Hasina Wajed, the Bangladeshi prime minister, is on a witch- hunt. She is executing political rivals after putting them through kangaroo trials. She is dredging up old hatreds that will cost her dearly as well.
Imam Khomeini, who left this earthly abode and joined heavenly company on June 3, 1989, has had a profound impact on global politics. The Islamic Republic’s success in withstanding the global conspiracy of kufr and nifaq for more than 36 years is testimony to its strong Islamic roots.
Both the Ikhwan al-Muslimoon in Egypt and Hamas in Palestine have suffered greatly but they continue to consort with unsavory characters tarnishing their own reputation.
The media in Pakistan display the most negative characteristics of any group in the country. Most of them are on the payroll of foreign masters including the Americans and Indians, they indulge in the most nonsensical allegations against people they do not like. The new amir of the Jamaat-e Islami, Sirajul Haq has also been subjected to vicious attacks.
If there is any truth in the saying that people vote against, rather than for, someone or something, then the results of the general elections in Pakistan on February 18 are a stinging rebuke to General Pervez Musharraf and the party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e Azam faction, PML-Q), that he created as a civilian façade for his brutal rule.
The main factor exacerbating the situation of Pakistan and Pakistanis is the state of the local Islamic movement there. The Jama‘at-e Islami is in no position to show anyone the way out of the morass that Pakistan has become. Likewise the Ikhwan – the Jama‘at's analogue in the Arab world – are running around in circles in Egypt.
The reasons for the current political turmoil in Pakistan are not difficult to see. We have a government, led by Pervez Musharraf, that has been utterly discredited by its subservience to the United States of America, which is regarded as a sworn enemy by the majority of Pakistan’s people, and by its willingness to wage war on its own people at the US’s behest. And we have opposition politicians angling to replace Musharraf who have no more credibility because of their own records in power in the past, and the fact that they too are perfectly willing – even eager – to kowtow to the US in order to secure their own position.
The countrywide protests that began in Pakistan when President General Pervez Musharraf declared the country’s Chief Justice (CJ), Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, “non-functional” on March 9 are continuing, with no sign of the crisis being resolved in the foreseeable future. For the CJ’s supporters, the ideal outcome would be the withdrawal of charges against him at the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) – a forum for internal accountability of the judiciary – and his restoration to his position; in other words, a return to the status quo existing before March 9.
Iqbal Siddiqui on the desperate need of an Islamic movement in Pakistan..
With Qazi Husain Ahmed, its amir (leader), in detention since October, the Jama’at-e Islami, an Islamic political party in Pakistan, is feeling somewhat adrift, although acting amir Syed Munawwar Hasan is trying gamely to lead.
The issue of Palestine is central to the Islamic movement. Obviously, the occupation of Islam’s third holy city by the greatest enemies of Islam and the greatest powers of kufr that history has ever known is a situation that Muslims can never accept. But the experience of opposing that occupation is proving a severe testing-ground for the Ummah.
One thing that revolutionary Islamic movements have largely been clear about since the Islamic Revolution in Iran is that trying to come to power through democratic processes in the political systems established and run by secularist politicians in Muslim countries is a waste of time.
Qazi Husain Ahmed started his third term as Amir (leader) of the Jama’at-e Islami in Pakistan on April 8. He was elected by 79.38 percent of the 11,234 votes cast in last month’s leadership elections. He was first elected amir of the Jama’at in 1989.
This paper was presented by Imam Muhammad al-Asi at the ‘Dr Kalim Siddiqui Memorial Conference' convened by the Muslim Institute for Research and Planning and the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain in London on November 3, 1996.
Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maudoodi (1908 – 1979) is the best-known modern Muslim writer and activist and his books, both in their original Urdu and in translation are probably more widely read in all countries than any other contemporary Muslim author. As founder of the Jama’at-e-Islami in Lahore in 1941, he is unique among Muslim scholars in that he was also a man of action who, through his political movement, strived to the limits of his mental and physical strength to implement into practical life all that he wrote.
[Kalim Siddiqui, Political thought and behaviour of Muslims under colonialism, London: The Muslim Institute, 1986. This was the keynote paper presented at the Muslim Institute World Seminar on ‘Muslim Political Thought during the Colonial Period’, London: August 6-9, 1986. It was reprinted as the introduction to Kalim Siddiqui (ed), Issues in the Islamic Movement 1985-86, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1987, and in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1996.]
[Paper was written and published as the introduction to Kalim Siddiqui (ed), Issues in the Islamic Movement 1981-82, London and Toronto: The Open Press, 1983, and reprinted in Zafar Bangash (ed), In Pursuit of the Power of Islam: Major Writings of Kalim Siddiqui, 1996.]
