International Islamic University Islamabad, Since 2007
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International Islamic University ΩΎΑ ϡϼγ ΔϳϣϟΎόϟ ΔϳϣϼγϹ ΔόϣΎΟϟ Islamabad ϥϳΩϟϝϭλΔϳϠϛ Faculty of Usuluddin ϥΎϳΩϷ ΔϧέΎϘϣϡγϗ Department of Comparative Religions VoyageinSearchofthe"TrueReligion": StudyofMaryamJameelah’sConversiontoIslamandherCritiqueof WesternCivilization Submitted by: Zohaib Ahmad Reg #: 202-FU-PhDCR-F14 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Anis Ahmad Co Supervisor: Dr. Muhammad Akram InternationalIslamicUniversityIslamabad 1439A.H.Ǧ2018C.E. II III DECLARATION I hereby declare that the work present in the following dissertation is my own effort, except where otherwise acknowledged and that the thesis is my own composition. No part of the thesis has been previously presented for any other degree. Date ____________ ____________ Zohaib Ahmad IV DEDICATION To my grandparents for all their efforts to teach their children. V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All thanks due to Almighty Allah, the most gracious and the most benevolent. Without His help, nothing is possible. I have been a student in the Faculty of Islamic Studies, Department of Comparative Religions at International Islamic University Islamabad, since 2007. The knowledge and skills acquired during these ten years have had the most profound impact on my life. I would like, therefore, to express my gratitude to the Faculty of Islamic Studies and to the Department of Comparative Religion. I would also like to thank my thesis advisors both Prof. Dr. Anis Ahmad and Dr. Muhammad Akram who not only read this dissertation but also helped me whenever I was in doubt and confusion. Without their guidance and support, this thesis would have never been written. I share my deep appreciation to the family of Ms. Maryam Jameelah (late) for granting me the privilege to access her personal archives. The access to this material provided me to have a more in-depth study of her thoughts and ideas. I pay my deepest gratitude to Muhammad Yunus Aziz as well, who not only accommodated me in Lahore but also, in spite of his old age, personally traveled with me to the various libraries and arranged interviews with Jameelah's family. My elder brother, Muhammad Usama Akram, must also be thanked especially for his photographic skills that allowed me to capture thousands of pages from Jameelah's library in no time. It is not the first time when my brother surprised me with his professional abilities, however. Special thanks must also be extended to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Professor Khurshid Ahmad, John L. Esposito, Marcia Hermansen, Patrick D. Bowen, Deborah Baker, and Habib-ur-Rehman Asim, for they were always ready to answer my never-ending questions with patience and sincerity. Their continuous support greatly helped me to complete the present dissertation well before the given time. Also, I would like to thank all my friends especially Muhammad Awais Khan, Mohsin Abbas, Azhar Usama, and Fahad Abdul Al-Salam for their constructive comments and suggestions which improved both the strength and the VI structure of this work. Further thanks are due to the staff of Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah Library, International Islamic University, Islamabad for their cooperation and help in arranging the relevant material. I must also thank the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan for their financial assistance to carry out this research work. And last but not the least, I want to thank my family for their support and confidence in me. VII PREFACE It was summer 2014 when after submitting my MS research dissertation, I was first introduced to the letters of Ms. Maryam Jameelah which were translated and republished by Colonel (R) Ashfaq Hussain. The story presented in those letters immediately caught my attention and I started exploring more and more writings of her. Later on, I decided to register my doctoral research work to understand the nature of the connection between her conversion and her criticism of Western civilization. Afterwards, when I went to Lahore to visit her family, I found more than 4000 unpublished pages in her personal library. Fortunately, her family allowed me to capture all that material which had remained unveiled to not only national but international academia as well. Those were various sorts of writings including letters written to Jameelah which could roughly be grouped into the following types: 1. Letters of well-known scholars such as Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Muhammad Hamidullah, and Kenneth Cregg. 2. Letters of Euro-Americans who were either converted to Islam or had an interest in it. 3. Letters of the editors, publishers, translators, reviewers, and students. 4. Invitations of national and international conferences. 5. Letters from Islamic missions of different countries. 6. Letters from her family members and friends. Apart from the letters, those pages also included unpublished manuscripts of Jameelah's writings which she did not want to be published in her life. From a birthday card to a scholarly book, she preserved almost everything in her personal library. All that new material provided metadata and an impetus to carry out the current research work. This work is divided into five chapters. Each chapter is further divided into two parts. The first part of the first chapter consists of the research proposal and methodological framework. In this regard, Lewis Ray Rambo's heuristic stage VIII model of conversion is mainly used to analyze the process of religious change of Jameelah. The second part of the first chapter briefly introduces types, motifs, and definitions of religious conversion along with the concept of conversion to Islam. The first part of the second chapter presents a brief story of her life in chronological order. The second part of the second chapter is devoted to understand the social, historical, theological, and cultural dimensions of her conversion. The third chapter presents analysis, findings, and application of Rambo's stage model on her conversion. The first part of the fourth chapter investigates the development of her thoughts and ideas whereas, in the second part, her criticism towards the modern western ideas is discussed. The fifth chapter presents her criticism of the Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam along with the suggestions to Muslims. This thesis ends with a conclusion. This dissertation contains many Quranic Ayaat. Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall's translation of the Holy Quran is used for this purpose. This research work uses Chicago 16th footnote style for references and bibliography. IX ABSTRACT Maryam Jameelah is an American Jewish lady who, after her conversion to Islam, migrates to Pakistan on the invitation of Abul A'la Maududi. She is studied mostly as a scholar of modern Western thought. Less information is available regarding her conversion, however. Her writings indicate that her criticism of Western civilization is directly connected to her conversion. Therefore, this research aims to analyze her conversion and its relationship with her criticism of Western civilization. Notably, the complexity of the analytical study of any conversion process is augmented due to the involvement of various underlying motifs, events, and types of conversion. Therefore, Lewis Ray Rambo's heuristic stage model of conversion is used for understanding of psychological, sociological, historical, religious, and anthropological aspects of her conversion. Rambo uses the inter-disciplinary approach to formulate his heuristic model that consists of seven stages including context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences. This research finds out that adopting many religious traditions, groups, and movements, Jameelah is converted multiple times in her life. Her 'multiple conversions' reveal that it is her quest for the complete satisfaction that moves her from one religious fold to another. Her study of Islam provides her such satisfactory answers that end the process of her multiple conversions. After converting to Islam, she does not convert to any other religion. During her life in Pakistan, she is inclined towards Sufism and starts practicing it. Analysis of her 'multiple conversions' figures out that findings related to the context, crisis, and quest stages of Rambo’s model are almost the same in each of her conversion process whereas some differences are observed in other stages of her conversions. Regarding her criticism of Western civilization, it is observed that during her life in America, she feels the strong impact of secular culture on religion. Numerous factors such as the Reform Judaism especially the work of Moses Mendelssohn, the Western mood of living, the industrial revolution, love of natural beauty, the nonobservant attitude of parents, the genocide of red Indians, and love of classical music make her hate modernism and Western civilization. She claims X that modernism or westernization are two sides of the same coin. When she discovers that, being influenced by the theory of evolution, modern scholars are trying to deny the presence of ideals such as permanence and absolute truth in the real life, she decides to spend the rest of her life in defending them by criticizing modern philosophies. In sum, her criticism of Western civilization can be divided into two types. Firstly, she criticizes Western civilization and its impact on Islam by evaluating its philosophical foundations. Secondly, she criticizes the reformers of Islam through hundreds of her book reviews. Moreover, she criticizes both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars of Islam alike maintaining that Islam does not need any sort of reforms or changes. She