THE book under review is an insider’s indictment of the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) on the perceived abandonment of the party’s aim. The author’s thesis is that the JI has moved away from the original roadmap, and the shift has been so profound that it has tended to obfuscate the aim itself. For this purported heresy, he doesn’t seem to forgive the party leadership and toward the end of the book uses language that is shockingly harsh.

The author is Irfan Ghazi, whose father, Abdul Jabbar Khan Ghazi, was once the JI’s chief and a close lieutenant of the JI’s founder Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi. That author Ghazi’s diction and idiom is couched in the JI jargon should surprise no one, for he is steeped in party ethos. Those under whose shadow he came of age were, besides his father, ideologues who constituted the JI high command during its formative phases — men of such stature as Amin Ahsan Islahi, Dr Israr Ahmed, Sultan Ahmad, Irshad Ahmad Haqqani and others. All these men fell out with Maudoodi and quit the party for reasons which the author spells out in detail, quoting from letters, memoirs, and party documents that have so far remained unknown to people outside the party. The theme running through the book is the JI’s abandonment of the strategy to achieve the party’s aim, which was to establish a sociopolitical system based on Sharia.

A useful work for scholars on the Jamaat-i-Islami and its trajectory

When established in 1941, and on subsequent occasions, the party made it clear that an Islamic state could be established only by a society that was morally Islamic, and that resorting to politics would reduce the JI to just another party competing for power along with other ‘secular’ elements in a ‘Western’ electoral system. Maudoodi cited several examples from history, especially that of the Mujahideen movement led by Syed Ahmad Shaheed, to show how they failed because society was immoral. In other words, a Sharia-based system could not be imposed from the top. It had to grow bottom up. To avoid the pitfalls of such a journey, the JI leadership drew up a comprehensive education plan that would raise a new generation of people truly Islamic in character and capable of creating and running an Islamic state. An Islamic society must, therefore, precede an Islamic state.

However, as far back as 1948 and much to the chagrin of many in the top echelon, the JI launched its mass contact movement beginning with a public meeting at Karachi. Quoting party insiders, the author considers this mass contact movement as the JI’s plunge into politics — a plunge from which there was no going back. In fact, the author quotes Maudoodi as saying that staying away from politics would not advance the JI’s aim and that it had no choice but to enter the political arena. The decision drew harsh criticism from Ghazi senior, who ultimately resigned from the party in December 1956. Since then the JI has been in the thick of the political process, pursuing populist and street politics, joining alliances, and sharing power at federal and provincial levels. This way, according to the author, the JI, instead of being a revolutionary movement, turned itself into a political party and accepted the Western concept of democracy. Matters came to a head at the historic Machhi Goth meeting in February 1957. The author says the dissidents’ viewpoint remained secret because the minutes of the three-day meeting were never made public, but that the Machhi Goth meeting finally sealed the JI’s decision to choose the electoral path for the attainment of its goals. This led to the exit of some of the party’s top leaders, including Islahi, Sultan, Israr and of course, Ghazi senior.

What author Ghazi grapples with is an issue that has confronted all ideological parties in varying degrees. The question that deserves an answer is: does change in tactics amount to a betrayal of the aim? Do not changing economic, political, and social conditions warrant corresponding changes in tactics without losing sight of the aim? The schism in the once-monolithic communist movement became inevitable because Chinese and Soviet national interests clashed, and both used the ideological idiom to justify their policies — as did Yugoslavia and tiny Albania.

In India, the radical change in the JI policies has been well portrayed by Irfan Ahmad in his book Islamism and Democracy in India: the Transformation of Jamaat-i-Islami. Abullais Nadvi, the JI India chief, said not taking part in the political process would amount to suicide on the JI’s part. Consequently the party’s aim was changed from hukumat-i-ilahiya [divine rule] to istiqamat-i-din [strengthening Islam]. The shura then decided to take part in India’s electoral process, recognised the Aligarh University’s ‘Islamic character’, and passed a resolution that constituted, says Irfan Ahmed, “a passionate defence” of secular democracy and termed secularism “a divine boon”.

The astonishing part of Ghazi’s book is the repeated vitriolic attacks on Maudoodi, who he says was the central character of this “alamnaak dastaan” [tragic story] and accuses the JI founder of using tactics typical of dictators and fostering the “cult of personality” (the author uses these English words in the Urdu text). The heading of a paragraph dealing with the JI’s neglect of its educational scheme is titled Taleemi agenday se farar [running away from the educational agenda] and shows the author’s certitude mixed with rancour. The last chapter contains an outpouring of venom, ridiculing the very appearance of the current JI chief Sirajul Haq and accusing the JI of being a co-sharer of, and participating in, the nation’s moral degeneration.

Ignoring the bias against Maudoodi for obvious reason, the book is research material and contains valuable data for future scholars. The book also contains the facsimiles of extant documents.

The writer is Dawn’s Readers’ Editor.

Jamaat-i-Islami: Aik Alamnaak Dastaan
(POLITICS)
By Irfan Ghazi
Sagar Publishers, Lahore
325pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 15th, 2017