Jamaat-e-Islami

Jamaat-e-Islami is an Islamist movement founded in 1941 in British India by the author of Tafhim-ul-Quran, Syed Abul Ala Maududi, who developed a conception of "theo-democracy", whereby a state operates in full accordance with Islamic law in all areas of life, and is ruled by the entire Muslim community. While its founding branch in Pakistan has been labelled fundamental, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami remains politically dominant, serving as the country’s main opposition party and previously holding ministerial positions through coalition governments.

One of the most influential and powerful Islamist organisations, Jamaat-e-Islami was founded to revive Islamic values across the Indian subcontinent and advocate for an Islamic political system. It was formed on 26 August 1941 in Lahore under the leadership of Maududi, who believed that contemporary political ideologies resulted from Western imperialism, and that it was necessary to implement Sharia law to preserve Muslim culture. According to some scholars, the events following the death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir and loss of his Sharia code of Fatawa Alamgiri, weakened the Muslim authority in the subcontinent, creating an environment in which later thinkers argued for restoring strength through Sharia based governance. Maududi believed politics was "an integral, inseparable part of the Islamic faith," and that Islamic ideology and non-Islamic ideologies (such as capitalism and socialism, liberalism or secularism) were mutually exclusive. He saw the creation of an Islamic state as both act of piety, and a cure for social and economic problems faced by Muslims, which he attributed to Western influence. For his service to Islam, Mawdudi became the first recipient of the Saudi Arabian King Faisal International Award in 1979. Wilfred Cantwell Smith described the ideology as "the most systematic thinker of modern Islam".