Javed Ahmad Ghamidi Biography

Pakistani Islamic scholar and philosopher (born 1952)

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (Urdu: جاوید احمد غامدی, romanized::Jāvēd Aḥmad Ghāmidī; April 7, 1952) is a Pakistani philosopher, educationist, and a scholar of Islam. He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Ins*ute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation Danish Sara.

He became a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistani Government and the country's Parliament) on 28 January 2006, where he remained for a couple of years. He also taught Islamic studies at the Civil Services Academy for more than a decade from 1979 to 1991. He was also a student of Islamic scholar and exegete, Amin Ahsan Islahi. He is running an intellectual movement similar to Wasatiyyah, on the popular electronic media of Pakistan. Currently he is Principal Research Fellow and Chief Patron of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning in United States. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi was named in The Muslim 500 (The World's Most Influential Muslims) in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions.

Early life

Javed Ahmed Ghamidi was born as Muhammad Shafique (later he renamed himself as Javed Ghamidi) on 18 April 1952 to a Kakazai family in a village called Jiwan Shah, Arifwala in (District Pakpattan), Punjab, Pakistan. His family village settlement was Dawud in Sialkot. His father, Muhammad Tufayl Junaydi, was a landowner, involved in medicine and a committed follower of tasawwuf until his death in 1986.

Ghamidi and his two elder sisters grew up in a Sufi household. His early education included a modern path (matriculating from Islamia High School, Pakpattan), as well as a traditional path (Arabic and Persian languages, and the Qur'an with Nur Ahmad of Nang Pal).

His first exposure to traditional Islamic studies was in the Sufi tradition. After matriculating, he came to La* in 1967 where he is settled ever since. Initially, he was more interested in Literature and Philosophy. He later graduated from Government College, La*, with a BA Honours in English Literature & Philosophy in 1972.

Ghamidi encountered the works of Hamiduddin Farahi, a scholar of the Quran by chance in a library. Finding mention of Amin Ahsan Islahi (who advanced Farahi's thought) in this work inspired Ghamidi to meet Islahi who resided in La* during that time. This encounter would change Ghamidi's focus from philosophy and literature, to religion. In 1973, he came under the tutelage of Amin Ahsan Islahi (d. 1997), who was destined to who have a deep impact on him. He was also *ociated with scholar and revivalist Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi (d. 1979) for several years. He started working with them on various Islamic disciplines particularly exegesis and Islamic law.

In his book, Maqamat (مقامات), Ghamidi starts with an essay "My Name" (میرا نام) to describe the story behind his surname, which sounds somewhat alien in the context of the Indian Subcontinent. He describes a desire during his childhood years to establish a name linkage to his late grandfather Noor Elahi, after learning of his status as the one people of the area turned to, to resolve disputes. This reputation also led to his (grandfather's) reputation as a peacemaker (مصلح). Subsequently, one of the visiting Sufi friends of his father narrated a story of the patriarch of the Arab tribe Banu Ghamid who earned the reputation of being a great peacemaker. He writes, that the temporal closeness of these two events clicked in his mind and he decided to add the name Ghamidi to his given name, Javed Ahmed. Taxila.

Views

Some of the works of Ghamidi

Ghamidi's conclusions and understanding of Islam, including the Sharia, has been presented concisely in his book Mizan with the intention of presenting the religion in its pure shape, cleansed from tasawwuf, qalam, fiqh, all philosophies and any other contaminants.

In his arguments, there is no reference to the Western sources, human rights or current philosophies of crime and punishment. Nonetheless, employing the traditional Islamic framework, he reaches conclusions which are similar to those of Islamic modernists and progressives on the subject.

Jihad

The only valid basis for jihad through arms is to end oppression when all other measures have failed. According to him Jihad can only be waged by an organised Islamic state, that too only where a leader has been nominated by the previous leader or by the consensus of the ulema if the state is newly established. No person, party or group can take arms into their hands (for the purpose of waging Jihad) under any cir*stances. Another corollary, in his opinion, is that death punishment for apostasy was also specifically for the recipients of the same Divine punishment during Muhammad's times—for they had persistently denied the truth of Muhammad's mission even after it had been made conclusively evident to them by God through Muhammad.

According to Ghamidi, the formation of an Islamic state is not a religious obligation upon the Muslims per se. However, if and when Muslims do happen to form a state of their own, Islam does impose certain religious obligations on its rulers as establishment of the ins*utions of salat (obligatory prayer), zakah (mandatory charity), and 'amr bi'l-ma'ruf wa nahi 'ani'l-munkar (preservation and promotion of society's good conventions and customs and eradication of social vices); this, in Ghamidi's opinion, should be done in modern times through courts, police, etc. in accordance with the law of the land which, as the government itself, must be based on the opinion of the majority.

