Jahiliyyah is an Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic concept of "ignorance of divine guidance" or "the state of ignorance of the guidance from God" or "Days of Ignorance" referring to the condition in which Arabs found themselves in pre-Islamic Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia

Pre-Islamic Arabia refers to the Arabic civilization which existed in the Arabian Plate before the rise of Islam in the 630s. The study of Pre-Islamic Arabia is important to Islamic studies as it provides the context for the development of Islam.-Studies:...

, i.e. prior to the revelation

Revelation

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...

  of the Qur'an

Qur'an

The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...

 to Muhammad

Muhammad

Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...

. The root of the term jahiliyyah is the I-form verb yajhalu "to be ignorant or stupid, to act stupidly". By extension, it has come to refer to the state of anyone not following Islam and the Qur'an.

In the Qur'an

The term jahiliyyah is used several places in the Qur'an, and translations often use various terms to represent it:

3:154 Then, following misery, He sent down upon you a feeling of security, a slumber overcoming a party among you, while another party cared only for themselves, thinking false thoughts about God, thoughts fit for the Age of Idolatry.
5:50 Do they truly desire the law of paganism? But who is fairer than God in judgment for a people firm of faith?
33:33 Remain in your homes, and do not display your adornments, as was the case with the earlier Age of Barbarism.
48:26 For the unbelievers had planted in their hearts a zealotry, the zealotry of lawlessness ...

Muslim scholarship

Medieval Islamic scholar ibn Taymiyyah was probably the first to use the term to describe backsliders in contemporary Muslim society . In the 20th century, Indian Islamist writer Abul Ala Maududi

Abul Ala Maududi

Syed Abul A'ala Maududi , also known as Molana or Shaikh Syed Abul A'ala Mawdudi, was a Sunni Pakistani journalist, theologian, Muslim revivalist leader and political philosopher, and a major 20th century Islamist thinker. He was also a prominent political figure in Pakistan and was the first...

 wrote of it. Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamist theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and '60s....

 popularized the term in his influential work Ma'alim fi al-Tariq "Milestones", with the shocking assertion that "the Muslim community has been extinct for a few centuries."

When a person embraced Islam during the time of the Prophet, he would immediately cut himself off from Jahiliyyah. When he stepped into the circle of Islam, he would start a new life, separating himself completely from his past life under ignorance of the Divine Law. He would look upon the deeds during his life of ignorance with mistrust and fear, with a feeling that these were impure and could not be tolerated in Islam! With this feeling, he would turn toward Islam for new guidance; and if at any time temptations overpowered him, or the old habits attracted him, or if he became lax in carrying out the injunctions of Islam, he would become restless with a sense of guilt and would feel the need to purify himself of what had happened, and would turn to the Qur'an to mold himself according to its guidance. —Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb

Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian author, educator, Islamist theorist, poet, and the leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the 1950s and '60s....

Jahili poetry

With the period before the coming of Islam being defined as the time of "Jahiliyyah", pre-Islamic poetry is commonly referred to in Arabic as "الشعر الجاهلي" or Jahili poetry - literally "the ignorant poetry". Although so named, however, what survives of this poetry is well regarded as the finest of Arabic poetry to date (see Pre-Islamic poetry).

Jahiliyya in contemporary society

Use of the term for modern Muslim society is usually associated with Qutb's other radical ideas (or Qutbism

Qutbism

Qutbism is a strain of Sunni Islamist ideology and activism, based on the thought and writings of Sayyid Qutb, an Islamist and former leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood who was executed in 1966. It has been described as advancing the ideology of jihadism, i.e...

) -- namely that reappearance of Jahiliyya is a result of the lack of Sharia

Sharia

Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...

 law, without which Islam cannot exist; that true Islam is a complete system with no room for any element of Jahiliyya; that all aspects of Jahiliyya ("manners, ideas and concepts, rules and regulations, values and criteria") are "evil and corrupt"

Non-Muslim societies may also be termed jahili ( ). One western academic has compared the idea of contemporary Jahiliyya in some radical Islamic circles to the secular Marxist idea of false consciousness - in each case the masses being unaware they are not following their true consciousness by rising up to overthrow the capitalist

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

 system and replacing it with socialism

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 (in the case of Marxism); or overthrow the secular state and replace it with the true Islam of strict sharia

Sharia

Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...

law (in the case of Qutbism).

Further reading

Milestones