Origin of the Political Islamist doctrine espoused by Jamaat-e-Islami

by rawemotions Thu Aug 04, 2016 8:09 pm

http://www.firstpost.com/world/behind-the-shah-faisal-award-zakir-naik-among-awardees-who-promoted-political-islamism-2915894.html

Excerpts
Known as “Amr bil Ma'ruf wa Nahi an al Munkar” (Enjoining good and forbidding evil), there is an essential Islamic doctrine enunciated in this Qur'anic verse. A modernist Qur’an exegete Muhammad Yunus, who has been engaged in an in-depth study of the Qur’an, explains the rationale behind this verse in his book Essential Message of Islam (Amana Publications, USA, 2009) co-authored by Ashfaque Ullah Syed:

“The Qur’an enjoins what it calls Ma’ruf – which it connotes with doing good to others and behaving in the most decent and reasonable manner in the community, forbids the Munkar: all acts, gesture, and behaviour that run counter to reason and contradict all norms of good behaviour (3:104, 3:110, 7:157, 9:112, 22:41, 31:17). For simplicity, we render these terms as the good (Ma’ruf) and the evil (Munkar)”.

Bereft of its moral trajectory and deeper spiritual exhortation, this verse has long been misconstrued by the political Islamist ideologues and preachers to accord the political authority to a ‘political Islamist party’ or ‘religious police’ or what is called “Mutawwa” or “Mutaween” in Saudi Arabia. The pioneer of political Islamism and founder of the Saudi state religion — Wahhabism —Shaikh Ibn Tamiyyah has written a complete book on this subject titled Enjoining Right and Forbidding Wrong. He was the first to propound a totalitarian theology misconstruing the Qur’anic concepts of al-ma’ruf(good) and al-munkar (evil).

But the question arises: Who will be responsible for 'enjoining good (Ma’ruf)' and 'forbidding the evil (Munkar)'? Is it left to the discretion of a political Islamist party like Jamaat-e-Islami or an extremist Islamist outfit like the Islamic State to declare what is good (Ma’ruf) and what is evil (Munkar)? Of course, it is not actually so. But this is what the translation of Maulana Maududi connotes, as he rendered the Qur’anic term “ummah” in this verse, which actually means ‘nation’ or ‘community’, into ‘party’.

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And, therefore, he founded his political Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami — in 1941 in the undivided India — which continues to operate today in many parts of the world where Muslims live in majority or minority including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Great Britain, and Afghanistan. Noteworthy is that Jamaat-e-Islami was founded in India on the same ideological base of political Islamism which the Islamist outfit Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan-ul-Muslimin) of the Islamist theologian Hasan al-Banna established in 1926 Egypt.

Bereft of its moral trajectory and deeper spiritual exhortation, this verse has long been misconstrued by the political Islamist ideologues and preachers to accord the political authority to a ‘political Islamist party’ or ‘religious police’ or what is called “Mutawwa” or “Mutaween” in Saudi Arabia.

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But, brazenly violating the spiritual essence of the Qur’anic doctrine — “enjoining good and forbidding the evil”— political Islamists have taken it upon themselves to correct whatever they view as ‘evil’ (al-munkar) in socio-political affairs of their countries. One of the gravest evils in their sight is secularism or democracy which is included in their scheme of al-munkar. Note the above reference to Maulana Maududi’s speech in which he despises secularism, encouraging the Saudi Kingdom’s initiative of running an international Islamic movement “which exerts great efforts to curb the destructive principles and the secular systems, and sacrifices a lot to revive Islam and ensure its dominance on this globe as a system, civilisation and Shari'ah”.
When the Jamaat-e-Islami’s founder-ideologue has shown an unequivocal abhorrence of secularism replacing it with the so-called Shariah and encouraging every Muslim individual to exert efforts to apply “the Islamic rules as in Pakistan”, the political Islamists’ anti-secularism and their dance of destruction against pluralism in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are no surprise.