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Jahiliyyah

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Not to be confused with Ahl al-Fatrah.

In Islam, jahiliyyah (Arabic: ‏جَاهِلِيَّة‎ [d͡ʒæːhɪˈlɪj.jæ]) is a polemical term for the society of pre-Islamic Arabia. It is otherwise called the Age of Ignorance, referring to Arabian religious practices before the rise of Muhammad in the 7th century.[1][2] It may be derived from the verbal root jāhala (جهل, lit. 'to be ignorant or stupid' or 'to act stupidly').[3] Alternatively, it is an abstract noun derived from jāhil, the Arabic term for a barbarian.[2]

Islamists have used the concept of jahiliyyah to criticize un-Islamic conduct in the Muslim world.[1] Prominent Muslim theologians like Muhammad Rashid Rida and Abul A'la Maududi, among others, have used the term as a reference to secular modernity and, by extension, to modern Western culture. In his works, Maududi asserts that modernity is the "new jahiliyyah."[4][5] Sayyid Qutb viewed jahiliyyah as a state of domination of humans over humans, as opposed to their submission to God.[6] Likewise, radical Muslim groups have often justified the use of violence against secular regimes by framing their armed struggle as a jihad to strike down modern forms of jahiliyyah.[6]

In the context of jahiliyyah, many Muslim historians have stated that violent misogyny, particularly female infanticide, was common among Arabians before Islam was founded. However, the information in these sources may have been greatly exaggerated in order to provide a foundation for high criticism of the Age of Ignorance, both for religious concerns and for other reasons.[7]

Jahiliyyah is similar in some ways to Ahl al-Fatrah (أهل الفترة, lit. 'people of the time period'), which refers to people who were alive at any point between the supposed death of Jesus around 30 CE and the first revelation of Muhammad around 610 CE. Generally speaking, fatrah refers to those whom the message of God was not or could not be transmitted effectively, thus absolving them of personal accountability for idolatry or like-minded sins. Meanwhile, jahiliyyah refers to pre-Islamic Arabians who might have had the option of following Abrahamic monotheism (i.e., becoming a hanif) as per their knowledge, but chose not to do so out of ignorance or pride, thus incurring divine punishment on the Day of Judgement.

Etymology

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The term jahiliyyah is derived from the Arabic verbal root jahala "to be ignorant or stupid, to act stupidly".[3] It has been suggested that the word jahiliyyah in the Quran means "ignorant people", against both the traditional Islamic interpretation "Age of Ignorance", and the Orientalist interpretation "(state of) ignorance" (Ancient Greek ἄγνοια).[8] The basic argument is that the ending -iyyah in early Arabic (Arabiyya) denotes a collective plural noun rather than an abstract noun, as the word jahiliyya was later understood.

In the Quran

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The term Jahiliyyah is used several places in the Quran, and translations often use various terms to represent it:

  • Then, following misery, He sent down upon you a feeling of security, a slumber overcoming a party among you, while another party cared only for themselves, thinking false thoughts about God, thoughts fit for the Age of Idolatry. Quran 3:154[9]
  • Do they truly desire the law of paganism? But who is fairer than God in judgment for a people firm of faith? Quran 5:50 [10]
  • Remain in your homes, and do not display your adornments, as was the case with the earlier Age of Barbarism. Quran 33:33[11]
  • For the unbelievers had planted in their hearts a zealotry, the zealotry of lawlessness ... Quran 48:26[12]

Historical concept

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This term refers to Arab culture before the arrival of Islam. Before Islam, some of the tribes of Arabia were nomadic, with a strong community spirit and some specific society rules. Their culture was patriarchal, with rudimentary religious beliefs. Their religious beliefs included yearly celebrations around the Kaaba, a time of trading and social exchange. Since the term describes the condition of the time, 'Jahiliyya' is used to describe the period of ignorance and darkness that predated Islam.[13]

A notable usage of this concept during the Islamic Golden Age is from the controversial 13th-century theologian ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) who pronounced takfir (excommunication) upon the Ilkhanate monarchs who had publicly professed themselves as Muslims yet implemented a legal system which was based on the traditional Mongol Yassa judicial code instead of Muslim law. According to ibn Taymiyya, a ruler who claims to be Muslim but codified human-made laws for governance is guilty of the pagan idolatry of jahiliyya; in spite of his declaration of the shahada (Islamic testimony of faith), or regular observance of salah (prayers), sawm (fasting) and other outward expressions of religiosity.[14]

Classical Qur'anic commentator ibn Kathir ( d. 1373), a prominent pupil of Ibn Taymiyya, propounded the same belief in his tafsir, writing: {{quote|[These verses] refer to people who abide by regulations and laws set by men, to fit their own misguided desires and whims, rather than adhering to the Shari'a bestowed upon us by Allah. This was the case with the inhabitants [of Arabia] during the jahiliyya . . . and (today) with the Mongols who follow the Yasa code set down by Genghis Khan, which is a conglomeration of laws, some taken from Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other legal traditions, and many others decided upon by the whim of the Mongol rulers; the whole amalgam being given priority over the laws of Allah laid down in the Koran and the Sunna. Those who follow such (man-made) laws are infidels and should be combated until they comply with the laws of God."[15]

