The Jamaat-e-Islami

The Jamaat-e-Islami is an organisation founded by Abul A'la Maududi (1903–1979) at Lahore in August 1941, in what was then British India, to assemble a disciplined body of Muslims who would remake individual and collective life according to Islamic norms. The entry on the organisation in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, by M. Manazir Ahsan, records that it was founded by seventy-five delegates who came together at Maududi's call, and states its object as securing the transformation of human life as a whole under the guidance of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, and the establishment of Islam in social life.¹

Its first six years were spent on organisation, propagation, publishing and the training of its members. The partition of India in 1947 divided it: separate and independent organisations were constituted in Pakistan and in India, and further bodies appeared later in Indian-administered Kashmir, in Sri Lanka, and in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s. Maududi retained the leadership of the Pakistani organisation and held it until 1972; in India the leadership passed to Maulana Abul Lais Islahi. In Pakistan the organisation became a central participant in the long argument over an Islamic constitution, and afterwards in electoral politics; in India, where Muslims are a minority, it developed as a movement of religious revival; in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kashmir the organisations bearing the name took political roles and contested elections. Manazir Ahsan's entry emphasises that the five organisations, though they share a name and broadly similar aims, are not joined to one another, each having developed its own programme and strategy in its own political setting.²

The organisation's early history is unusually well documented from its own side. The minutes of its founding meeting and of its early consultative sessions were printed as the Roodad, or proceedings, of which the first, second and fourth volumes are available in English translation. These are the records of the body itself and state its own account of what was decided; the scholarly treatments used here are F. C. R. Robinson's entry on Maududi in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Manazir Ahsan's entry on the organisation and Anis Ahmad's on its founder in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, Muhammad Qasim Zaman's study of the ulama in contemporary Islam, and Irfan Ahmad's study of the Indian organisation, which is based on fieldwork and on the organisation's own Urdu publications.

Maududi before the Jamaat

Family, education and early journalism

Anis Ahmad's entry in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi records that Maududi was born on 3 Rajab 1321, 25 September 1903, at Aurangabad, a town in the Indian state of Hyderabad and now in Maharashtra. He was given the name of his great-grandfather Abu'l-A'la, who died in 935 AH (1529 CE), and was known as Sayyid Abu'l-A'la on the ground of descent from al-Husain. The family was originally from Herat and traced its line to Mawdud-i Chishti, one of the shaykhs of the Chishti order, from whom the family name derives.³

Manazir Ahsan's entry notes that Maududi lost his father at the age of seventeen and so did not complete a conventional schooling, with the consequence that his learning and intellectual formation were largely the product of his own study.⁴ Anis Ahmad's entry notes that he read Arabic, fiqh, literature, logic and kalam with Abu Ziyad Niyazi by the method known as the dars-i nizami,^[a] afterwards received an ijaza from the Fatehpuri madrasa, and learned English. In this period he took part in the Indian Hijrat movement, which argued that Muslims should emigrate to Afghanistan.⁵

Both entries record that he worked as an editor of Urdu newspapers and periodicals through the 1920s.⁶⁷ Manazir Ahsan dates this work to the years between 1920 and 1928 and names among the titles Jamʿiyyat, the organ of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Hind; Robinson's entry in The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives Maududi's editorship of al-Jamʿiyyat as running from 1924 to 1927.⁸ Manazir Ahsan states that in 1927, at the age of twenty-four, he wrote a work on war and peace in Islamic law answering the claim that Islam had been spread by the sword, and that this drew attention in Indian academic life.⁹ Robinson gives the work as al-Jihād fi'l-Islām, published at A'zamgarh in 1930, and places its composition after the assassination of Swami Shraddhanand.¹⁰

Tarjuman al-Qur'an and Dar al-Islam

Maududi settled in the Deccan in 1928.¹¹ Both TDV entries record that in 1932 he was appointed to the editorship of the monthly Tarjuman al-Qur'an, which Manazir Ahsan notes remained the principal organ of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan long afterwards, and which Anis Ahmad describes as having served throughout Maududi's life to spread his ideas.¹²¹³ In the opening address at the founding meeting of 1941, recorded in the first volume of the proceedings, Maududi gave his own account of the same journal, saying that he had begun it in 1352 AH, 1933 CE, in order to call others to what he had come to believe.¹⁴

In 1938, at the invitation of the poet and thinker Muhammad Iqbal, Maududi went to the village of Jamalpur near Pathankot in eastern Punjab and took part in founding Dar al-Islam, conceived as an institution of research and education and afterwards the centre of the Jamaat-e-Islami.¹⁵ His own account in the proceedings dates the step to 1357 AH, 1938 CE, and records that at that time only four people became its associates; he added that the beginning had seemed too small to matter, that the number of associates had increased by only one person in the period that followed, but that small groups of like-minded people were forming in different parts of the country, and that the spread of literature and spoken preaching had continued alongside.¹⁶

The founding, August 1941

The call and the response

The first volume of the proceedings sets out how the meeting came about. The explanation of an Islamic movement, and of the need for a jamaat to work towards establishing it, had been set out in the second volume of Maududi's Musalman aur Maujooda Siyasi Kashmakash — rendered in the translation as Muslims and the Present Political Struggle — in which the plan for forming such a body was also presented.¹⁷ Robinson's entry records the work as Musalmān awr mawjūda siyāsī kashmakash, in three volumes, published at Lahore between 1937 and 1939, and Anis Ahmad's entry calls it a collection of the political writings published in Tarjuman al-Qur'an.¹⁸¹⁹

After the book appeared, readers were asked through Tarjuman al-Qur'an, in the issue of Safar 1360 AH, 1941 CE, to inform the journal's office of their acceptance of the position and of their willingness to work along its lines. The proceedings record that messages began arriving within days of publication and that it became clear a significant number of people were ready to work for the formation of a Jamaat-e-Islami. It was therefore decided to gather them in one place, to shape them into a Jamaat, and then to consider how the movement was actually to be built. The meeting was fixed for the first of Sha'ban 1360 AH, which the translation gives as 25 August 1941.²⁰

