Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam

The Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Assembly of Islamic Clergy, or JUI) is a political party in Pakistan. It is part of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of religious parties that won 11.3% of the popular vote and 53 out of 272 elected members in the 20 october 2002 legislative elections.

In the 2008 Pakistani general election, only JUI-F participated because other major chunk of MMA, Jamaat-e-Islami boycotted the elections on the electability of President Pervez Musharraf and the restoration of judiciary issues. But, unlike the 2002 elections when MMA sweeped the national and provincial assemblies, JUI-F only won 6 general seats in the National Assembly which garnered them 1 additional seat in the Women Reserved section raising the total to 7 NA seats. In the provincial assemblies, it won 14 seats in the NWFP Assembly, but could only muster 2 seats in the 371-seat Punjab Assembly.

Background

JUI is a Deobandi organisation, and the part of Deobandi Muslim movement. The group broke off from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind in 1945 over that organization's support of the Indian National Congress and refusal to support the Muslim League and its goal of a separate Pakistan.Its first president was Allamah Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. ["Islam and the Muslim World", (2004)p.374] The JUI remained a religious organization and had limited political significance until it was revived by Maulana Mufti Mahmud, who opposed President Ayub Khan's modernizing policies. Following the collapse of the Khan regime in the late 1960s, the JUI participated in Pakistans general elections.

Ideologically, JUI is regarded as uncompromisingly rigid and insisting on the strict enforcement of traditional Islamic law. JUI helped establish thousands of madrasahs in Pakistan, more than any other religious movement and also helped create the Taliban movement in Afghanistan, and provide soldiers it for another Deobandi-oriented political movement.

Currently in Pakistan, it has two wings: that of Maulana Sami-ul Haq and that of Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman. Both are members of the national assembly and part of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition. [Esposito, John L., "Oxford Dictionary of Islam," OUP, (2003)]

ee also

*Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman

References