Jamaat-e-Islami
Islamic organization

Jamaat-e-Islami also known as Party of Islam 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 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.
Jamaat-e-Islami opposed the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan and actively worked to prevent it. After the partition of India, the organisation spearheaded the movement to transform Pakistan from a Muslim homeland into an Islamic state. Mawdudi's efforts focused on transforming to a "theo-democracy" based on the Sharia which would enforce things like abolition of interest-bearing banks, gender separation, veiling of women, hudud penalties for theft, adultery, and other crimes.
“Jamaat-e-Islami” enters the record as islamic organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jamaat-e-Islami, Islamic and organization can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Jamaat-e-Islami” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jamaat-e-Islami, Islamic and organization provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6127208. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Jamaat-e-Islami”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Jamaat-e-Islami primary sources, Jamaat-e-Islami archive and Jamaat-e-Islami research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jamaat-e-Islami”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Jamaat-e-Islami” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.