the crisis of modernisation and islamicisation 325ernism. In that he asserts in The Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts
in Islam, “No wonder then that the young generation...demand a
fresh orientation of their faith. With the reawakening of Islam, there-
fore, it is necessary to examine, in an independent spirit, what Europe
has thought and how far the conclusions reached by her can help
us in the revision, and if necessary, reconstruction of theological
thought in Islam”, (Iqbal, 1968).
Abù A"la Maudùdìand Jamaat-i-Islami
AbùA"la Maudùdì(1903–1979) carried the banner of re-Islamisation
in Pakistan in trying to mobilise the masses to return to the Islamic
values and ideals. To help achieve this objective, Maudùdìfounded
jama"at-i-Islami(Society of Islam) in 1941 as a centralised, strictly hier-
archical organisation, similar to the Muslim Brothers in Egypt (Sagiv,
1995). Like the Muslim Brothers Society in Egypt, the Pakistani
Jama’at had a similar long term objective of establishing an Islamic
state which Maudùdìcalled a “Theo-democracy”, (Sivan, 1990).
Although, like Abdou, al-Afghànì and al-Banna in Egypt before
him, Maudùdì acknowledged that there might be a necessity of
importing Western science and technology he maintained that tech-
nology could be applied without Islamic values being sacrificed as
there was no contradiction between the two.
He stressed a theory of “new Jahiliyyah”, referring to Jahiliyyah
in pre-Islamic Arabia that meant ignorance and misguidance. He
ascertained that the state of Muslims in the twentieth century was
a state of ignorance of their religion and Islamic ideals and as such
they were living in a new Jahiliyyah. He went further to state that the
majority of Muslims had become alienated from the original inten-
tion of Islam and were therefore apostate, and as such they usurped
the divine authority by designing their own law (Davidson, 2003).
Maudùdìwent as far as characterizing governments in Muslim coun-
tries that did not implement strict Sharì"ah as apostate, obligating
the true believer to wage jihàdagainst them (Esposito, 2002). He
invited his followers in Jamaat-i-Islami to remain outside government
until such time when society had been Islamized (Sagiv, 1995).
Consequently, as a parliamentary party the Jamaat deliberately stayed
out of government until 1948, after which time when it accepted
the idea of a gradual reform within government.