The Jamaat’s journey

The Jamaat-e-Islami, which used to be a mainstream religious political party of the 1970s, has gradually faded into political obscurity due to wrong policies. Once a formidable political group with significant street power and feared by its rivals, the Jamaat is now reduced to a small pressure group with fading memories of its past glory and power.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Jamaat-e-Islami was the second most powerful and well-organized political party after the PPP. It played a crucial role in the agitation of 1977, which ultimately led to the downfall of the popularly elected prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

It is true that political parties, like human beings, have life cycles – they are born, they grow powerful or weak, and sometimes they die. However, the decline of the Jamaat-e-Islami is peculiar. Many rightists still admire it, appreciate its work, respect its leadership for their honesty and integrity, and continue to send their hard-earned money to it. Many in Pakistan and abroad align with Jamaat-e-Islami on international issues like conflicts etc – yet they no longer vote for the Jamaat. They may still be sympathetic to this religious party in their hearts, but they believe it is no longer a viable option in Pakistani politics.

The Jamaat-e-Islami’s social services wing, Al-khidmat, is thriving day by day, but the Jamaat’s political influence is declining. Many across the globe describe Pakistanis as emotional, ideological, and overly religious people, but in the political field, they are very practical and pragmatic. Jamaat and its student wing, Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), trained politicians who did not stick to their first love of youth, the Jamaat-e-Islami, but joined popular nationalist parties, considering them more viable. Two of the incumbent federal ministers, Chaudhry Ahsan Iqbal and Musadaq Malik, were prominent IJT activists. Similarly, PTI leaders Arif Alvi, Asad Qaiser, Ijaz Chaudhry, Senator Tariq Ch, and Mian Mahmood ur Rasheed all had their roots in the Jamaat-e-Islami. The brave and seasoned politician, Javed Hashmi, also rose to prominence as a student leader of the IJT.

Ordinary voters in Pakistan are also very practical and pragmatic. They have similar thoughts to the above-mentioned IJT and Jamaat leaders. They may trust the Jamaat’s leadership for their honesty and shower donations for its social services, but they do not vote for it because of its non-viability. The Jamaat’s vote bank has fallen from 6.0 per cent in the 1970s to 2.3 per cent in the 2024 elections.

The Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) has served as a nursery of leaders for the Jamaat. Three of its Amirs, Syed Munawar Hassan, Siraj Ul Haq and Hafiz Naeem ur Rehman, came directly from IJT cadres. Even Qazi Hussain Ahmed was inspired by his brothers who were IJT activists. The present rank and file of the Jamaat are mostly from IJT. Leaders like Liaqat Baloch and Amir Ul Azeem, both part of the present central leadership, were once leaders of the IJT. Tragically for the Jamaat, this nursery is drying up with the long-standing ban on student politics.

The fresh blood supply for Jamaat-e-Islami has stopped. Moreover, irrelevance from the current political scenario has left no attraction for the younger generation to move towards the Jamaat. The end of the ideological division between the Right and the Left has pushed the Jamaat, as well as its ideological rivals of the Left, to the sidelines of politics. The IJT used to serve as a fresh blood supply, but it also earned a bad name for the party of the pure (Saleheen).

The Jamaat was initially planned to be a party of pure and peaceful people who were always at the forefront in any national calamity like floods or earthquakes. However, the IJT proved to be a more aggressive and violent group, tarnishing the image of the mother party from a peaceful party to an aggressive politico-religious pressure group.

Violence helped the IJT create a monopoly on student politics, but it damaged the Jamaat and IJT’s reputation. The IJT virtually ruled campuses and colleges, but outside educational boundaries, it suffered a severe loss of reputation. Students who experienced IJT rule in universities turned into hardened opponents of the IJT and Jamaat-e-Islami. Many young supporters of the Jamaat also made an ideological shift when they entered the practical and business world.

In the early nineties, the Jamaat motivated many of its supporters to venture into private education to continue the ideological hold on the field, but most of the supporters who became successful in the education business changed their ideology. For example, the Jamaat and IJT always opposed the co-education system to the hilt, but most JI-supported education investors opted for coeducation in their private educational institutions because it suited them business-wise. In the practical world, business interests come first, and ideology becomes a second priority.

The changing Jamaat-e-Islami policies have also disgruntled many of its supporters. The Jamaat has tried both modes, solo flight and electoral alliances, to secure more seats. It got the maximum number of National Assembly seats it was part of alliances: a maximum of 17 through the MMA in the 2002 elections under General Musharraf, nine through the PNA in 1977, and eight through the IJI in the 1988 and 1990 general elections. When on a solo flight, the Jamaat-e-Islami secured four National Assembly seats in 1970, only three in 1993, three in 2013, one seat in 2018, and none in the 2024 elections.

The election data clearly shows the Jamaat benefited from alliance politics, while solo flights have cost it dearly. The Jamaat’s solo flight has greatly contributed to its gradual journey from the political mainstream to near oblivion. It is interesting to note that soon after the creation of Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami had serious internal infighting on the question of whether to participate in the elections or not.

In February 1957, at Machi Goth, the Jamaat had its most serious internal crisis when senior stalwarts like Amin Ahsan Islahi, Dr Israr Ahmed, Irshad Ahmed Haqqani, and Maulana Abdul Ghaffar Hassan rebelled against Maulana Moudoodi on the issue of taking part in politics. This issue might be pondered again within the Jamaat as it put 231 candidates on 266 seats of the National Assembly in the 2024 elections, showing its nationwide organisation, but the result was startling – it couldn’t win even one NA seat in the whole country.

On the one side, the Jamaat-e-Islami has lost its political grip, but on the other side, its social service wing, Al-Khidmat, has astonishingly grown to the highest limit of spending around 10 billion rupees annually. Therefore, it is high time for the Jamaat to either make a new political strategy or follow the path of Machi Goth rebels and restrict itself to social and religious causes only.

The writer is the editor of Jang in Lahore, an anchor, and the executive director at Geo TV.