Preface

The rise of Islamic revivalism has presented a serious challenge to conventional wisdom in the social sciences and as a result has been the object of considerable debate and inquiry. The resurgence of an atavism that both rejects and defies Western modernization and preaches submission to the writ of religious law in societies that have already undergone significant modernization requires a redefinition of the very notion of modernization itself, both as a process and as an intellectual construct. Modernization can no longer be regarded as a process that automatically produces secularization, privatization of faith, and the rejection of old values. Nor can religion any longer be seen merely as a set of traditional rites and beliefs, impervious to change and irrelevant to modernization. The task therefore becomes one of reconciling anachronistic values and loyalties with time-honored assumptions about the content, nature, and direction of modernizing change. Changes in the past decade and a half across the Muslim world have yielded an impressive number of studies on Islamic revivalism but no consensus, perhaps because these studies have left some gaps. It is precisely those gaps that this book tries to fill.

For one thing, many studies have limited themselves to theoretical approaches and existing models of sociopolitical change when it has become ever more apparent that understanding will come only from greater attention to individual cases of Islamic revivalism. It is through meticulous inquiry that the distinguishing aspects of the teleology and politics of Islamic revivalism can be identified; new theories can be formed in light of these empirical findings. The social sciences have always been inductive, anchored in what Clifford Geertz has called “thick description.”

Many studies of Islamic revivalism have concentrated on preconditions and root causes on the one hand and on the ideological pronouncements of its proponents on the other. Comparatively little has been written on the development of revivalist movements, how they operate, and what social, political, and economic conditions shaped their evolution. Concern with how revivalism came about has diverted attention from the more pertinent question of where it is heading. As revivalism has become part of politics in Muslim societies, the study of Islamic revivalism must move beyond a discussion of causes to examine development.

The study of Islamic revivalism has until now concentrated primarily on Iran and the Arab world and has, as a result, been somewhat restricted in its outlook. A comprehensive theoretical approach will need to consider revivalist activity elsewhere. Of particular importance is South Asia, where the structure of sociopolitical thought and practice has been greatly affected by religious revivalism. From the emergence of the tradition of reform and renewal associated with Shah Waliu’llah of Delhi in the eighteenth century to the rise of the Fara’izi reformists in Bengal and the advent of new initiatives for reassertion of Islamic values in the form of the Deoband, Aligarh, Ahl-i Hadith, Brailwi, and Nadwi schools of thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the advent of the Khilafat movement and eventually the campaign for Pakistan, two centuries of activism have fused religious loyalties and political identity in South Asia into an integrated worldview. The development of South Asian Islam in modern times therefore provides valuable insights into the origins of revivalism and the forms its political action has taken.

A comprehensive examination of the history and ideology of the Jama‘at-i Islami (the Islamic party), the self-appointed “vanguard of the Islamic revolution,” can elucidate the manner in which religiopolitical leadership, politicization of religion, and sacralization of politics have tied Islamic theology and piety with the passage of Muslim societies into modernity. The Jama‘at is one of the oldest and most influential of the Islamic revivalist movements and the first of its kind to develop an Islamic ideology, a modern revolutionary reading of Islam, and an agenda for social action to realize its vision. It has influenced Islamic revivalism from Morocco to Malaysia and controlled the expression of revivalist thinking in Southwest Asia and South Asia since 1941. There are today eight discrete Jama‘at-i Islami parties: in Pakistan, India, India’s Kashmir province, Pakistan’s Azad Kashmir, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Great Britain, and North America. The party’s ideological reach and impact, throughout its history as well as across a vast geographical expanse, far exceed the boundaries of any one political arena or historical period. By mobilizing its resources in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and England, the party played a central role in orchestrating the protests against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in England in 1988–1989, a notable example of its influence. Thanks to the Jama‘at, Muslims in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe pitted Islam against the West and laid the foundations for the international crisis that ensued.

Central to any effort to understand the Jama‘at is an examination of its ideological foundations, social basis, organizational structure, and politics. We need to discover what led the Jama‘at to embrace revivalism and what promoted and sustained the party’s political activism, charted its development, and determined the nature and scope of its impact on Pakistan’s politics. The nature of the state’s reaction to Islamic revivalism, from confrontation to accommodation to incorporation, is also of direct relevance. This book probes how Mawdudi’s vision was articulated and how it shaped the Jama‘at’s political agenda and plan of action, influenced the development of the Pakistan state, and changed in the face of political imperatives.

