Jahiliyyah

Jahiliyyah (Arabic جاهلية, ǧāhilīya DMG ) is an Arabic term from the vocabulary of the Koran, which in common parlance refers to the time of the ancient Arabian paganism before Islam, whose precise meaning is not clear. The derived attribute is dschāhilī ( جاهلي / ǧāhilī ), accordingly, for example in the Arab literary history poetry ( shi ʿ r) of the pre-Islamic Arabs shi ʿ r dschāhilī ( شعر جاهلي / Si ʿ r ǧāhilī ) called. In the Salafi tradition of thought that is based on the writings of the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya, on the other hand, the term does not denote a period of time, but a condition that can occur at any time, if a company deviates from Islam.

From a purely grammatical, the word jahiliyyah forms an abstract noun - to the active participle dschāhil ( جاهل / ǧāhil ). This in turn belongs to the Arabic root word dsch - St. The Jahl has also belonging to this root noun in the modern Arabic the meaning of " ignorance, ignorance, foolishness ."

Quranic use

The active participle dschāhil from which the term is derived jahiliyyah, appears for the first time at locations of the Koran, which are assigned to the middle or late Meccan Meccan period (see eg Sura 25:63; 28:55; 39:64 ), and it describes the enemies of the Prophet.

The term jahiliyyah even met only in medinischer time, and although there total in four places:

• In Sura 3:154 a group of followers is mentioned in connection with a battle of the Prophet Mohammed, who find no sleep unlike other trailers, but is anxious to deal with yourself, by hiring illegal speculation about God on the type of jahiliyyah. The post will be dated immediately after the battle of Uhud in 3 AH to time.
• In Sura 5:50 is asked in the context of a dispute: " In need of ( approximately ) the decision, the jahiliyyah Who could for people who are convinced that a better decision than God? " (Translation Paret ). The dating of the site is uncertain.
• In Surah 33:33, the women of Muhammad will be asked to stay in their house and not on the type of the first jahiliyyah ( الجاهلية الأولى / al - al - Ula ǧāhilīya ) spruce. The site is in a passage, which is dated to the year 5 AH.
• In Sura 48:26 is the zeal of the jahiliyyah which has penetrated into the hearts of the unbelieving Meccans, compared with the " inner peace " ( Sakina ), whom God has sent down to the believers. The position will be based on the time shortly after the peace treaty of Hudaibiya in 6 of the Hijrah.

Interpretations

Traditional Islamic exegesis

The nine Qur'anic evidence for dschāhil and the four documents for jahiliyyah do not allow precise semantic definition of the terms. In traditional Islamic Koran exegesis is usually stressed that Jahl an antonym to ʿ ilm ("knowledge " ) is, and interpreted according to the dschāhil as " ignorant ": he knows neither the one God as the creator nor the Prophet Mohammed nor the religious law and has thus no knowledge of religious norms of Islam.

The first jahiliyyah in Sura 33:33 is expressed either as the period from Adam to Noah (as opposed to the second jahiliyyah that will range from Jesus to Mohammed ) interpreted in the Islamic Koran exegesis or as the entire vormohammedanische time as opposed to relapse into Paganism, which occurs after the appearance of the Prophet.

Orientalist interpretations

The traditional Islamic interpretation of Ignaz Goldziher jahiliyyah held contrary to that in the ancient Arab poetry the antonym to Jahl ʿ ilm is not, but hilm ( حلم = " gentleness, insight, reason" ) is. Accordingly, had the Koranic term jahiliyyah not the meaning of " ignorance ", but of " barbarism ".

Idolatry is actually already considered in a poem of Hanif Zayd ibn ʿ Amr ibn Nufail as a sign of lack of hilm. There it is, in the English translation by Alfred Guillaume:

"I will not worship Hubal though he was our lord / in the days when I had little sense (ID Hilmi yasīru ) "

Ludolf Krehl however, presented in a private letter dated 5 March 1889 Ignaz Goldziher its interpretation of the term in question:

" ... With your opinion of the name and the concept Ǧāhilīja I am, however, disagreed. The contrast of ǧhl is in my opinion not حلم ( hilm di gentleness; insight; reason) but علم ( ʿ ilm di knowledge, knowledge ), di the knowledge of God, the God one. The name جاهلية 's only Muslim (which admits itself Suyuti in Muzhir ) and the Muslim is d ʿ ilm about the hilm ... "

Franz Rosenthal suggested later, jahiliyyah to be understood as an echo of the Jewish concept of Galut, which refers to the Jewish Diasopora.

Jahiliyyah in the tradition of thought of Salafi

Even the medieval scholar Ibn Taymiyya, who is considered a pioneer of the Salafi, fell back on the jahiliyyah - term to characterize contemporary customs, which he saw as un-Islamic. Particularly important was the term for the Wahhabis, who were in their thinking greatly influenced by Ibn Taymiyya. So said Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab -, the founder of the Wahhabi doctrine, in his writings of a second jahiliyyah which must be completed by a renewed proclamation of Islam as the first, pre-Islamic. Here he saw it himself in the position of the necessary Herald. The Wahhabi historian Husayn ibn Ghannam (d. 1811) said that at the beginning of the twelfth century of the Hijra, at the beginning of the 18th century CE, sunk back most of the Muslims in the shirk and have fallen from their faith in the jahiliyyah. It was Ibn Abd al - Wahhab's mission to combat the symptoms of this second jahiliyyah.

Even among Muslim thinkers who looked to Ibn Taymiyya in the 20th century, the term played an important role. So compared to the Indian Muslim Abu l -Hasan ʿ Alī an- Nadwi 1945 in a document, the current situation of Muslims with passengers of a train jahiliyyah means and takes them into the hell fire at high speed. Through this writing, of the 1951 Arabic translation appeared in Egypt, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb became aware of the term. He used it in the mid- 1950s in several of his writings and made him thus become a key concept of Islamism.

Especially prominent the concept appears in his book Ma ʿ alim fi t - Tariq ( " Signs " ), which he wrote in the early 1960s during his detention. In it he set a dichotomous relationship between Islam and Dschāhilīya, which also includes the realm of politics. All forms of government that do not meet the Islamic order, whether democratic, dictatorial, communist or capitalist -oriented, are then assigned to the Dschāhilīya and must be addressed accordingly. Even a secular society lives after his performance in the jahiliyyah because it forbids the people to demand the rule of Shariah in her life, and wants to limit God in the kingdom of heaven.