ALONG a wide service lane in Karachi’s Federal B. Area, a handful of old and young men are gathered at the entrance of a mosque after Isha prayers. A few shake hands and others hug each other. It is a cold and foggy evening when a friend of mine — one of the handful men — brings me amongst them. They are preparing for an Ijtema-i-Karkunan — a weekly workers’ meeting of the Jamaat-i-Islami’s small residential unit in the central district of the city.

This gathering every Wednesday is not restricted to this locality. On this day across Karachi neighbourhoods, wherever its organisational structure — called Halqa — exists, workers of the JI gather to plan and review upcoming week’s activities. They set the new targets and their chief, called nazim, seeks reports from workers about the previous one.

Such a meeting within the party is called “power house” that gives energy to its workers and distinguishes the JI from other parties in the country in terms of organisation, discipline and having a loyal cadre of activists.

But a question that has been haunting the party and its workers for several years is that how the organisation — that is about to complete 80 years of its existence and is known for activists almost entirely educated and generally respected in their neighbourhoods and regarded for its decency in terms of dedication and honesty — has never been a choice of people when it comes to elections.

“What really goes wrong?” I ask a young participant in the Ijtema as he comes out of the mosque. He prefers to stay focussed on the last polls: “This year [2018 elections] I think we made a mistake in reforming the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. We should have fought on our strength or at least forged an alliance with the PTI in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where we served five years as their coalition partner.”

My quest is no question for the critics or workers of the party. After the July 25 elections, the realisation has hit the ranks of the JI leadership about the disastrous results for the party from the MMA platform. It even failed to retain seats in its strongholds of Khyber Pakhunkhawa and impress a majority in Karachi after years of activism over public issues including water and power, amid the disintegration and crisis of the MQM. Now the JI finally questions itself, is it really the party of electoral politics?

Profile: Jamaat-i-Islami

Following years of defeats whenever it has come up independently to contest polls, the party finally looks at what went wrong over the years that has made its narrative no longer attractive for the people and mainly the young generation.

These questions are not raised by any disgruntled worker, neither do they come from a JI critic. These are a few amongst the many points compiled in a report as food for thought, suggestions and proposals by senior leaders of the JI who were assigned to look into the causes behind the recent defeat in elections, propose reforms, and suggest measures that may help the party in overcoming the recent crisis — even to amendments in its constitution.

The committee holds meetings with the cadres of the party, visits towns and cities, goes to villages and hamlets and completes the job in weeks.

“The report of the committee has finally been submitted to Ameer-e-Jamaat [Senator Siraj-ul-Haq],” says a party leader who wishes to stay anonymous. The confirmation comes from another party leader privy to the committee operations and its findings.

“The committee has found that the brand of JI — or you can say the narrative it’s been carrying for decades — has somehow lost its charm for the people of Pakistan. Unfortunately the party has nothing to offer them in the current situation, which attracts the new generation and one needs to think over it,” he says. “Over rebranding, over the narrative.”

“A second question has strongly emerged for the committee — the future of the JI as an electoral political party. Should it continue with the current status or the same electoral political party that has not been seeing any improvement for years? Or should the JI go for a separate political wing and retain its role as the mother organisation, which mainly focuses on Dawat and Tableegh?”

He then refers to the same experiment in 1993 when the then JI chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed launched the Pakistan Islamic Front as an electoral entity of the party. The results of the 1993 elections for the party, however, remained one of the worst.

“It was a premature idea and was executed without much planning and debate,” says the party leader. “Questions, or you can say food for thought, have been raised in the report.”.

“The JI is now seriously lacking sobriety and depth,” says Dr Jaffar Ahmed, former director of the Pakistan Study Centre at the University of Karachi. “The party, which was once linked with intellectuality, thought or ideological process, has come to a halt. It has taken over the field of politics which is not wrong but unfortunately it has lost all the ground for which the party was known.”

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2018