Jahiliyyah

"Jahalia" redirects here. For the Romanian village, see Râșca, Suceava.

Not to be confused with Ahl al-Fatrah.

Al-Jāhiliyyah ("The Age of Ignorance") is a historical era in Islamic salvation history that describes the pre-Islamic Arabian past or, more specifically, the Hejaz (Western Arabia) in the centuries leading up to the life of Muhammad. It is a time when the jahl (sing. jāhil) predominated, people signified by Islamic religious authorities as either lacking in religious knowledge (ʿilm) or characterized by barbarism and an absence of important virtuous and civilized qualities (ḥilm). Both ʿilm and ḥilm were thought to have come by Muhammad's revelations.

Emblematic of this society was polytheism and idol worship, tyranny and injustice (resulting in despotism and anarchy), female infanticide (ritual killing of baby girls), and vainglorious tribal antagonisms. Today, these impressions are thought to have been forged in the creation of a master narrative of a morally corrupt social order that condenses, homogenizes, and essentializes centuries of pre-Islamic history into a barbaric way of life overshadowed by the way of life introduced by Muhammad. Analogous constructs include the narrative of the Age of Enlightenment that it was preceded by a European Dark Ages or the notion of a world contaminated by Original Sin before the coming of Jesus Christ who redeems the world from its fallen state. As a discourse, it functions to validate the venture of Islam.

Islamists have used the concept of jahiliyyah to criticize un-Islamic conduct in the Muslim world. 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." Sayyid Qutb viewed jahiliyyah as a state of domination of humans over humans, as opposed to their submission to God. 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.

Etymology

The term jahiliyyah is derived from the Arabic verbal root jahala "to be ignorant or stupid, to act stupidly". It has been suggested that the word jahiliyyah in the Quran means "ignorant people", in contrast to traditionalist or contemporary notions of an "age" or "state of ignorance".

Jahiliyyah society

According to Islamic-era scholars, a regular practice during the Jahiliyyah was for Arabians to commit female infanticide by burying their daughters alive (which they called waʾd al-banāt). According to Al-Tha'labi (d. 1035) in his commentary on Quran 81:8:

When a man had a daughter and he wanted to spare her life, he would dress her in a garment of wool or hair, and [when she had grown up] she would watch over his camels and sheep in the steppe. If he wanted to kill her, he would let her live until she was six spans in length (sudāsiyyah) and then say to her mother, “Perfume and adorn her, for I will take her to meet her relatives.” [Instead,] he had dug a pit for her in the desert where he would take her. He would say to her, “Look there.” Then he would push her into it from her back and pour earth over her until the ground was even … And Ibn ʿAbbās has said that when a pregnant woman was about to give birth during the jāhiliyyah, she would dig a grave and give birth next to it. If it was a daughter, she would cast her in the grave, and if it was a son, she would keep him.

Ilkka Lindstedt argues that notions of this practice in the jahiliyyah derived as an inference of two verses in the Quran (16:57–59, 81:8–9). Lindstedt, however, argues that there is little evidence to support such a practice in pre-Islamic Arabia and that the Quranic verses themselves are unlikely to have originally carried this meaning.

Other extreme and violent practices attributed to the Jahiliyyah included corpse mutilation, abuse and torture of captives, and random murder. In one tradition, Muhammad's uncle, Hamza ibn Abd al-Muttalib, is killed in the Battle of Uhud: subsequently, the jahl mutilated his corpse. Muhammad, by contrast, forbade the mutilation of corpses. They were also said to have tortured some Muslim prisoners they captured.

A practice regularly attributed to the Jahiliyyah was overly emotional wailing over the death of loved ones (niyāḥa), contrasted in tradition with the more civilized and rational Islamic practice of accepting the inevitability of death without excessive displays of emotion. G.H.A. Juynboll demonstrated that Islamic attitudes towards niyāḥa were far from uniform and that the absolute prohibition against it emerged in Iraq in the second half of the eighth century before being retrojected into Prophetic hadith. In a later study, Leor Halevi diverged from Juynboll in arguing that niyāḥa was a genuine pre-Islamic practice as opposed to an Islamic-era creation, although Halevi agreed with Juynboll that it was not prohibited by Muhammad. Peter Webb's most recent study agrees that it was a practice that occurred in pre-Islamic times due to its mention in pre-Islamic poetry, but he also argued that Islamic-era authors exaggerated the features of the custom and reshaped it into a quintessential trait of the "Jahili" past.

