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The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama'at-i Islami of Pakistan (Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies)

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With the exception of the much-studied Muslim Brethren of Egypt, few fundamentalist Islamic groups have been subjected to book-length investigations in English. And if any one deserves such attention, it's the Jama`at-i Islami (Islamic Party) of Pakistan, founded in 1941 by Sayyid Abul A`la Mawdudi (1903-79). Nasr, professor of political science at the University of San Diego, does his important subject justice in an excellent history of the founder and of his movement.

Throughout its existence, the Jama`at-i Islami has suffered from a tension between an intention to create a holy community of the righteous and the (frustrated) desire to attain power through the political process. Mawdudi himself bounced from one unattainable goal to another: in the mid-1930s he rejected the Pakistan movement, arguing that Muslims should seek to rule the whole of India. By 1940 he accepted the inevitability of a Pakistan and began a decades-long effort to dominate that state.

All that's missing from Nasr's fine study is a consideration of Mawdudi's profound influence on the fundamentalist movement outside Pakistan, and specifically on Ayatollah Khomeini; in other words, how exactly was the Jama`at-i Islami "the vanguard of the Islamic Revolution"? That's such an important and large subject, it's surely worthy of another volume by the same author.

Middle East Quarterly, December 1994

A superb analysis of the causes of Islamic fundamentalism. Also has much about Pakistan politics. A must read. Readable and erudite.