Gender interaction

Ghamidi argues that the Qur'an states norms for male-female interaction in Surah An-Nur, while in Surah Al-Ahzab, there are special directives for Muhammad's wives and directives given to Muslim women to distinguish themselves when they were being har*ed in Medina. He further claims that the Qur'an has created a distinction between men and women only to maintain family relationships.

Penal laws

According to Ghamidi:

The Islamic punishments of hudud (Islamic law) are maximum pronouncements that can be mitigated by a court of law on the basis of extenuating cir*stances.
The shariah (Divine law) does not stipulate any fixed amount for the diyya (monetary compensation for unintentional murder); the determination of the amount—for the unintentional murder of a man or a woman—has been left to the conventions of society.
Ceteris paribus (all other things being equal), a woman's testimony is equal to that of a man's.
Rape is hirabah and deserves severe punishments as mentioned in Quran 5:33. It doesn't require four witnesses to register the case as in the case of Zina (Arabic) (consensual sex). Those who were punished by stoning (rajm) in Muhammad's time were also punished under hirabah for raping, sexually *aulting women, and spreading vulgarity in society through pros*ution. جاوید احمد غامدی

Sources of Islam

According to Ghamidi, all that is Islam is cons*uted by the Qur'an and Sunnah. Nothing besides these two is Islam or can be regarded as part of it. Just like Quran, Sunnah (the way of the prophet) is only what the Muslim nation received through ijma (consensus of companions of the prophet) and tawatur (perpetual adherence of the Muslim nation). Unlike Quran and Sunnah, ahadith only explain and elucidate what is contained in these two sources and also describe the exemplary way in which Muhammad followed Islam. The Sharia is distinguished from fiqh, the latter being collections of interpretations and applications of the Sharia by Muslim jurists. Fiqh is characterised as a human exercise, and therefore subject to human weakness and differences of opinion. A Muslim is not obliged to adhere to a school of fiqh.

Democracy

While discussing the Afghan Taliban, Ghamidi wrote:

The Taliban say that democracy is a concept alien to Islam. The ideal way to set up an Islamic government in our times is the one that they adopted for Mullah Omar's government in Afghanistan. The cons*ution, the parliament, and elections are nothing but modern day shams. ... I can say with full confidence on the basis of my study of Islam that this viewpoint and this strategy are not acceptable to the Qur'ān. It prescribes democracy as the way to run the affairs of the state. The Qur'ān (42:38) says: amruhum shūrā baynahum (the affairs of the Muslims are run on the basis of their consultation). 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) said: "Whosoever pledges allegiance to anyone without the collective consent of the Muslims presents himself for the death sentence." It is true that, in Muslim history, monarchy and dictatorship have often been accepted forms of government. Some people also believe that the head of government should be a nominee of God Himself. However, the principle the Qur'ān spells out is very clear.

— Javed A. Ghamidi, Islam and the Taliban

Morals and ethics

Ghamidi writes on moral and ethical issues in Islam. He states:

After faith, the second important requirement of religion is purification of morals. This means that a person should cleanse his at*ude both towards his Creator and towards his fellow human beings. This is what is termed as a righteous deed. All the sharī‘ah is its corollary. With the change and evolution in societies and civilizations, the sharī‘ah has indeed changed; however faith and righteous deeds, which are the foundations of religion, have not undergone any change. The Qur'an is absolutely clear that any person who brings forth these two things before the Almighty on the Day of Judgement will be blessed with Paradise which shall be his eternal abode.

Interaction with other Islamic scholars

Like Wahiduddin Khan, Maulana Naeem Siddiqui, Israr Ahmed and Dr. Khazir Yasin, Ghamidi also worked closely with Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maududi (alternative spelling Syed Maudoodi; often referred to as Maulana Maududi) (1903–1979) and Amin Ahsan Islahi. His work with Maududi continued for about nine years before he voiced his first differences of opinion, which led to his subsequent expulsion from Mawdudi's political party, Jamaat-e-Islami in 1977. Later, he developed his own view of religion based on hermeneutics and ijtihad under the influence of his mentor, Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904–1997), a well-known exegete of the Indian sub-continent who is author of Tadabbur-i-Qur'an, a Tafsir (exegeses of Qur'an). Ghamidi's critique of Mawdudi's thought is an extension of Wahid al-Din Khan's criticism of Mawdudi. Khan (1925–2020 ) was amongst the first scholars from within the ranks of Jamaat-e-Islami to present a full-fledged critique of Mawdudi's understanding of religion. Khan's contention is that Mawdudi has completely inverted the Qur'anic worldview. Ghamidi, for his part, agreed with Khan that the basic obligation in Islam is not the establishment of an Islamic world order but servitude to God, and that it is to help and guide humans in their effort to fulfill that obligation for which religion is revealed. Therefore, Islam never imposed the obligation on its individual adherents or on the Islamic state to be constantly in a state of war against the non-Islamic world. In fact, according to Ghamidi, even the formation of an Islamic state is not a basic religious obligation for Muslims. Despite such extraordinary differences and considering Maududi's interpretation of "political Islam" as incorrect, Ghamidi in one of his 2015 interviews said that he still respects his former teacher like a father.