Ever since the advent of the Iranian revolution Western scholarship has been convinced that revivalism is inherently antistate. This is not necessarily the case. The Jama‘at is the first instance of Islamic revivalism that participates in the political process, rather than trying to topple it. Its development tells much about how Islamic revivalism will interact with democratic forces across the Muslim world in the coming years. Western scholarship has also assumed that Islamic revivalism, once unleashed, will control Muslim political choices. This again is not supported by the facts at hand. The Jama‘at’s ideology and activism have been important in Pakistani politics and to revivalism across the Muslim world, but the party has failed to seize power in Pakistan. It can be credited with forming a national alliance that has been advocating the cause of Islam in Pakistan for four decades; it has helped create a distinctly Islamic voting bloc; it has institutionalized religiopolitical action, and sacralized national political discourse. It has contributed to the Islamization of Pakistan and has helped shape Pakistan’s history since 1947; it has had a role in the outcome of social movements and political events and is likely to continue to do so. Still, it has been unable to capture power. This is significant, because Islamic revivalism is not supposed to suffer from political constrictions of any sort. That the party has not been the principal beneficiary of the Islamization it has encouraged does not detract from its role in determining what change occurred in Pakistan, nor does it relegate the Jama‘at to the status of an anachronism. This suggests that Islamic ideology, in and of itself, does not explain what place Islamic revivalism has in the politics of contemporary Muslim societies. Whatever accounts for the rise of revivalism, it is not the same as what sustains, or expands, its influence. One set of factors bears on the preconditions for the rise of revivalism as an ideology; a different set of factors controls its transformation into a social movement and the direction that movement subsequently takes.

I distinguish those factors that account for the Jama‘at’s strength from those that account for its limited success as a political power. The corollary, of course, is to determine why the first set favored, while the second hindered, its rise. The set of factors are the events and historical processes that produced the Jama‘at and later led to its enfranchisement and participation in the political process; the nature of the state’s reaction to the Jama‘at’s drive for power; competition with other Islamic parties in the political arena; and the incongruities in the Jama‘at’s ideology and organizational structure. In examining these variables, four interrelated concerns will govern the heuristic aim of this study. They are the nature of the linkage between ideology and politics in the theory and practice of revivalist movements; the extent and nature of the influence of socioeconomic imperatives on social action and political change; the implications of revivalism for political change; and the dialectic of the historical and teleological development of ideological movements, especially within the political process. These four will also relate the findings of this study on Islamic revivalism to larger theoretical concerns in the social sciences. The unity of this book is not purely chronological, though it relies on chronology. It is conceived rather in consideration of those themes that explain the phenomenon of the Jama‘at, namely, its historical development, organization and social base, and politics. After a brief history of the party and a discussion of the pattern of its historical development, the analytical narrative takes up specific themes of importance in explaining both the power and political limitations of the Jama‘at: its organization and social base, and the nature of its political activism as reflected in its relations with successive governments. The story of the Jama‘at is told here as the implications of each of these for the sociopolitical role of that party are identified. An explanatory note regarding the treatment of Jama‘at’s story is in order. In many ways it is difficult to explain the nature of the party’s activities definitively. For instance, the Jama‘at has supported the rule of law and has been at the forefront of opposition to those in power who have broken it. The party has also engaged in unlawful activities, including acts of violence, a fact that draws a very different picture of its politics. The social sciences often favor clear-cut characterizations of political actors, to reduce parties such as the Jama‘at into one category or the other, but it seems that such an approach is not always useful and can conceal more than it reveals. I have therefore avoided it to the extent possible. Finally, the final draft of this book went to press in August 1993, and therefore does not cover events subsequent to that date.

This book would never have been written without the generous support of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, which provided me with two separate grants to travel to Pakistan and conduct field research on the Jama‘at during the academic year 1989–1990 and again in the summer of 1993. A fellowship at the Foundation for Iranian Studies in 1990–1991 enabled me to consult the archival sources at the Library of Congress and the National Archives in Washington, D. C., and to complete the first draft of this book. Additional research for this book was made possible by a grant from the Joint Committee on South Asia of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation. This grant allowed me to work on archival sources available at the British Library and the Public Record Office in England in the summer of 1992.

During my research stay in Pakistan, I greatly benefited from the assistance of an array of Pakistanis, to all of whom I am eternally grateful. The Ali family of Lahore, with their customary generosity, provided me with friendship and support. My heartfelt appreciation to them all, and to Syed Amjad Ali, Begum Kishwar Abid Husain, Syed Asad and Fakhr-i Jahan Ali, and Syed Yawar and Snookey Ali in particular. I am gratefully indebted to Muhammad Suhayl Umar, a true gentleman and an erudite scholar, who provided me with invaluable insights, sources, and contacts that have enriched this study immensely; Hakim Muhammad Sa‘id and the Hamdard Foundation; Air Commodore In‘amu’l-Haq; and finally, Ijaz and Nurin Malik.