"Modern Jahiliyyah" argument and Islamic revivalism

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Further information: Qutbism
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During the 1930s, militant Islamist movements began to increasingly assert that Islamic civilisation was threatened by the encroachment of Western values. At this juncture, the concept of Jahiliyya was revived by leading Islamic scholars Sayyid Rashid Rida (d.1935 C.E/ 1354 A.H) and Abul A'la Maududi (d. 1979 C.E/ 1399 A.H); both of whom equated the modern Western culture and its values with Jahiliyya. The notion was revived by prominent scholars of the twentieth century Egypt and South Asia; regions that were being impacted by increasing Westernization. These scholars saw in the doctrines of classical theologians like Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328 C.E/ 728 A.H), Ibn Qayyim (d. 1350 C.E/ 751 A.H), Ibn Kathir (d. 1373 C.E/ 774 A.H), etc. various remedies to the influx of foreign cultural influences.[4][16]

Syrian-Egyptian Salafi theologian Rashid Rida was the first major 20th-century Islamist scholar to revive Ibn Taymiyya's ideas. He described those "geographical Muslims" who nominally adhere to Islam without disavowing the man-made laws as being upon the conditioning of Jahiliyyah.[17] Rida asserts in Tafsir al-Manar that the Qur’ānic verse 5:44 condemning those who don't judge by Sharia (Islamic Law) refers to:

".. those Muslim [rulers] who introduce novel laws today and forsake the Shari'a enjoined upon them by God. . . . They thus abolish supposedly 'distasteful’ penalties such as cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers and prostitutes. They replace them by man-made laws and penalties. He who does that has undeniably become an infidel."[16]

Abul Ala Maududi, characterized modernity with its values, lifestyles, and political norms as the "new Jahiliyyah" which was incompatible with Islam.[18] Such criticisms of modernity were taken up in the emerging anti-colonialist rhetoric, and the term gained currency in the Arab world through translations of Maududi's work.[1] The concept of modern Jahiliyyah attained wide popularity through a 1950 work by Maududi's student Abul Hasan Nadvi, titled What Did the World Lose Due to the Decline of Islam?[1] Expounding Maududi's views, Nadvi wrote that Muslims were to be held accountable for their predicament, because they came to rely on alien, un-Islamic institutions borrowed from the West.[1]

In Egypt, Sayyid Qutb popularized the term in his influential work Ma'alim fi al-Tariq "Milestones", which included the assertion that "the Muslim community has been extinct for a few centuries."[19]

When a person embraced Islam during the time of the Prophet, he would immediately cut himself off from Jahiliyyah. When he stepped into the circle of Islam, he would start a new life, separating himself completely from his past life under ignorance of the Divine Law. He would look upon the deeds during his life of ignorance with mistrust and fear, with a feeling that these were impure and could not be tolerated in Islam! With this feeling, he would turn toward Islam for new guidance; and if at any time temptations overpowered him, or the old habits attracted him, or if he became lax in carrying out the injunctions of Islam, he would become restless with a sense of guilt and would feel the need to purify himself of what had happened, and would turn to the Quran to mold himself according to its guidance. — Sayyid Qutb[20]

In his commentary on verse 5:50 of the Quran, Qutb wrote:[21]

Jahiliyya [...] is the rule of humans by humans because it involves making some humans servants of others, rebelling against service to God, rejecting God's divinity (ulahiyya) and, in view of this rejection, ascribing divinity to some humans and serving them apart from God. [...] People—in any time and any place—are either governed by God's shari'a—entirely, without any reservations—accepting it and submitting to it, in which case they are following God's religion, or they are governed by a shari'a invented by humans, in whatever form, and accept it. In that case they are in jahiliyya [...]

Qutb further wrote: "The foremost duty of Islam in this world is to depose Jahiliyyah from the leadership of man, and to take the leadership into its own hands and enforce the particular way of life which is its permanent feature.[22]

Use of the term for modern Muslim society is usually associated with Qutb's other radical ideas (or Qutbism) -- namely that reappearance of Jahiliyya is a result of the lack of Sharia law, without which Islam cannot exist;[23] that true Islam is a complete system with no room for any element of Jahiliyya;[24] that all aspects of Jahiliyya ("manners, ideas and concepts, rules and regulations, values and criteria") are "evil and corrupt";[25] that Western and Jewish conspiracies are constantly at work to destroy Islam,[26] etc.

The Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir adds the concept of the caliphate to that of shariah law to insist that the Muslim world has been living in jahiliyya since the last caliphate was abolished in 1924 and will not be free of it until the caliphate is restored.[27][28]

Jahili poetry

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Main article: Arabic poetry § Pre-Islamic poetry

Pre-Islamic poetry is commonly referred to in Arabic as al-shiʿr al-jāhiliyy (الشعر الجاهلي) or Jahili poetry – literally "the ignorant poetry".

