A Comparative Study of the Concept of Jāhiliyyah in the Thought of Twentieth-Century Thinkers (A Case Study of Ayatollah Kharqānī, Sayyid Qutb, and Abul A‘la Mawdudi)

Abstract

The colonization of Islamic societies by the West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries generated numerous reactions throughout the Muslim world. Muslim intellectuals attempted to identify the causes behind the decline of Islamic societies that had placed them in a position of defeat vis-à-vis the West. Various responses were proposed, foremost among them the attempt to locate the causes of this decline within Muslim societies themselves. Consequently, thinkers such as Ayatollah Kharqānī in Iran, Sayyid Qutb in Egypt, and Abul A‘la Mawdudi in India sought, through categorizing Islamic society into periods analogous to the era of the Prophetic mission, to formulate a path for overcoming the defeat of Islamic societies in the face of extensive cultural, political, social, and other forms of Western assault. In their view, contemporary Muslim societies resemble the pre-Prophetic era, and indeed the state of jāhiliyyah afflicting them may be even more severe than that of the Prophet’s time. The present study seeks, through a comparative approach, to examine the concept of jāhiliyyah in the thought of these three thinkers.