Invitations went to everyone who had expressed a wish to join. Where local units had already formed, those places were asked to send only selected representatives rather than all their members. People began arriving on 28 Rajab; sixty had come by the first of Sha'ban and the remainder afterwards.²¹ The total strength of the meeting was seventy-five. The figure is given independently in both TDV entries, and Irfan Ahmad's table of the organisation's strength from 1941 to 2000 gives seventy-five full members for 1941, citing the first volume of the proceedings for it.²²²³²⁴

The meeting

The proceedings record that on the first of Sha'ban the meeting could not take place, more arrivals being expected and for other reasons not specified. The day was spent instead in informal discussion: those present were seated in small groups in the courtyard of the Tarjuman al-Qur'an office, where conversation about the Jamaat and the movement continued from morning to evening, with Maududi answering the problems put to him, until the gathering dispersed after the Isha prayer.²⁵

The meeting opened at eight in the morning on the second of Sha'ban, in the office of Tarjuman al-Qur'an, with everyone seated on the floor. Maududi, having asked the permission of those present, sat on a chair and delivered a long opening address on the history of the movement, in which he gave the account of his own formation and of Dar al-Islam described above. He then set out what he regarded as the difference between this movement and those already current among Muslims: that the others had taken either some single aspect of Islam, or some worldly objective for Muslims, as their foundation, whereas this one presented Islam entire; and that their organisational structure followed the pattern of worldly associations and parties, whereas this one adopted the system of the Jamaat that had been formed by the Prophet.²⁶

The draft constitution was then read. Copies had been printed and distributed a day or two in advance so that those coming to the meeting could study it, and in the general session everyone was given the opportunity to state his opinion of it. The proceedings record that every word was read and discussed, that the session was interrupted only for lunch and the Zuhr and Asr prayers, that it ended around Maghrib, and that the constitution was approved unanimously with certain modifications. Maududi then rose and recited the declaration of faith, and those present followed.²⁷

The office of amir

Maududi's address had dealt at length with the office of amir, and the proceedings preserve his argument. A Jamaat should appoint as amir a capable person from among itself, and the members should then support and obey him in what is right and correct him in what is wrong. He drew a sharp distinction between the office and the presidency of a western democracy, arguing that an Islamic Jamaat looks for piety and sincerity in its amir and commits its affairs to him on that basis, and advising the meeting accordingly not to write into its constitution the kinds of restriction that western constitutions place on a president. If a God-fearing and religious person could be found, he should be made amir and then trusted; if a person's sincerity were so doubtful that he could not be trusted, he should not be elected at all.²⁸

The election itself proved difficult. Three positions were argued through the morning without agreement. One group held that an amir should for the present be elected only temporarily and for a fixed term, on the grounds that the Jamaat was very small, that no proper election was possible, that a permanent choice made now would create difficulties when abler people joined later, and that outsiders who shared the aims would hesitate to join a body whose permanent amir they had had no part in electing. Against this it was argued that a Jamaat with a temporary amir, or with none, would never be strong enough for the struggle ahead, and that the election should therefore be made at once and permanently.²⁹

When no agreement had been reached after hours of debate, it was decided at the time of the Zuhr prayer to refer the question to a committee of seven whose decision all would accept, and the three groups unanimously elected that committee; the first named in the proceedings is Muhammad Manzoor Nomani, editor of al-Furqan of Bareilly. By the evening of the following day an amir was in office and had appointed the members of the Majlis-e-Shura, and the proceedings record that the first meeting of the Shura took place at eight the next morning, when the future of the movement and the Jamaat's line of action were discussed and the work was divided into departments, the first of them the department of knowledge and education.³⁰ Both TDV entries record that Maududi was elected amir on the founding of the organisation; Anis Ahmad's entry records that he remained in the office until he left it in 1972.³¹³²

The years before partition, 1941–1947

Manazir Ahsan characterises the period between the founding and the division of British India as one of expansion, settlement, organisation and educational activity. Most of the work of these years, he records, consisted of building the organisation, of propagation and publication, of the moral and spiritual training of members, and of propagating the two-nation theory, which opposed nationalism and secularism and argued for the universal brotherhood of the Muslim community.³³

The first volume of the proceedings carries the record of this early organisational work: the sessions of the Majlis-e-Shura held in Muharram and Shawwal 1361 AH, the establishment of a temporary markaz or centre for the Jamaat, statements of income and expenditure, reports on the progress of the work, and the proceedings of the Ijtema held at Darbhanga, the volume running to October 1943.³⁴ Anis Ahmad dates the move of the organisation's centre to Pathankot in 1942.³⁵

The second volume records the Ijtema held at Dar al-Islam, Pathankot, in the Punjab, on 26 and 27 March 1944, at which some well-wishers were also present; its sessions included addresses by the Amir-e-Jamaat and by Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi.³⁶ Anis Ahmad notes a general assembly held on 19 April 1945 at the Dar al-Islam in Pathankot, attended by eight hundred delegates from across India, at which Maududi spoke on the character and the future of the Islamic movement.³⁷ The fourth volume of the proceedings records the All-India Ijtema held on 5, 6 and 7 April 1946 — a Friday, Saturday and Sunday — at Harwara, near Allahabad in the United Provinces; it notes that members began arriving on the night of 4 April, that many were accommodated beside the road opposite the locality, and that staff were deployed to bring delegates from Allahabad railway station.³⁸

The aims recorded in the constitution

Irfan Ahmad's study sets out the aims that the constitution of the Jamaat proclaimed in this period. Its goal was the establishment of hukumat-e-ilahiya, which he renders as an Islamic state or the Kingdom of Allah. Maududi argued that the declaration of faith itself obliged Muslims to establish it; that because there was no Islamic state in British India and its constitution was, in the word Ahmad quotes from the Jamaat's literature, "infidelic", the country was dar al-kufr, a land of unbelief; and that the mission of the Jamaat was to transform India into dar al-Islam. Secular democracy he held to be forbidden, on the ground that it substituted human for divine sovereignty.³⁹

Ahmad sets out the constitution's requirement for members to abstain from a list of institutions: assemblies that legislate secular rather than sharia law; military service involving killing otherwise than in the path of God; recourse to courts founded on secular law, whether as plaintiff or defendant, and banks that deal in interest; teaching or studying in colleges and universities, including Muslim ones, whose purpose was not the pursuit of an Islamic state; and government service. He gives an instance of the requirement in practice: Mohammad Yusuf, who lived from 1908 to 1991 and was a reader to a judge of the Allahabad court, resigned his post on becoming a member in 1946 because he considered it impermissible. On the same principle the Jamaat did not take part in the first elections held in independent India.⁴⁰

