Taliban and other Punjab based militant groups which have been fighting Pakistani military and security apparatus. One of the most popular and oft-repeated Dars (religious lecture) delivered by JI leaders across Pakistan cite from Islamic scriptures that advocated the use of force to stop a wrong as the highest level of faith.
This theme of religious lecture has been part of the routine training and indoctrination of youth by Jamat-e-Islami across Pakistan. Jamat-e-Islami got engaged in cross border militancy in Afghanistan and Indian Administered Kashmir as part of Pakistani state led Jihad project during 1980s and 1990s when Soviet invaded Afghanistan and Kashmiris rose in revolts against Indian rule.
The other major religious-political party, which claimed to have ideology base in the areas bordering Afghanistan, was Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam. With Deobandi base JUI could more easily be described as a typical revivalist organization in Pakistan. It originated from the famous seminary, Darul-e-Uloom Deoband, established during British era by religious scholars who were advocating re-organization of Muslim community in India after the downfall of Mughal Empire. Some of its founders were actively involved in 1857 revolt against British rule in India. However the Deoband seminary turned to religious education pure and simple and its offshoots in Pakistan started to turn towards militancy only during Zia era, when Pakistani military was sponsoring an armed uprising against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The new Jihad literature was produced in Pakistan under the supervision of Arab-Afghans, which Jamat-e-Islami hosted in Peshawar or by the offshoots of Jamiat-e-ulema Islam (JUI), which mushroomed in 1980s and 1990s in Pakistani society. Another type of lecture was produced under the auspices of Salfi organizations, which were directly funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Salfi organizations developed their own organizations infrastructure that included organizations like Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jamat-e-Dawa.
Gradually, the focus of intellectual production among Pakistani Islamists shifted from Islamic law project based on nation-state model to presenting Islam as a religion that espouses making territorial gains through armed expansion. This was the natural corollary of a situation where the new Islamists were operating outside Pakistani territory in Afghanistan and Indian Administered Kashmir and were naturally less concerned about what direction the legal system of Pakistan took back home. Jihad became the central theme of their teachings and training that they were imparting of the youth across Pakistan. Political project of enforcing Islamic Sharia in Pakistan took a back seat. Similarly religious observance also was pushed into the background.
Like their predecessors, the new Islamists were also advocating that the answer to Muslim decline was to be found from within the teachings of Islam. But they were ignoring the two central principles of traditional Islamists, first, the central Islamist’s project of enforcement of Islamic Sharia as the law of the land, b) second Islamist’s principle the new Islamists were ignoring was that the Sharia has to be enforced within the framework of nation-state. Thus the traditional Islamists were ready by implication to work within the international system of nation-states.
They developed a whole new theology of militancy in the literature they produced during Afghan Jihad and in later years. This was a drift away from politics as the new Islamist, underwent a process of de-politicization. In the process, they invented a very deep romance with death.
The transformation from revivalist or fundamentalist political thought to violence as an ideology took place within the framework of Pakistan’s domestic politics. Organizations like Jamat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam were hosting or sustaining the activities of those organizations or individuals who were advocating a drift away from constitutional and political struggle for establishment of Islamic system of governance towards violence as the basis all religious activities.
In the process, the traditional Islamists like JI and JUI were pushed into the background and in their place we found new Islamists, who were defining violence as the central precept of Islam.
Revivalist political thought has a very long history in our region. This originated with the basic premise that the basis reason for Muslim decline in India was their drift away from following the principles of Islam and answers for the revival of Muslim political power in the sub-continent has to be found from within the teachings of Islam.
There were other trends which identified Muslim decline as a problem, but believed that the answers to the problem has to be found in the modern education and modern way of life that the Western colonial powers brought with them to the Muslim lands.
It is not that those who were advocating Islamic Sharia as an answer to Muslims problems were not accepting influence from the modern education and western political thought that the colonialists brought with them to India. This was the time when revivalists started to present Islam as a political system under the influence of western thought that perceived and developed systems in every walks of life after the advent of Industrialization in British society. It was during British colonial era that the Indian Poet-philosopher, Sir Muhammad Iqbal started to favor parliamentary democracy as an alternative to medieval concept of religious scholar— well versed in Islamic Sharia—acting as a lawgiver in Muslim society.
Iqbal, however, situated his conception of Islamic polity within the framework of Nation-state.
Although there are no intellectual links between the two, Iqbal was followed by Maududi, a traditionalist religious scholar, who started presenting Islam as a distinct political system. His approach was legalistic but he was advocating enforcing Islamic principles within the model of modern nation-state.
The project to define the contours of an Islamic state started right after the downfall of Mughal Empire in the Indian sub-continent. During British period, this intellectual project took a definite shape as the Islamic scholars started to define the concept of Islamic state in the light of their interpretations of Quran, Sunna and Fiqh (Islamic law).
These interpretations were taking place in a colonial environment and under the influence of Western education and philosophies.
