Jahiliyya: Difference between revisions

The idea of "modern Jahiliyya" was revived as an independent concept by some scholars in recent decades, mainly as a result of the encounter between the Islamic world and the modern world. For the first time in 1318 S.H. (1939), Sayyid [[Abul A'la al-Maududi]] (d. 1358 S.H./ 1979), the Pakistani religious leader and politician, talked about modernity as the modern Jahiliyya. He intended the term to include all governmental systems and socio-political viewpoints that are incompatible with Islamic ethics and cultures. He considered both the Communist and the Western worlds to be examples of modern Jahiliyya. Mawdudi's views were circulated in the Arabic world by the translation of his works into Arabic in 1950s (1330s S.H.).

The Egyptian religious scholar and political activist, [[Sayyid Qutb]] (d. 1346 S.H./ 1966), remarkably developed the notion of modern Jahiliyya. In his view, all ideas, beliefs, cultures and laws in today's world are instances of Jahiliyya. In this view, Jahiliyya consists in one human person serving and obeying another, whereas [[Islam]] is one human person serving and obeying [[God]]. Thus the two are irreconcilable, and in order to establish an Islamic society we should move from Jahiliyya to Islam.

Sayyid Qutb's brother, Muhammad Qutb (d. 1344 S.H./ 1965), also maintains that Jahiliyya consists in the psychological attitude of refusing to accept any guidance from God and any judgment in accordance with divine laws. In other words, Jahiliyya consists in whimsical judgments that may occur in any period and by any ethnicity. He held that Arab's Jahiliyya was simple and superficial, but modern Jahiliyya is based on science, research, theorization, and in general, what has come to be called progress and modern civilization. Muhammad Qutb took the twentieth century Jahiliyya to be the outcome of Jahiliyya in all periods of the Western history. In his view, the way to be liberated from the modern Jahiliyya is the liberation from its two tenets, that is, Capitalism and Communism, and the return to Islam.