Partition and division, 1947–1948

The creation of Pakistan in 1947 divided the organisation. Manazir Ahsan describes it as being reconstituted into two separate and independent bodies, the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan and the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, and records that independent organisations appeared later in the disputed territory of Kashmir that came under Indian administration, in Sri Lanka, and in Bangladesh in the mid-1970s. He records the leadership on the Pakistani side as remaining with Maududi and that in India as passing to Maulana Abul Lais Islahi.⁴¹ Anis Ahmad has Maududi settling in Lahore, which lay on the Pakistani side, and taking up the leadership of the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan; Manazir Ahsan specifies that he settled at Ichhra, that this became the new centre of the organisation, and that he was buried there on his death in 1979.⁴²⁴³

Irfan Ahmad's figures show how sharply the division cut into the membership. His table of organisational strength runs from the founding of the undivided body to the Indian organisation of his own day, and gives 999 full members in 1947 against 240 in 1948 — the fall marking the division rather than any collapse of support, since the greater part of the membership was now on the Pakistani side of the new border. The Indian figures recover slowly from there: 981 by 1960, 2,400 by 1978, 3,871 by 1990, of whom 181 were women, and 4,776 by 2000. Ahmad cites the proceedings for the 1941 figure, Agwani for 1947 and 1948, the organisation's periodical Dawat for 1960 and 1990, a Jamaat publication for 1978, and data supplied by its headquarters for 2000.⁴⁴

Ahmad also records a change of stated aim at this point. After partition, in 1948, the pre-partition goal of hukumat-e-ilahiya was replaced in the Indian organisation's constitution by iqamat-e-din, the establishment of religion, accompanied by a clarification that the earlier term had carried the same meaning as the new one. Ahmad's assessment is that the change in 1948 was merely one of wording, and that it was six years later that the clarification acquired an ideological dimension as well, the construction of the state losing the primacy it had held in 1948 to the development of the individual and the construction of society.⁴⁵

The Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan

The campaign for an Islamic constitution

Manazir Ahsan writes that in the period between the founding of Pakistan and the separation of Bangladesh in 1971 the organisation pursued an intensive political and educational programme directed at establishing and institutionalising Islamic life in the country, and that between 1948 and 1956 in particular it made great efforts to move the state towards the status of an Islamic one.⁴⁶

Its first substantial intervention concerned the Objectives Resolution published by the constituent assembly in March 1949, which was to form the basis of the Pakistani constitution; Manazir Ahsan gives the organisation the most important part in securing Islamic content for it, mobilising public opinion to that end. Robinson's entry likewise notes the Objectives Resolution of March 1949 among the organisation's concerns.⁴⁷⁴⁸

When the government took a negative and then a hostile attitude to these positions, and sought — in Manazir Ahsan's account — to discredit the argument by playing on differences between the schools, Maududi called together scholars belonging to the Deobandi, Barelvi, Ahl-i Hadith and Shia groups. The meeting, held at Karachi in January 1951, issued a joint declaration setting out twenty-two principles of the Islamic state.⁴⁹ Robinson's entry also notes the twenty-two principles of January 1951.⁵⁰ Muhammad Qasim Zaman's study examines this collaboration between the organisation and the ulama over the Islamic constitution at length, and treats the relations between Islamists and the ulama in Pakistan as a central theme; it notes that the Jamaat was a lay Islamist party and that its relations with the ulama were not uniformly easy, Maududi and the ulama differing on a number of questions.⁵¹

Manazir Ahsan attributes largely to the organisation the inclusion, in the first constitution adopted in 1956, of articles making it a principle to form a society resting on Islamic foundations and to bring all existing laws into order in the light of the Qur'an and the Sunnah.⁵²

Imprisonment and the sentence of 1953

Manazir Ahsan gives four terms of imprisonment for Maududi between 1948 and 1967, for five years in total, on account of his uncompromising stance over the establishment of Islamic rules in Pakistan and his criticism of practices of the government that he judged un-Islamic.⁵³ Robinson's entry gives periods of imprisonment in 1948–50 and 1953–55.⁵⁴

In March 1953 a martial-law court condemned Maududi to death on the charge that his writings had incited the violence directed against the Ahmadiyya in the Punjab. Manazir Ahsan notes that in the face of pressure from within the country and abroad the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and that he was released two years afterwards, in April 1955.⁵⁵ Robinson's entry notes the death sentence of 1953 and the Ahmadiyya agitation of 1952–53 among the events of these years.⁵⁶

Under Ayub Khan

Preparations for elections under the new constitution of 1956 were halted, Manazir Ahsan records, by the declaration of martial law by Ayub Khan in 1958, which banned the activities of all political parties, the Jamaat-e-Islami among them. When Ayub Khan had a further constitution drawn up in 1962 the organisation opposed it; its activities were banned again in 1964 and its leaders arrested, but the courts eventually decided in the organisation's favour. In the presidential election of 1965 the organisation supported Fatima Jinnah against Ayub Khan, and in 1969, after intensive protests in which it took a leading part, Ayub Khan was obliged to resign. No civilian government followed: the military regime continued, now under Yahya Khan.⁵⁷ Anis Ahmad notes that in 1967 Maududi spent two months in prison on account of his views on whether the crescent marking the festival of sacrifice had been sighted.⁵⁸

1970, and the separation of Bangladesh

The organisation took part in the general election of December 1970. Manazir Ahsan puts its share at more than twenty per cent of the vote, which, because of the electoral system, it could not convert into a corresponding number of seats; Anis Ahmad gives the same outcome.⁵⁹⁶⁰ In the war in East Pakistan the organisation fought on the government's side against the separatists and the Indian army. On the independence of East Pakistan as Bangladesh on 16 December 1971, Manazir Ahsan records, those of its members and supporters who remained there suffered heavy loss of life and property and the party was destroyed along with almost the whole of its organisation. After the ban on political parties was lifted in 1975 former members began working to revive it, and in the elections of 1991 it won twenty seats and became the fourth party in the parliament.⁶¹