At the time of independence, religious scholars started to define two principles as the key features of an Islamic state—one is that Quran and Sunna and complex network of Fiqhs are to be the only source of law in the Islamic state, and second that some kind of consultations with those who are being ruled is an essential requirement of governance in an Islamic state.
Quran and Sunna as a sole source of law have been conservatively adhered to in Islamic literature since the creation of Pakistan. However, Pakistani ulemas have changed their position with regards to the kind of political system an Islamic state should have according to changing directions of winds at the time. Sometimes, they supported parliamentary system while at other times they advocated highly centralized presidential system.
Islamists program in most of the Muslims societies – especially those societies where Islamists are influential-revolves around Islamizing the law. In other words, Islamists think that making Sharia the normative, penal and civil law of the land will give birth to a political system which could be called Islamic.
The whole political activity is directed towards the objective of introducing Islamic sharia as the public policy and normative, civil and penal law in the society.
The basic point about revivalist political thought of this era is that it wanted to use the nation-state model as the preferred model for its operations. They were not advocating transnational political or militant ideologies as their central idea at this point of time. For instance Maududi strongly opposed the idea of sending guerilla fighters into Indian administered Kashmir while Pakistani nation-state was still in any kind of written documented agreements with India in late 1940s.
Maududi himself was a very non-violent type of person, but the ideology he was advocating carried the germs of modern day militancy, which we see in different parts of South Asia, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has been described as the father of modern day Islamic fundamentalist movements, most of which turned towards militancy in connivance with the adventurist states—in case of Pakistan and as a result of state repression—in case of Egypt and other northern African Muslim societies.
Jamat-e-Islami—Maududi’s political party—didn’t indulge in any insurgency or militancy against Pakistani state, but many of its disgruntled core supporters did join the militant groups including Pakistani Taliban and other Punjab based militant groups which have been fighting Pakistani military and security apparatus. One of the most popular and oft-repeated Dars (religious lecture) delivered by JI leaders across Pakistan cite from Islamic scriptures that advocated the use of force to stop a wrong as the highest level of faith.
This theme of religious lecture has been part of the routine training and indoctrination of youth by Jamat-e-Islami across Pakistan. Jamat-e-Islami got engaged in cross border militancy in Afghanistan and Indian Administered Kashmir as part of Pakistani state led Jihad project during 1980s and 1990s when Soviet invaded Afghanistan and Kashmiris rose in revolts against Indian rule.
The other major religious-political party, which claimed to have ideology base in the areas bordering Afghanistan, was Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam. With Deobandi base JUI could more easily be described as a typical revivalist organization in Pakistan. It originated from the famous seminary, Darul-e-Uloom Deoband, established during British era by religious scholars who were advocating re-organization of Muslim community in India after the downfall of Mughal Empire. Some of its founders were actively involved in 1857 revolt against British rule in India. However the Deoband seminary turned to religious education pure and simple and its offshoots in Pakistan started to turn towards militancy only during Zia era, when Pakistani military was sponsoring an armed uprising against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
The new Jihad literature was produced in Pakistan under the supervision of Arab-Afghans, which Jamat-e-Islami hosted in Peshawar or by the offshoots of Jamiat-e-ulema Islam (JUI), which mushroomed in 1980s and 1990s in Pakistani society. Another type of lecture was produced under the auspices of Salfi organizations, which were directly funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Salfi organizations developed their own organizations infrastructure that included organizations like Laskhar-e-Taiba and Jamat-e-Dawa.
Gradually, the focus of intellectual production among Pakistani Islamists shifted from Islamic law project based on nation-state model to presenting Islam as a religion that espouses making territorial gains through armed expansion. This was the natural corollary of a situation where the new Islamists were operating outside Pakistani territory in Afghanistan and Indian Administered Kashmir and were naturally less concerned about what direction the legal system of Pakistan took back home. Jihad became the central theme of their teachings and training that they were imparting of the youth across Pakistan. Political project of enforcing Islamic Sharia in Pakistan took a back seat. Similarly religious observance also was pushed into the background.
Like their predecessors, the new Islamists were also advocating that the answer to Muslim decline was to be found from within the teachings of Islam. But they were ignoring the two central principles of traditional Islamists, first, the central Islamist’s project of enforcement of Islamic Sharia as the law of the land, b) second Islamist’s principle the new Islamists were ignoring was that the Sharia has to be enforced within the framework of nation-state. Thus the traditional Islamists were ready by implication to work within the international system of nation-states.
They developed a whole new theology of militancy in the literature they produced during Afghan Jihad and in later years. This was a drift away from politics as the new Islamist, underwent a process of de-politicization. In the process, they invented a very deep romance with death.
The transformation from revivalist or fundamentalist political thought to violence as an ideology took place within the framework of Pakistan’s domestic politics. Organizations like Jamat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam were hosting or sustaining the activities of those organizations or individuals who were advocating a drift away from constitutional and political struggle for establishment of Islamic system of governance towards violence as the basis all religious activities.
In the process, the traditional Islamists like JI and JUI were pushed into the background and in their place we found new Islamists, who were defining violence as the central precept of Islam.