Академия Корана:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān/Age of Ignorance

William E. Shepard, "Age of Ignorance" in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: J. D. McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

This phrase is a common translation of the Arabic word jāhiliyya used by Muslims to refer to the historical period in west-central Arabia covering the centuries immediately prior to the mission of Muḥammad, a period characterized by ignorance of the divine truth. To the original audience of the Qurʾān, however, it almost certainly referred primarily to the moral condition of those individuals and their society which led them to oppose the mission of the Prophet (see opposition to muḥammad) and only secondarily, if at all, to a defined historical epoch. It is also possible that the word was a kind of collective plural of «ignorant person» (jāhil), as has been asserted by F. Rosenthal (Knowledge triumphant, 33-4). As to the nature of this moral condition, I. Goldziher and T. Izutsu have argued that the primary meaning of the root, j-h-l, from which jāhiliyya is derived, is not «ignorance» but «barbarism», especially the tendency to go to extremes of behavior. According to this view the original antonym was not ʿilm (knowledge) but ḥilm (moral reasonableness, self-control). I. Goldziher (ms, 201-8) has adduced considerable evidence for this from pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, while T. Izutsu (Concepts, 28-35) has examined key passages from the Qurʾān and the biography of the Prophet (see sīra and the qurʾān). The word jāhiliyya is often translated «pagandom» or «heathendom» and it may be argued that its effective antonym is islām (q.v.), as it certainly is for many later writers (see ignorance).

The texts of the four passages where the word jāhiliyya occurs in the Qurʾān tend to bear these prints out, though not conclusively. The contrast between jāhiliyya and ḥilm seems particularly clear in q 48:26: «When the unbelievers stirred up fierce arrogance in their hearts, the fierce arro- gance of jāhiliyya (ḥamiyyat al-jāhiliyya), God sent down his tranquility upon the messenger and the believers and imposed on them the command of self-restraint (taqwā).» T. Izutsu (Concepts, 31) interprets «the fierce arrogance of the jāhiliyya» as «the staunch pride so characteristic of the old pagan Arabs, the spirit of stubborn resistance against all that shows the slightest sign of injuring their sense of honor and destroying the traditional way of life.» q 3:154 speaks of «a band anxious for themselves, wrongly suspicious of God with a suspicion (ẓann) of the jāhiliyya.» Here jāhiliyya may mean ignorance, but a lack of trust in God would seem more specific. q 5:50 reads, «Do they seek a jāhiliyya judgment (ḥukm jāhilī)?» i.e. a judgment by pagan rather than divine standards. Here islām would seem the likely antonym. Finally, q 33:33 admonishes the wives of the Prophet: «Stay in your homes and do not make a display of yourselves in the manner of the first [or old] jāhiliyya (al-jāhiliyya al-ūlā).» Only here does it seem plausible, though not necessary, to interpret «jāhiliyya» as an epoch.

These passages illustrate some but not all of the contrasts between the beliefs and values represented by jāhiliyya and those of the Qurʾān. The key difference is the attitude toward God. The Qurʾān insists that only God is to be obeyed and worshipped. The pagan Arabs did recognize God as creator of the world and as a kind of remote figure to be approached in certain crisis situations (q 29:65), but they also recognized other deities closer at hand, such as the three Meccan deities, al-Lāt, al-ʿUzza and Manāt, who were thought to intercede with God (q 53:19-20; see satanic verses). The Qurʾān calls this the association of other beings with God (shirk), and treats it as the worst of sins, the one thing God will not forgive (q 4:48; see belief and unbelief). While the Qurʾān inculcates an attitude of submission to God and dependence on him, the pagan Arabs were marked by a spirit of independence and self-sufficiency in relation both to God and to other deities, seeing themselves as subject only to a rather impersonal fate (q.v.). The ways of their ancestors had more authority than the commands of God. While the Qurʾān preaches universal values (q 49:13), their highest loyalty was to the tribe and to tribal solidarity (ʿaṣabiyya) as illustrated by the words of the poet Durayd: «I am of Ghaziyya: if she be in error, then I will err; and if Ghaziyya be guided right, I go right with her» (R.A. Nicholson, Literary history, 83). Whereas the key motive for ethical action in the Qurʾān is the hope of reward and fear of punishment in the future life (see reward and punishment), for the pagan Arab there was no future life: «There is nothing but our present life. We die and we live. Nothing but time destroys us!» (q 45:24). W.M. Watt has called these attitudes «tribal humanism» (Muhammad at Mecca, 24-5).