The leadership after Maududi

Anis Ahmad dates to 2 November 1972 the day on which Maududi, his health having deteriorated, gave up the leadership of the organisation to Mian Tufayl Muhammad. He records further that in 1975 Maududi advised the party's consultative council to withdraw from politics, advice that was not accepted, and that he went to the United States in May 1979 for treatment, his son being a physician there. He died at Buffalo, New York, on 22 September 1979, after a series of operations. His body was taken to Pakistan, and after a funeral prayer attended by more than a million people he was buried in the garden of his house in Lahore on 26 September 1979.⁶² Manazir Ahsan notes that he was among the founders of the Muslim World League at Mecca.⁶³ Robinson's entry notes that ill health affected him from 1969 and that he resigned the headship of the organisation in 1972.⁶⁴

Bhutto, Zia-ul-Haq and after

Manazir Ahsan describes the years between 1971 and 1991 as a period in which the organisation in Pakistan was engaged in a contest over democracy, the application of sharia, and participation in government. The left-leaning government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in office from 1971 to 1977, obstructed its activities, and Anis Ahmad places Maududi among those who criticised that government severely.⁶⁵⁶⁶ Robinson's entry places the organisation behind the movement against Bhutto in 1977.⁶⁷

The organisation accordingly supported the military government of Zia-ul-Haq, which began in 1977 — M. Boivin's entry on Zia-ul-Haq in The Encyclopaedia of Islam dates the seizure of power to 5 July of that year, when Zia-ul-Haq, at the head of a group of officers, arrested Bhutto and proclaimed himself administrator of martial law⁶⁸ — and joined the national alliance formed by the opposition parties, taking four ministries. Manazir Ahsan relates that these four ministers, finding Zia-ul-Haq's programme inadequate from an Islamic point of view and the promise of elections to the nation unfulfilled, resigned after a year in office along with most of the other ministers; that the organisation, having withdrawn from the government, went beyond criticising the military administration to acting together with the opposition parties; and that it joined efforts to build public pressure for democratic change.⁶⁹ Anis Ahmad notes that Maududi had supported the Zia-ul-Haq administration at its outset.⁷⁰

Zia-ul-Haq's death in an aircraft accident put the country, in Manazir Ahsan's account, into a crisis.⁷¹ Zaman dates the crash to August 1988, and Boivin's entry gives Zia-ul-Haq's dates as 1924 to 1988 and records that he held office from 1977 until his death in an accident in that year; the entry on Pakistan in The Encyclopaedia of Islam likewise places the crash in August, with elections that had been postponed to November following it.⁷²⁷³⁷⁴ The organisation contested those elections of 1988 without much success, as other Islamic parties also found, and Benazir Bhutto came to power. When she was dismissed in 1990 by the president on grounds of corruption and ineffectiveness, the organisation entered into an alliance with other Islamic parties for the ensuing elections; when that alliance, the Islamic Democratic Alliance, won, the organisation declined to take ministries and instead pursued a policy of pressing for the fulfilment of the undertakings given during the campaign about the application of Islamic law. It fell out with the government before long and, in May 1992, left the alliance and withdrew into opposition.⁷⁵

The Jamaat-e-Islami Hind

Reconstitution and early work

Irfan Ahmad dates the division of the Jamaat to the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, and its reconstitution as the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind to 1948. His account of the organisation at Aligarh Muslim University illustrates how slender its presence was at the outset: no one from the university had taken part in the founding meeting of 1941, and there is no evidence that anyone there became a member before partition; when the body was reconstituted in 1948, its organisational report recorded two workers at Aligarh and no members at all, and observed that there was little scope for expansion because most students and teachers were committed to communism. The two workers it names are Jalil Ahmad, a lecturer in the English department, and Anwar Ali Khan Soz, a student.⁷⁶

Ahmad notes that at a meeting of the consultative council in August 1948 the organisation announced a plan to found a residential school, the Darsgah Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, at Malihabad, and that education became a substantial part of its work in India; his study devotes a chapter to the organisation's schools and another to its mobilisation of the young. He dates the launch of the organisation's monthly Urdu organ Zindgi to November 1948; it was published from Rampur until 1984, after which Zindgi-e-nau was published from Delhi.⁷⁷

On the political questions of the new republic, Ahmad records that Maududi described secularism as forbidden and urged Indian leaders after partition to institute a Hindu rather than a secular state, and that soon after independence the Indian organisation's amir, Abul Lais Islahi Nadwi, likewise pressed the Congress on the point. The organisation declined to take part in the Muslim convention held at Jaunpur after partition. Ahmad notes that it was banned twice after partition, and that in 1975 Indira Gandhi outlawed all the opposition parties, the Jamaat among them.⁷⁸

The dispute over voting

The longest internal argument Ahmad records concerns whether members might vote in Indian elections, and it illustrates the organisation's constitutional machinery in operation. Criteria laid down in 1967 had required that a candidate supported by members be a Muslim who believed in the declaration of faith and who considered legislation contrary to God's law impermissible. A resolution to lift the ban on voting divided the consultative council nine to eight; under Article 39(C) of the organisation's constitution it was referred in May 1977 to the body of representatives, the numaindagan, where it passed by a large majority, and members accordingly voted in the assembly elections of 1977. Ahmad notes that this ran counter to a ruling Maududi had given in 1974 forbidding the organisation to take part in elections, and that the criteria applied in 1977 no longer required the candidate to be a Muslim: the foremost consideration was now that he should support the restoration of democracy, the interests of Muslims being secondary.⁷⁹

After the Congress was removed from office in the elections of 1977, the council reimposed the ban in February 1978, reasoning that the repeal of the Forty-second Amendment by Parliament had removed the justification for lifting it. The question was discussed again in May 1978 without agreement, and the resolution to lift the ban, referred once more to the representatives under the same article, was defeated. Ahmad records that discontent had accumulated among influential members who had hoped to be allowed to take part in the political process, that the Hyderabad unit passed a resolution against the ban and appealed to the central leadership to do likewise, and that two weeks before the Maharashtra assembly elections of February 1978 Pirzadah, a member of the council and the amir of Maharashtra, resigned to form the Muslim Democratic Forum, having already canvassed in the parliamentary elections of 1977 in breach of the ban.⁸⁰