Several non-Sunni texts also provide depictions of the Jahiliyyah. For example, according to the Ibadi author Hūd ibn al-Muªakkam, the Jahiliyyah was characterized as a time that people forced their female slaves into prostitution so that she could have more children. Al-Qummī, a Shia, says that slaves were forced into prostitution for the profit of their master.

Evolution of the Jahiliyyah narrative

Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry

The term with the root j-h-l is cited several times in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, especially in the poetry of Imru' al-Qais and Al-Nabighah al-Dhubyani (where it is used eight and six times respectively). The meaning of the word in these poems is disputed. According to Ignaz Goldziher and Toshihiko Izutsu, the word meant "barbarism" and was used as an antonym (opposite) of ḥilm (forbearance, equanimity). Franz Rosenthal argued that it meant ignorance and was used as an opposite of ʿilm (religious knowledge). Peter Webb has accepted both of these definitions, finding different contexts in which each is the more appropriate definition.

Quran

The term jahiliyyah appears four times in the Quran (3:154, 5:50, 33:33, 48:26). In the Quran, the word is not used to refer to a historical epoch, but instead characterizes a way of life ascribed to the disbelievers who, in their ignorance, failed to acknowledge the message of Muhammad. For example, Muhammad emphasized the reward of the afterlife whereas those who rejected his message lacked a belief in an afterlife entirely. The use of the word jahiliyyah in Islamic literature from later centuries therefore diverged from the way that the word was used in the Quran in three key ways: (1) It came to refer to a historical epoch instead of a way of life or a moral state of being (2) It came to be used to refer to Arabs generally instead of Muhammad's opponents (3) It came to be associated with a recurring set of particular negative stereotypes. The transformation of this term into a historical era may have been driven by Quran 33:33, which talks about former times in which jahiliyyah prevailed.

Classical Arabic dictionaries

Early Arabic dictionaries stressed two features of jahiliyyah: a specific period of time between two prophets (Al-Fatra, sometimes more narrow as the time between Jesus and Muhammad) and the opposition between jahiliyyah and ʿilm. These approaches are found in the earliest surviving Arabic dictionary, the Kitab al-'Ayn of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi, as well as the dictionaries of Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) and Al-Azharī (d. 980). These sources do not confine the jahiliyyah to Arabia or attach particular disordered characteristics to it. For some, the word could also be used to refer to a future time of religious ignorance (especially the time leading up to the apocalypse) or it could be used to refer to a set of quantified time periods: for Al-Tabari in the tenth century, it denoted both Arabia before Muhammad and Israel before Jesus. In the twelfth century and on, a new style of definition is adopted for the jahiliyyah, as is seen by the works of al-Zamakhshari and al-Ḥimyarī. Jahiliyyah began to be used to describe the non-Islamic past in general instead of the time between prophets, especially one lacking in or in opposition to moral virtue. With the Lisān al-ʿArab of Ibn Manzur (d. 1312), the word is constricted to pre-Islamic Arabs in particular in addition to their negative moral characteristics. Ibn Manzur's definition is the one found in dictionaries today.

Quran commentaries

The meaning of jahiliyyah experiences a similar evolution in exegeses of the Quran as they do in Arabic dictionaries. In the eighth-century commentary by Muqatil ibn Sulayman, the jahiliyyah describes the recent pre-Islamic past instead of pre-Islamic times in its entirety. In the commentaries of Al-Tabari, the word describes a period between prophets and the moral code of the non-Muslim community. The commentaries of Al-Zamakhshari and Al-Qurtubi in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries introduce the phrase al-Jahiliyyah understood as a period of time whose inhabitants were morally tarred by virtue of the era they lived in. Related phrases in this context included millat al-Jāhiliyya (the religious community of al-Jāhiliyya) and ahl al-Jāhiliyya (the people of al-Jāhiliyya). Both exegetes characterize Al-Jahiliyyah as the pre-Islamic past as a whole, and not the time between any two prophets. Al-Qurtubi expands on the qualities of this era such as fanaticism, idol worship, and rule by the strong over the weak.