The Qurʾān, however, by no means rejects all the values of the pagan Arabs. At many points the concern is rather to redirect and moderate them. Nobility comes not from having noble ancestors whose deeds one emulates, but from deeds of piety as defined by God (q 49:13). The loyalty, courage and fortitude that once served the tribe in battle and elsewhere are now meant to serve God and the Muslim community (umma). Honor is a value, but not the sort of honor that leads to unending vendettas. The Qurʾān permits limited retribution, but encourages forgiveness (q 2:178; 17:33). Generosity and hospitality are values, but not to the extent of Ḥātim of Tayy, who gained fame by giving away all his father’s camels (R.A. Nicholson, Literary history, 85-6). The Qurʾān says, «Be neither miserly nor prodigal» (q 17:29).

At other points, pagan values and practices are more completely rejected. The hard-drinking and womanizing admired by the pre-Islamic poets are rejected in favor of bans on alcohol (q 5:90; see intoxicants; gambling) and on adultery (q 17:32; see adultery and fornication). In place of the class stratification of the jāhiliyya the Qurʾān supports human equality and encourages concern for the poor (q 49:13; 80:1-16). In relations between the sexes, the Qurʾān seems, at least in some cases, to have limited women’s freedom, as q 33:33 suggests. On the other hand, it also appears to have given women greater security and greater recognition of their status as humans, as suggested by the ban on female infanticide (q 16:58-9; see infanticide).

While the word «jāhiliyya» in the Qurʾān refers primarily to the moral condition of the pagan Arabs, it came later to refer primarily to the epoch in which they lived. The reasons for this are not hard to imagine. What was a living force when the first Muslims confronted their pagan neighbors became in time a matter of history, the characteristics of a past age. Thus in the ḥadīth collection of al-Bukhārī, jāhiliyya is almost always a past epoch. For example, we read «The tribe of the Quraysh (q.v.) used to fast on the day of Ashūrāʾ in the jāhiliyya», and «The best people in the jāhiliyya are the best in Islam, if they have understanding» (Saḥīḥ, iii, 65; iv, 461). The exact period of historical time covered by the term «jāhiliyya» was a matter of discussion among the early Muslims, as is reflected in the commentaries on q 33:33. These suggest various time spans for the «first jāhiliyya», such as the time between Adam (see adam and eve) and Noah (q.v.) or that between Idrīs (q.v.) and Noah, or the time when Abraham (q.v.) was born, with the implicit «later jāhiliyya» being the time between Jesus (q.v.) and Muḥammad. Some also suggest that the first jāhiliyya was «the jāhiliyya of unbelief» (jāhiliyyat al-kufr) before Islam and the other is «the jāhiliyya of iniquity» (jāhiliyyat al-fusūq) after the coming of Islam. They illustrate this with a ḥadīth in which Muḥammad says to one of his followers, «Within you is jāhiliyya», and when asked whether he meant the jāhiliyya of unbelief or the jāhiliyya of Islam (i.e. of iniquity), he said the jāhiliyya of unbelief (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr; Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf; Bayḍāwī, Anwār; Qurṭubī, Jāmi; Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr ad q 33:33.).

As these last examples illustrate, there has always been an awareness that jāhiliyya is not simply a past epoch but that the qualities that characterize jāhiliyya have continued to be present even after the coming of Islam. This also appears quite forcefully in the Shīʿī ḥadīth, «Whosoever of my community dies and does not have an imām (q.v.) from among them, has died the death of the jāhiliyya» (M. Momen, Shiʿi Islam, 158). Indeed, the early centuries of Islamic history may be interpreted as a struggle between the older jāhiliyya culture and the newer Islamic culture (e.g. A. Amīn, Fajr, 78-83) and some have seen jāhiliyya present in much later times. Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) wrote of «a jāhiliyya in a restricted sense» in reference to the pre-Islamic customs persisting among the Muslims of his time (M. Memon, Ibn Taimiya’s struggle, 146). In recent centuries, the idea of a contemporary jāhiliyya has regained currency in some circles. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the twelfth/eighteenth-century Arabian reformer who began the Wahhābī movement, and his followers perceived their fellow Muslims, either throughout the world or in the Arabian peninsula, as living in a jāhiliyya (E. Peskes, Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhab) because of their adoption of practices and beliefs lacking scriptural support.