Organisation and membership

Manazir Ahsan's entry describes the organisation's structure as a highly effective central one whose regulations have been amended several times as circumstances required, and judges that in its internal arrangements the Jamaat-e-Islami is among the most democratic of political organisations.⁸¹

The senior leadership consists of the amir and the Central Consultative Council. The amir is elected for five years and there is no limit on re-election. He is assisted by five deputies, a general secretary and office staff. The Central Consultative Council has fifty members, elected by the membership by secret ballot for three years, and from among them the amir forms a working committee of twelve. Below the central organisation are local bodies, each with its own amir, consultative council and secretary. The central administration works from a building constructed for the purpose at Mansura in Lahore, and departments covering finance, the training of personnel, social services, education, translation and publication, public relations, external relations and parliamentary affairs work under the supervision of their own heads.⁸² Robinson's entry likewise notes that both the amir and the majlis-i shura were elective.⁸³

Manazir Ahsan describes the three tiers of membership as among the most striking features of the structure. Full membership, whose holders are called arkan, is given only to those who devote themselves entirely to Islam and are loyal to the organisation; they alone vote in the elections for the amir and the Central Consultative Council, and because the standards are strictly applied their number has always been very small. He gives the figures for Pakistan as 3,497 in 1978, 4,430 in 1983 and 6,044 in 1989, and for Bangladesh as 5,000 in 1989. The second tier is that of associate membership, whose holders are called karkun; they hope to attain full membership in time, cannot vote in the elections for the amir and the council, but hold important responsibilities in the daily working of the local organisations. In 1989 there were 16,364 of them in Pakistan and 50,000 in Bangladesh. The third tier consists of the sympathisers called muttafiq, who form the majority: they approve the ideology and programme, support the organisation in elections and other activities and contribute materially, but are not yet prepared for its strict discipline. In 1989 these numbered about half a million in Bangladesh and about four hundred thousand in Pakistan. A significant part of the support, he records, comes from students — the organisation's unofficial student body being the Islami Jamiat-i Talaba — and from trade union members, doctors, teachers, engineers, journalists, writers and lawyers.⁸⁴ Zaman's study likewise discusses the organisation's base of support, and notes that its strength lay among the educated rather than among the traditionally trained religious scholars.⁸⁵

Aims and thought

Manazir Ahsan's entry sets out the positions on which the organisation rests. Islam is not held to be merely a relation between God and the individual: it is taken to order social, economic and political life as well, so that being a Muslim is not an article of belief alone but a complete way of living with its own view of the world and its own socio-political order. The organisation takes its inspiration from the example of the Prophet and from the tradition of renewal and revival in Islam, and holds that no programme of reform in daily life will produce results unless a person's fundamental attitude is changed first: there must be a movement from self-sufficiency towards the acceptance of divine guidance, and from a narrow materialism towards a balance in which material and spiritual elements serve the same end. Divine sovereignty, on this view, is to be established in every area of human activity, so that the mosque and the parliament, piety and justice, the remembrance of God and the sharia are inseparable parts of one reality.⁸⁶

Manazir Ahsan draws a comparison with the Tablighi Jamaat: where that movement advocates individual piety, the Jamaat-e-Islami emphasises that the establishment of an Islamic society and state is as much a part of the prophetic model as individual perfection and personal morality. On the organisation's account, a person errs in submitting to powers other than God, whether a ruler, the state or inherited custom. Because divine guidance is taken to cover the whole of human activity, the Islamic state is held to be universal and all-embracing; since its purpose is to establish the sharia, it is to be governed by people who believe in it and have grasped its spirit. God is the source of law and the human being His vicegerent, and the organisation's conception of the state is accordingly described as a kind of theo-democracy, in which the Muslim community interprets the divine law through representatives within the framework of the sharia. The ruler or head of government may be chosen by a suitable method of election, provided he has won the confidence of the people and conforms to the standards of Islam.⁸⁷ Robinson's entry likewise records Maududi's term "theo-democracy", and records that legislation was to proceed by interpretation, analogy, inference and independent judgement.⁸⁸

Manazir Ahsan records further that the organisation is neither committed to elections alone nor factional in approach, and that it works to remove factional opinions and inherited religious disputes; that while it holds the way of ijtihad open to meet the requirements of the age, it follows the Hanafi school in fiqh; and that notwithstanding its revolutionary conception it regards violence as illegitimate and holds that an Islamic state is to be reached by peaceful, democratic and parliamentary means.⁸⁹

The entry sets out a programme of four points adopted towards the establishment of an Islamic order: to reshape human thought in the light of divine values and principles; to change the individual, to free him of bad traits and bring him to a genuine Islamic character, and to bring all who respond into an order that helps them work in turn to call others; to take every possible step to order the institutions of society and the relations between people according to Islamic teaching, supporting educational programmes, social services and cultural activity to that end; and to effect a transformation under the leadership of Islamic society, reordering political and socio-economic life by Islamic standards and finally establishing an Islamic state.⁹⁰

Robinson's entry records the influences on Maududi's thought as including Ibn Khaldun, Shah Wali Allah, Iqbal and Hasan al-Banna, and counts some 138 works by him.⁹¹ Among them is the commentary Tafhim al-Qur'an, in six volumes; Anis Ahmad's entry records that Maududi began publishing it in Tarjuman al-Qur'an from 1942 and completed it in 1972, writing an introduction to each chapter dealing with the circumstances of its revelation and the difficulties the Islamic call had met, and states that he followed a free method in order to render the Qur'an in intelligible language.⁹² Robinson's entry gives the dates of the six volumes as 1949 to 1972 and notes that the work took thirty years to finish.⁹³

Reception and limits

Manazir Ahsan's entry records that the breadth of the organisation's activities and aims brought it serious difficulties from the beginning. In Pakistan he identifies the principal obstacles as the feudal and secular groups represented by the bureaucracy and the army, and notes that some Islamic parties also treated the Jamaat-e-Islami as a rival at elections. His assessment is that although the organisation held a substantial base among the educated, its influence in the countryside and among ordinary people remained limited, and that while it brought a new understanding to Islamic politics it did not overcome the traditional centres of power in society, with the consequence that it was unable to convert the whole of its moral and ideological weight into political weight.⁹⁴

Among its achievements he counts the removal of a widespread sense of self-doubt among Muslims, the restoring of a severed connection between religion and politics, and the propagation of a conviction that Islam offers an alternative world order capable of addressing the problems facing not Muslims alone but humanity as a whole. He records that it gave a new political idiom to Islamic thought, at least in South Asia, and that expressions such as "Islamic ideology", "Islamic state", "Islamic constitution" and the economic and political system of Islam came into general use among Muslim writers and politicians as a result.⁹⁵ Anis Ahmad's entry on Maududi similarly records that his ideas influenced writers and politicians and also the thinking of Islamic organisations.⁹⁶

Historiographical Note

The date of the founding

The sources consulted do not agree on the day in August 1941 on which the organisation was founded, and the disagreement is worth setting out because the two dates in circulation both have a basis.