From the beginning of this project, teachers and friends alike provided invaluable support, which has greatly enriched this endeavor. John L. Esposito, Lucian Pye, and Myron Weiner oversaw it in its first incarnation as a dissertation at M. I. T. and helped formulate my thoughts on the Jama‘at-i Islami and its role in political change in Pakistan. To many others I am indebted for their intellectual guidance and wisdom. I have benefited greatly from discussions with Charles J. Adams, Mumtaz Ahmad, Zafar Ishaq Ansari, Robert Frykenberg, Ijaz S. Gilani, Barbara D. Metcalf, Roy Mottahedeh, Farhan Ahmad Nizami, James Piscatori, and Francis Robinson. I am grateful for the assistance of Muhammad Afzal, the late Allahbukhsh K. Brohi, Mawlana Abdu’l-Ghaffar Hasan, Javid Hashmi, Javid Iqbal, Muhammad Safdar Mir, the late Siraj Munir, Mawlana Sayyid Abu’l-Hasan Ali Nadwi, the late Ja‘far Qasmi, Hamid Qizilbash, Altaf Hasan Quraishi, Mustafa Sadiq, Muhammad Salahu’ddin, Mujibu’l-Rahman Shami, and S. M. Zafar. I also owe much to the assistance of the staff of the various archives and libraries to which this study took me. The staff of the Pakistan Ministry of Culture and the Institute of Islamic Research in Islamabad; the Iqbal Academy, the Institute of Islamic Culture, the Islamic Studies Academy of the Jama‘at-i Islami, the Qa’id-i A‘zam and Punjab Public Libraries, all in Lahore; and the Khudabakhsh Library in Patna deserve a special note of thanks.

Many within the Jama‘at helped me to find the sources I needed. Their efficiency and especially their openness stood in stark contrast to the apprehensions and preconceptions I harbored before embarking upon this project. I am particularly in the debt of Yusuf Khan and his archives at the Jama‘at’s Mansurah complex; Abdu’l-Wahid Khan at the Islamic Publications, who provided me with the galleys of as yet unpublished manuscripts; Muhammad Ibrar, who opened all of the doors which I had not managed to at the Jama‘at headquarters; Shahin Rashid and Hasan Suhayb Murad and the staff of Jama‘at’s election and administration bureaus, who graciously took the time to compile the electoral and membership data which I had requested. I also benefited greatly from conversations with many Jama‘at leaders and members, notably Abdu’ssattar Afghani, Qazi Husain Ahmad, Khurshid Ahmad, Abdu’l-Ghafur Ahmad, Malik Ghulam Ali, Mahmud A‘zam Faruqi, Sayyid As‘ad Gilani, Chaudhri Rahmat Ilahi, Khurram Jah Murad, Mian Tufayl Muhammad, and Chaudhri Aslam Salimi. They spent many hours with me and despite their demanding schedules patiently listened to my queries, many of which were, no doubt, unpalatable to them. Their candor is greatly appreciated, although no doubt many of the conclusions of this study will not be in accordance with their views. I wish also to express my gratitude to a number of people who were close to Mawlana Mawdudi, notably Khwaja Amanu’llah, Begum Atiyah Inayatu’llah, Begum Abidah Gurmani, and Begum Mahmudah Mawdudi, for sharing their reminiscences with me.

Some of the main themes of this book were discussed with Middle East and South Asia specialists at two seminars at Columbia University and Harvard University from which I benefited greatly. Gholam Reza Afkhami, Mumtaz Ahmad, Said Amir Arjomand, Shaul Bakhash, Houchang Chehabi, Leila Fawaz, David Gilmartin, Shahla Haeri, Stephen Humphreys, Omar Noman, Muhammad Suhayl Umar, and Anwar H. Syed read all or some of the chapters of this volume and made valuable comments. For the shortcomings of the book, however, I alone am responsible. The manuscript owes much to the masterful editing of Margaret Ševčenko. I can think of no editor more helpful or supportive than Lynne Withey of the University of California Press, who along with Tony Hicks and Stephanie Fowler has done a splendid job of producing this book. To my wife, Darya, goes a special note of gratitude. She helped with many aspects of this project in Pakistan and provided me with unwavering support during the arduous months it took to narrate the text of this study. If there is any merit to this endeavor, I share it with all those mentioned here.

San Diego, August 1993