As iconoclastic rationale

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See also: Buddhas of Bamiyan and Destruction of cultural heritage by the Islamic State

Jahiliyya is associated with iconoclasms. In 2015, the ancient history scholar Lucinda Dirven noted that in the destruction of antiquities by the Islamic State, the religious rationale also covers for economic and political factors. "Cultural cleansing is a way to claim political power within a certain territory as well as control over history."[29] The assyriologist Eckart Frahm said, "Such iconoclasm is not specifically Islamic... What is quite unique in the case of ISIS is that the destruction is directed against images that are thousands of years old, often damaged, and no longer worshipped by anyone, and that there is a concerted effort to use these acts of vandalism as propaganda by broadcasting them through videos."[30][31]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Eleanor Abdella Doumato (rev. Byron D. Cannon) (2009). "Jāhilīyah". In John L. Esposito (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-530513-5.
  2. ^ a b Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J., eds. (1965). "Djāhiliyya". The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume II: C–G. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 383–384. OCLC 495469475.
  3. ^ a b Amros, Arne A. & Stephan Pocházka. (2004). A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden
  4. ^ a b Worth, Robert (13 October 2021). "The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 November 2009.
  5. ^ L. Esposito, John (2003). The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 154. ISBN 0-19-512558-4.
  6. ^ a b Jahiliyyah The Oxford Dictionary of Islam
  7. ^ Webb, Peter (2020). "Cry me a Jāhiliyya: Muslim Reconstructions of Pre-Islamic Arabian Culture—A Case Study". Islam at 250. Brill. pp. 235–280. doi:10.1163/9789004427952_013. ISBN 978-90-04-42795-2.
  8. ^ Bjorsnes, Amund (2018). "Jāhiliyya and Rahbāniyya in the Qur'ān". Reading Slowly: A Festschrift for Jens E. Braarvig, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. doi:10.2307/j.ctvckq4dr.9. Retrieved 8 July 2018.
  9. ^ (3:154)
  10. ^ (5:50)
  11. ^ (33:33)
  12. ^ (48:26)
  13. ^ Colla, Elliott (2007). Conflicted antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian modernity. U.S.A: Duke University Press. pp. 265, 266. ISBN 978-0822390398.
  14. ^ Sivan, Emmanuel (1990). "Four: The Sunni revolution". Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, N.Y., USA: Yale University Press. pp. 96–98. ISBN 0-300-04914-5.
  15. ^ Sivan, Emmanuel (1990). "Four: The Sunni revolution". Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, N.Y., USA: Yale University Press. pp. 97–98. ISBN 0-300-04914-5.
  16. ^ a b Sivan, Emmanuel (1990). "Four: The Sunni revolution". Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, N.Y., USA: Yale University Press. p. 101. ISBN 0-300-04914-5.
  17. ^ Sivan, Emmanuel (1990). "Four: The Sunni revolution". Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, N.Y., USA: Yale University Press. pp. 101–102. ISBN 0-300-04914-5.
  18. ^ L. Esposito, John (2003). The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 154. ISBN 0-19-512558-4.
  19. ^ Qutb, Milestones, p. 9
  20. ^ Qutb, Milestones, p. 19
  21. ^ William E. Shepard SAYYID QUTB'S DOCTRINE OF JAHILIYYA Int. J. Middle East Stud. 35 (2003), 521-545.
  22. ^ Miroslav Volf Exclusion or Saturation? Rethinking the Place of Religion in Public Life ABC Religion and Ethics. 2014
  23. ^ Qutb, Milestones, p.9, 82
  24. ^ Qutb, Milestones, p.32, 47
  25. ^ Qutb, Milestones, p.9, 132
  26. ^ Qutb, Milestones, p.110-111, 114, 116
  27. ^ "The Re-establishment of the Khilafah is an obligation upon all Muslims". khilafah.com. 24 June 2007. Retrieved 5 April 2016.[permanent dead link‍]
  28. ^ Baran, Zeyno (December 2004). "Hizb ut-Tahrir: Islam's Political Insurgency" (PDF). Nixon Center. p. 18. Retrieved 2016-03-30.
  29. ^ Dirven, Lucinda (2015). "Iconoclasm in the 'Islamic State'". Retrieved 8 October 2015.
  30. ^ Gonzalez, Susan (March 16, 2015). "ISIS' destruction of cultural antiquities: Q&A with Eckart Frahm". Yale News. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
  31. ^ Shaheen, Kareem (March 9, 2015). "Isis attacks on ancient sites erasing history of humanity, says Iraq". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 October 2015.
  • Qutb, Sayyid (2006). Milestones (PDF). Maktabah. Retrieved 5 April 2016.

Further reading

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  • Dr. Hina Azam. "Terrorism: A Return to Jahiliyya". alt.muslim. Archived from the original on 2006-03-20. Retrieved 2005-12-01.
  • Kepel, Gilles (1985). The Prophet and Pharaoh: Muslim Extremism in Egypt. Al Saqi. ISBN 0-86356-118-7.
  • Qutb, Sayyid (1981). Milestones. Mother Mosque Foundation.
  • Sivan, Emmanuel (1985). Radical Islam : Medieval Theology and Modern Politics. Yale University Press.
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Wikiquote has quotations related to Jahiliyyah.
  • The dictionary definition of jahiliyyah at Wiktionary
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