Jahiliyyah

"Jahalia" redirects here. For the Romanian village, see Râșca, Suceava.
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Not to be confused with Ahl al-Fatrah.

In Islam, jahiliyyah (Arabic: ‏جَاهِلِيَّة‎ [d͡ʒæːhɪˈlɪj.jæ]) is a polemical term for the society of pre-Islamic Arabia. It is otherwise called the Age of Ignorance, referring to Arabian religious practices before the rise of Muhammad in the 7th century.[1][2] It may be derived from the verbal root jāhala (جهل, lit. 'to be ignorant or stupid' or 'to act stupidly').[3] Alternatively, it is an abstract noun derived from jāhil, the Arabic term for a barbarian.[2]

Islamists have used the concept of jahiliyyah to criticize un-Islamic conduct in the Muslim world.[1] 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."[4][5] Sayyid Qutb viewed jahiliyyah as a state of domination of humans over humans, as opposed to their submission to God.[6] 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.[6]

In the context of jahiliyyah, many Muslim historians have stated that violent misogyny, particularly female infanticide, was common among Arabians before Islam was founded. However, the information in these sources may have been greatly exaggerated in order to provide a foundation for high criticism of the Age of Ignorance, both for religious concerns and for other reasons.[7]

Jahiliyyah is similar in some ways to Ahl al-Fatrah (أهل الفترة, lit. 'people of the time period'), which refers to people who were alive at any point between the supposed death of Jesus around 30 CE and the first revelation of Muhammad around 610 CE. Generally speaking, fatrah refers to those whom the message of God was not or could not be transmitted effectively, thus absolving them of personal accountability for idolatry or like-minded sins. Meanwhile, jahiliyyah refers to pre-Islamic Arabians who might have had the option of following Abrahamic monotheism (i.e., becoming a hanif) as per their knowledge, but chose not to do so out of ignorance or pride, thus incurring divine punishment on the Day of Judgement.

  1. ^ a b Eleanor Abdella Doumato (rev. Byron D. Cannon) (2009). "Jāhilīyah". In John L. Esposito (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-530513-5.
  2. ^ a b Lewis, B.; Pellat, Ch. & Schacht, J., eds. (1965). "Djāhiliyya". The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Volume II: C–G. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 383–384. OCLC 495469475.
  3. ^ Amros, Arne A. & Stephan Pocházka. (2004). A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic, Reichert Verlag, Wiesbaden
  4. ^ Worth, Robert (13 October 2021). "The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 November 2009.
  5. ^ L. Esposito, John (2003). The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 154. ISBN 0-19-512558-4.
  6. ^ a b Jahiliyyah The Oxford Dictionary of Islam
  7. ^ Webb, Peter (2020). "Cry me a Jāhiliyya: Muslim Reconstructions of Pre-Islamic Arabian Culture—A Case Study". Islam at 250. Brill. pp. 235–280. doi:10.1163/9789004427952_013. ISBN 978-90-04-42795-2.