Positive portrayals

A more optimistic version of the jahiliyyah narrative can be found among many authors in the second and third centuries of Islam during the early Abbasid period. In this period where Arab tribal identity continued to be important, many sought to extol their genealogical ancestors as opposed to denigrating them, as can be found with the Ma'add or South Arabian ancestries. For many, especially poets and philologists, the jahiliyyah was a heroic era that gave rise to both pure Arabic and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, crafted by renowned poets such as Imru' al-Qais and others. Continuity is emphasized instead of discontinuity between Jahiliyyah and Islam, including in areas of religion. As such, pre-Islamic ethics are seen as praiseworthy, laudatory, and the basis of Arabness. Individuals (hanifs) or entire tribes maintained the monotheism introduced by Abraham or Ishmael, and rites such as the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) were maintained throughout this time period. Lists of the merits of the Arabs from this time period were written. The Musannaf of Ibn Abi Shaybah contains a mix of positive and negative hadith about the Jahiliyyah. Positive hadith condone various unique Jahili rituals and legal practices.

Jahiliyyah in medieval Islam

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.

Classical Qur'anic commentator ibn Kathir ( d. 1373), a prominent pupil of Ibn Taymiyya, propounded the same belief in his tafsir, writing: "[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."

Jahiliyyah in the present

Further information: Qutbism

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.

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. 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."

Abul Ala Maududi, characterized modernity with its values, lifestyles, and political norms as the "new Jahiliyyah" which was incompatible with Islam. 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. 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? 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.

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."

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

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

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.

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; that true Islam is a complete system with no room for any element of Jahiliyya; that all aspects of Jahiliyya ("manners, ideas and concepts, rules and regulations, values and criteria") are "evil and corrupt"; that Western and Jewish conspiracies are constantly at work to destroy Islam, 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.

Iconoclasm

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

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."

See also

• Arabic poetry
• Hanif
• Pre-Islamic Arabia
• Rahmanan
• Takfir
• Year Zero (political notion)
• Al-Dukhul and Hummel Mountains

References

Sources

• Halevi, Leor (2004). "Wailing for the Dead: The Role of Women in Early Islamic Funerals". Past & Present. 183: 3–39.
• Halverson, Jeffry R.; Goodall, H.R.; Corman, Steven R. (2011). "The Jahiliyyah". Master Narratives of lslamist Extremism. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 37–48.
• Lindstedt, Ilkka (2023). "The Qurʾān and the Putative pre-Islamic Practice of Female Infanticide". Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association. 8 (1): 5–29.
• Munt, Harry (2015). "Arabic and Persian Sources for Pre-Islamic Arabia". In Fisher, Greg (ed.). Arabs and Empires before Islam. Oxford University Press. pp. 434–500.
• Shepard, William E. (2007). "Age of Ignorance". In Jane Dammen, McAullife (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Quran, Volume 1. Brill. pp. 37–40.
• Urban, Elizabeth (2020). Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves and the Sons of Slave Mothers. Edinburgh University Press.
• Webb, Peter (2014). "Al-Jāhiliyya: Uncertain Times of Uncertain Meanings". Der Islam. 91 (1): 69–94.
• Webb, Peter (2016). Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam. Edinburgh University Press.
• Webb, Peter (2020). "Cry me a Jāhiliyya: Muslim Reconstructions of Pre-Islamic Arabian Culture—A Case Study". In Sijpesteijn, Petra M.; Adang, Camilla (eds.). Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll. Brill. pp. 235–280.

Further reading

• Al-Sharqi, Laila M. (2022). "Intersectionality and Transnationalism in Lailā Al-Johanī's Jāhiliyya (Age of Ignorance)". Contemporary Women's Writin. 15 (3): 382–401.
• 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.

External links

• The dictionary definition of jahiliyyah at Wiktionary