Source	Date given
Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, volume 1	The meeting was announced for 1 Sha'ban 1360 (25 August 1941); on that day it could not take place; it opened on 2 Sha'ban (26 August 1941) and the constitution was approved the same day
Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi	25 August 1941
M. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi	August 1941, without a day
F. C. R. Robinson, "Mawdūdī", The Encyclopaedia of Islam	August 1941, without a day

The two entries in the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi differ from one another: the entry on Maududi gives 25 August, while the entry on the organisation itself gives only the month. The proceedings, which are the organisation's own minuted record, account for both dates by distinguishing the day for which the meeting was called from the day on which it actually opened. The article follows the proceedings. All four sources agree that the meeting was held at Lahore and that seventy-five people took part.

The founding of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind

The sources consulted establish that the Indian organisation was constituted in 1948 but do not give a date within that year. Irfan Ahmad, whose study is devoted to that organisation, records that the Jamaat was divided on partition in 1947 and reconstituted in 1948, and refers to a meeting of its consultative council in August 1948; Manazir Ahsan records the division into two independent organisations without dating the Indian one. No day or month for the founding is asserted here.

The date of Zia-ul-Haq's death

Manazir Ahsan's entry places the aircraft accident that killed Zia-ul-Haq in 1987. Three other approved sources give 1988: Zaman states that he was killed in a plane crash in August 1988; M. Boivin's entry on him in The Encyclopaedia of Islam gives his dates as 1924 to 1988 and has him in office from 1977 until his death in an accident in that year; and the entry on Pakistan in the same work places the crash in August, with elections that had been postponed to November following it. The year is given here as 1988, and the divergence is noted because the sequence of events in Manazir Ahsan's own account — the crash, then the elections of 1988, then Benazir Bhutto's government — agrees with the later date rather than the earlier one.

Membership figures

The figures in this article come from two sources that count different things and should not be read as a single series. Irfan Ahmad's table gives the full membership of the Indian organisation from 1941 to 2000; Manazir Ahsan gives figures for Pakistan and Bangladesh across the three tiers of membership for years in the 1970s and 1980s. The sharp fall in Ahmad's series between 1947 and 1948, from 999 full members to 240, reflects the division of the organisation at partition rather than a collapse in support.

Tafhim al-Qur'an

Anis Ahmad's entry gives the span of Maududi's Qur'anic commentary as 1942 to 1972, dating the beginning to its serial publication in Tarjuman al-Qur'an; Robinson's entry gives the six volumes as published between 1949 and 1972 and describes the work as having taken thirty years. Both are recorded above as they stand.

See also

• Abul A'la Maududi — its founder, and its amir from 1941 to 1972
• Muhammad Iqbal — at whose invitation Dar al-Islam, afterwards the organisation's centre, was founded in 1938
• The Tablighi Jamaat — the movement of individual piety with which Manazir Ahsan's entry contrasts it
• The Deobandi movement, the Barelvi movement and the Ahl-i Hadith — the schools whose scholars joined the Karachi meeting of January 1951
• Aligarh Muslim University — where Irfan Ahmad traces the Indian organisation's early presence
• Sharia — the law whose establishment the organisation takes as the purpose of the state

Notes

References

Citations

Footnotes

1. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7, pp. 291–293 — the founding by seventy-five delegates at Maududi's call, and the organisation's stated object. ↩

2. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the first six years, the division at partition, the later bodies in Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and the point that the five organisations are not joined to one another. ↩

3. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 29, pp. 432–437 — Maududi's birth on 3 Rajab 1321 at Aurangabad, the name taken from his great-grandfather, the descent from al-Husain, and the family's origin at Herat and line to Mawdud-i Chishti. ↩

4. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the loss of his father at seventeen, the incomplete conventional schooling, and his formation by his own study. ↩

5. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — his reading with Abu Ziyad Niyazi by the dars-i nizami, the ijaza from the Fatehpuri madrasa, his learning English, and his part in the Hijrat movement. ↩

6. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — his editorial work dated to 1920–1928, with Jamʿiyyat, the organ of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Hind, among the titles. ↩

7. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the same decade of editorial work on Urdu newspapers and periodicals. ↩

8. Robinson, "Mawdūdī", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 6, pp. 872–874 — the editorship of al-Jamʿiyyat from 1924 to 1927. ↩

9. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the work of 1927 on war and peace in Islamic law, written at twenty-four in answer to the claim that Islam had been spread by the sword, and the attention it drew. ↩

10. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the work given as al-Jihād fi'l-Islām, published at A'zamgarh in 1930, and composed after the assassination of Swami Shraddhanand. ↩

11. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — his withdrawal to Hyderabad in 1928 for further research and writing. ↩

12. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the editorship of Tarjuman al-Qur'an taken up in 1932, and the journal as still the organisation's principal organ in Pakistan long afterwards. ↩

13. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the same appointment, and the journal as having served throughout his life to spread his ideas. ↩

14. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1, the opening address to the founding meeting — his own statement that he began the magazine in 1352 AH, 1933 CE. ↩

15. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — Iqbal's invitation, the move to Jamalpur near Pathankot in 1938, and the founding of Dar al-Islam as an institution of research and education. ↩

16. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — his own dating of the step to 1357 AH, 1938 CE, the four original associates, the single addition that followed, the groups forming elsewhere, and the continuing work of publication and preaching. ↩

17. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the explanation of the movement and the plan for forming a jamaat, set out in the second volume of Musalman aur Maujooda Siyasi Kashmakash. ↩

18. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the work as three volumes published at Lahore between 1937 and 1939. ↩

19. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the work as a collection of the political writings published in Tarjuman al-Qur'an. ↩

20. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the appeal to readers in the issue of Safar 1360 AH, the replies that followed, the decision to gather those who answered, and the meeting fixed for 1 Sha'ban 1360, given in the translation as 25 August 1941. ↩

21. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the invitations, the request that formed units send selected representatives, the arrivals from 28 Rajab, and the total strength of seventy-five. ↩

22. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the figure of seventy-five, given independently. ↩

23. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the same figure. ↩

24. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India, Appendix 1 — seventy-five full members for 1941, cited there to the first volume of the proceedings. ↩

25. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the meeting's failure to open on 1 Sha'ban and the day of informal discussion in the courtyard of the journal's office. ↩

26. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the opening of the meeting at eight on 2 Sha'ban, the long address on the history of the movement, and the distinction Maududi drew between this movement and those already current. ↩

27. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the prior distribution of the draft constitution, the reading and discussion of every word, the unanimous approval with modifications, and the recitation of the declaration of faith. ↩

28. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — Maududi's argument on the office of amir, and the distinction he drew from the presidency of a western democracy. ↩

29. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the three positions argued through the morning on whether the election should be temporary or permanent. ↩

30. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the reference of the question to a committee of seven at the time of the Zuhr prayer, the amir in office by the following evening, the appointment of the Majlis-e-Shura, and its first meeting and division of the work into departments. ↩

31. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — Maududi's election as amir at the founding. ↩

32. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the same, and his holding the office until 1972. ↩

33. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the years between the founding and partition as a period of organisation, propagation, publication and training, and the propagation of the two-nation theory. ↩

34. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 1 — the Majlis-e-Shura sessions of Muharram and Shawwal 1361 AH, the temporary markaz, the accounts and progress reports, and the Darbhanga Ijtema. ↩

35. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the move of the centre to Pathankot in 1942. ↩

36. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 2 — the Ijtema at Dar al-Islam, Pathankot, on 26 and 27 March 1944, and its sessions. ↩

37. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the general assembly of 19 April 1945 at Dar al-Islam, its eight hundred delegates, and Maududi's address. ↩

38. Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, vol. 4 — the All-India Ijtema of 5 to 7 April 1946 at Harwara near Allahabad, and the arrangements for it. ↩

39. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the aims proclaimed in the constitution of this period: hukumat-e-ilahiya, the obligation drawn from the declaration of faith, British India as dar al-kufr, the mission to make it dar al-Islam, and the prohibition of secular democracy. ↩

40. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the institutions from which members were required to abstain, the instance of Mohammad Yusuf, and the abstention from the first elections of independent India. ↩

41. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the reconstitution into two independent bodies, the later organisations in Kashmir, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and the leadership passing to Maududi in Pakistan and to Abul Lais Islahi in India. ↩

42. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — Maududi's settlement in Lahore and his taking up the leadership of the Pakistani organisation. ↩

43. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — his settlement at Ichhra, which became the organisation's new centre and his burial place in 1979. ↩

44. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India, Appendix 1 — the table of full membership, with 999 in 1947 against 240 in 1948, and the Indian figures to 2000, together with the sources given there for each year. ↩

45. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the replacement of hukumat-e-ilahiya by iqamat-e-din in 1948, the clarification that accompanied it, and his assessment that the change of 1948 was one of wording and that the ideological shift came six years later. ↩

46. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the political and educational programme pursued between 1947 and 1971, and the efforts of 1948 to 1956 in particular. ↩

47. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the Objectives Resolution of March 1949 and the organisation's part in securing Islamic content for it. ↩

48. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the Objectives Resolution of March 1949 among the organisation's concerns. ↩

49. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the government's hostility and its appeal to differences between the schools, the scholars Maududi called together, and the joint declaration of twenty-two principles at Karachi in January 1951. ↩

50. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the twenty-two principles of January 1951. ↩

51. Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam — the collaboration between the organisation and the ulama over the Islamic constitution, the organisation as a lay Islamist party, and the points on which Maududi and the ulama differed. ↩

52. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the articles of the 1956 constitution he attributes largely to the organisation. ↩

53. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — four terms of imprisonment for Maududi between 1948 and 1967, five years in all, and the grounds for them. ↩

54. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the periods of imprisonment in 1948–50 and 1953–55. ↩

55. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the death sentence of March 1953, its commutation to life imprisonment under pressure at home and abroad, and the release in April 1955. ↩

56. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the death sentence of 1953 and the Ahmadiyya agitation of 1952–53. ↩

57. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the martial law of 1958 and the ban on political parties, the opposition to the 1962 constitution, the further ban of 1964 and the courts' decision, the support for Fatima Jinnah in 1965, and Ayub Khan's resignation in 1969. ↩

58. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the two months' imprisonment in 1967 over the sighting of the crescent. ↩

59. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the share of more than twenty per cent of the vote in December 1970 and the seats it did not yield. ↩

60. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the same outcome. ↩

61. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the organisation's part in the war in East Pakistan, the losses suffered after 16 December 1971, the revival after the ban was lifted in 1975, and the twenty seats won in 1991. ↩

62. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the handover of the leadership on 2 November 1972, the unheeded advice of 1975, the journey to the United States in May 1979, the death at Buffalo on 22 September 1979, and the funeral and burial at Lahore on 26 September. ↩

63. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — Maududi among the founders of the Muslim World League at Mecca. ↩

64. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — his ill health from 1969 and his resignation of the headship in 1972. ↩

65. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the years 1971 to 1991 as a contest over democracy, the application of sharia and participation in government, and the obstruction of the organisation's activities under Bhutto. ↩

66. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — Maududi among those who criticised the Bhutto government severely. ↩

67. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the organisation behind the movement against Bhutto in 1977. ↩

68. Boivin, "Ziyā' al-Ḥakk", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 11, p. 547 — the seizure of power on 5 July 1977, the arrest of Bhutto, and Zia-ul-Haq's proclamation of himself as administrator of martial law. ↩

69. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the support for the Zia-ul-Haq government, the four ministries taken, the ministers' resignation after a year, and the organisation's turn to the opposition and to pressure for democratic change. ↩

70. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — Maududi's support for the Zia-ul-Haq administration at its outset. ↩

71. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the crisis that followed Zia-ul-Haq's death in an aircraft accident, which that entry dates to 1987; see the Historiographical Note. ↩

72. Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam — the crash dated to August 1988. ↩

73. Boivin, "Ziyā' al-Ḥakk" — Zia-ul-Haq's dates as 1924 to 1988, and his death in an accident in that year after holding office from 1977. ↩

74. "Pākistān", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, vol. 8 — the crash placed in August, with the postponed elections following it in November. ↩

75. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the elections of 1988, Benazir Bhutto's government and her dismissal in 1990, the Islamic Democratic Alliance, the refusal of ministries, and the withdrawal into opposition in May 1992. ↩

76. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the division of 1947 and reconstitution of 1948, and the organisation's slender presence at Aligarh, with the two workers named in its 1948 report. ↩

77. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the plan announced in August 1948 for the Darsgah at Malihabad, the place of education in the organisation's work, and the launch of Zindgi in November 1948 and its successor at Delhi. ↩

78. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — Maududi's description of secularism as forbidden and his urging of a Hindu rather than a secular state, Abul Lais Islahi Nadwi's pressing of the same point, the refusal to attend the Jaunpur convention, and the two bans including that of 1975. ↩

79. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the criteria of 1967, the council's nine-to-eight division, the reference to the numaindagan under Article 39(C) in May 1977, the members' voting in that year's elections, and the departure from Maududi's ruling of 1974. ↩

80. Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India — the reimposition of the ban in February 1978, the inconclusive discussion of May 1978 and the defeat of the resolution, the discontent among influential members, the Hyderabad unit's resolution, and Pirzadah's resignation. ↩

81. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the central structure, the amendment of its regulations, and his judgement of its internal democracy. ↩

82. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the amir and his deputies, the fifty-member Central Consultative Council and the working committee of twelve, the local bodies, and the departments at Mansura in Lahore. ↩

83. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — both the amir and the majlis-i shura as elective. ↩

84. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the three tiers of membership, the figures given for Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the occupations from which support came. ↩

85. Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam — the organisation's base of support, and its strength among the educated rather than the traditionally trained scholars. ↩

86. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the positions on which the organisation rests: Islam as ordering social, economic and political life, the sources of its inspiration, the change of fundamental attitude it requires, and divine sovereignty in every area of activity. ↩

87. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the comparison with the Tablighi Jamaat, the universality claimed for the Islamic state, God as the source of law and the human being as His vicegerent, the state as a kind of theo-democracy, and the conditions on the head of government. ↩

88. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — Maududi's term "theo-democracy", and legislation by interpretation, analogy, inference and independent judgement. ↩

89. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the organisation as neither committed to elections alone nor factional, its openness to ijtihad alongside its adherence to the Hanafi school, and its treatment of violence as illegitimate. ↩

90. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the four-point programme adopted towards the establishment of an Islamic order. ↩

91. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the influences on Maududi's thought, and the count of some 138 works. ↩

92. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the publication of Tafhim al-Qur'an in Tarjuman al-Qur'an from 1942 and its completion in 1972, the introductions to each chapter, and the free method Maududi followed. ↩

93. Robinson, "Mawdūdī" — the six volumes dated 1949 to 1972, and the thirty years the work took. ↩

94. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the difficulties the organisation met from the beginning, the obstacles he identifies in Pakistan, and his assessment of the limits of its influence. ↩

95. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî" — the achievements he counts, and the political idiom he credits the organisation with giving to Islamic thought in South Asia. ↩

96. Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî" — the effect of Maududi's ideas on writers, politicians and Islamic organisations. ↩

Sources

Primary sources. The organisation's own minuted record, and the writings in which its programme was set out.

• Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, Volume 1: First Ijtema and Ijtema of Darbhanga, August 1941 to October 1943, translated by Arshad Shaikh.
• Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, Volume 2: The Proceedings of the Ijtema Darul Islam, translated by Arshad Shaikh.
• Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, Volume 4: All India Ijtema of Jamaat-e-Islami, 5–7 April 1946, Harwara, Allahabad, translated by Arshad Shaikh.
• Abul A'la Maududi, Musalman aur Maujooda Siyasi Kashmakash, 3 volumes, Lahore, 1937–1939 — the work in which the plan for the organisation was set out.
• Abul A'la Maududi, Tafhim al-Qur'an, 6 volumes, Lahore — serialised in Tarjuman al-Qur'an from 1942 and completed in 1972.

Academic and scholarly sources.

• M. Manazir Ahsan, "Cemâat-i İslâmî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, volume 7. Istanbul, 1993, pp. 291–293.
• Anis Ahmad, "Mevdûdî", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, volume 29. Ankara, 2004, pp. 432–437.
• F. C. R. Robinson, "Mawdūdī", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, volume 6, pp. 872–874.
• M. Boivin, "Ziyā' al-Ḥakk", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, volume 11, p. 547.
• "Pākistān", The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, volume 8.
• Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami.
• Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change.
• Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 — consulted for the Deobandi tradition with which the organisation's relations are described. No particular claim in this article rests on it alone.

Sources cited at second hand. Irfan Ahmad's membership table draws on the following, which were not consulted directly and are listed so that the chain of attribution can be followed: Agwani for the figures of 1947 and 1948; the organisation's periodical Dawat for 1960 and 1990; a Jamaat publication for 1978; and data supplied by its headquarters for 2000.

Further reading

Offered to the reader for further study. Nothing in this article rests on the works below.

• Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Jamaʿat-i Islami of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
• Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, "Mawdūdī, Sayyid Abū al-Aʿlā", in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World. New York, 1995, volume 3, pp. 71–75.
• Shafi Monis, Mokhtasar tārikh: jamāat-e-islāmī hind. New Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Islami Publishers, 2001.
• Maulana Abul Lais Nadwi, The Future of India and the Message of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. Delhi: Markazi Maktaba Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, 1971.

External links

Approved sources only, each with its number on the Register of Approved External Web Sources.

• Cemâat-i İslâmî and Mevdûdî — the TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, register entry 2: the entries by M. Manazir Ahsan and Anis Ahmad
• Proceedings of Jamaat-e-Islami, Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 4 — archive.org, register entry 12: the organisation's own minuted record in English translation