More recently reformers such as Muḥam- mad ʿAbduh (d. 1905) and Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1935), in their qurʾānic commentary entitled al-Manār (vi, 422), have compared the conservatism, injustice, superstition and secular tendencies found in their society with comparable aspects of the pre-Islamic jāhiliyya criticized by the Qurʾān. For example, their commentary on q 5:50 (listed as q 5:53 in the verse-numbering of al-Manār) identifies the «jāhiliyya judgment» as the favoring of the strong over the weak and argues that some geographical Muslims in this age are «more corrupt in their religion and morals than those concerning whom these verses were revealed.» The idea of jāhiliyya as a contemporary reality has been more forcefully asserted, however, by the twentieth-century revivalists, Abū l-ʿAlāʾ Mawdūdī (d. 1979) in India and Pakistan and Sayyid Quṭb in Egypt. Mawdūdī (Meaning of the Qurʾān, x, 106) defined «jāhiliyya» as any conduct which goes against Islamic culture, morality and the Islamic way of thinking and behaving. He found it in both the West and the communist world. Sayyid Quṭb took a similar position but went further. In his best known book, Maʿālim fī l-ṭarīq (Milestones on the way), he said that a jāhilī society is any society that does not serve God by following his guidance in all areas of its life. Such societies serve human beings instead of God and thus are inevitably unjust, inhumane and backward. Only an Islamic society can be truly «civilized.» In his view, contemporary jāhiliyya is at least as bad as that of Muḥammad’s time. He further asserted that not only Western and communist societies were jāhilī at present but also all of the so-called Muslim societies. This idea, along with his apparent belief that the nature of jāhilī societies is such that they cannot be replaced without violence, led to his execution by the Egyptian government in 1966 and has inspired many militants since his death.

Although relatively few Muslims would take things this far, the idea of jāhiliyya as a contemporary moral and social reality seems to be quite widespread today. In this current usage the term refers not so much to the distinctive failings of the old pagan Arabs as to those of modern societies, such as materialism and secular ideologies. The notion of jāhiliyya has thus been effectively updated.

See also idolatry and idolaters; idols and images.

Bibliography

Primary

• A. Amīn, Fajr al-Islām, Cairo 1929
• Bayḍāwī, Anwār, 2 vols., Cairo 1388/19682
• Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, trans. M.M. Khan, 9 vols., Chicago 1976-93 (revised)
• Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, Beirut 1385/1966
• A.ʿA. Mawdūdī, Tafhīm al-Qurʾān [in Urdu], A.A. Kamal (trans.), The meaning of the Qurʾān, Lahore 1974-3
• Qurṭubī, Jāmi, 18 vols., Cairo 1387/1967
• S. Quṭb, Maʿālim fī l-ṭarīq, Cairo 1384/1964, trans. S. Badrul Hasan, Milestones, Kuwait 1398/1978
• M. Rashīd Riḍā and M. ʿAbduh, Manār, 12 vols., Cairo 1346/1927-1354/1936
• Ṭabarī, Tafsīr
• Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf

Secondary

• Goldziher, ms
• T. Izutsu, Concepts
• M.U. Memon (trans.), Ibn Taimiya’s struggle against popular religion, The Hague 1976
• M. Momen, An introduction to Shiʿi Islam. The history and doctrines of Twelver Shiʿism, New Haven 1985
• R.A. Nicholson, A literary history of the Arabs, Cambridge 1907
• E. Peskes, Muhammad b. ʿAbdalwahhab (1703-92) im Widerstreit. Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der Frühgeschichte der Wahhabiya, Beirut 1993
• F. Rosenthal, Knowledge triumphant. The concept of knowledge in medieval Islam, Leiden 1970
• W.M. Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, Oxford 1953