Ghamidi's thought and discourse community has received some academic attention in the recent past by Pakistani scholar Dr. Husnul Amin whose critical *ysis of Ghamidi's thought movement has received academic attention. Amin traces the history of secessionist tendencies within the mainstream Islamism, and its ruptures, and then critically examines Ghamidi's emergence and proliferation in society as an unprecedented phenomenon. Ghamidi's views and discourse on Islam and democracy have also been examined in another cited research paper.

Awards and recognition

In 2009, Ghamidi was awarded Sitara-i-Imtiaz, the third highest civilian honor of Pakistan.

Resignation from Council of Islamic Ideology

Public appearances

Ghamidi has appeared regularly on dedicated television programs. His television audience consists of educated, urban-based middle-cl* men and women between the ages of 20–35, as well as lay Islamic intellectuals and professionals. Ghamidi's religiously oriented audience tends to be dissatisfied with the positions of traditional ulema and Western-educated secular-liberal elite, and find his interventions and ideas more sensible, moderate, and relevant.

Alif on Geo TV (in multiple airings)
Ghamidi on Geo TV
Live with Ghamidi on AAJ TV (usually Q/A format but with occasional special programs). The channel also airs other Islamic programs by Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and his *ociates, such as Aaj Islam.
And other channels like PTV.
Al-Mawrid has video recording setup of its own.
Ilm-o-Hikmat, Ghamidi Key Saath (Urdu: علم و حکمت غامدی کے ساتھ) (Knowledge and Wisdom with Ghamidi) on Duniya TV.
Youtube Channels like Ghamidi Center Of Islamic Learning, Al Mawrid Hind,Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

Criticism

Some books highly critical of Ghamidi are, Fitna-e-Ghamdiyat (فِتنئہ غامدیت) by Hafiz Salahuddin Yusuf and Fitna-e-Ghamdiyat ka Ilmi Muhasbah (فِتنئہ غامدیّت کا عِلمی محاسبہ) by Muhammad Rafiq.

Exile from Pakistan

Ghamidi left Pakistan in 2010 as a result of opposition to his work and threat to his life and his close ones. In a 2015 interview with Voice of America, Ghamidi explained his reason for departure was to safeguard the lives of people near him including his neighbours who had begun to fear for their safety. Some of his close *ociates had already been killed like Muhammad Farooq Khan and Dr. Habib-ur-Rehman. Ghamidi maintained that his work of education was not affected by his departure because of modern communication. Ghamidi, also regularly appears on Ilm-o-Hikmat, a Pakistani Dunya News show. He has stated his desire to return in the future when cir*stances change.

Ghamidi moved to Dallas, Texas, USA as of July 2019, to support establishment of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning, an initiative of Al-Mawrid US and an educational ins*ute named after himself.

Publications

Ghamidi's books include:

Al-Bayan (Volume 1 to 5)
Mizan میزان
Burhan برہان
Maqamat مقامات
Al-Islam الاسلام
Khayal-o-Khamah

English Translation of his works by Dr. Shehzad Saleem:

Al-Bayan (Volume 1 and 5)
Islam: A Comprehensive Introduction
Selected Essays of Javed Ahmed Ghamidi
Islam: A Concise Introduction
The Qur'ān Translated

References

External links

Official website, with all his books and Audio/Video lectures
NON Official Video website
Profile Archived 13 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
Link for Al-Mawrid website that contains all of the Javed Ahmed Ghamidi lectures
TV talk shows with Javed Ahmed Ghamidi
Debate on Hudood Ordinance: hangingodes.blogspot.com
Articles available on the internet written by Javed Ahmed Ghamidi. Archived 5 April 2007 at the Wayback Machinerenaissance.com.pk, monthly-renaissance.com
Resignation of Javed Ahmed Ghamidi from CII; The News International
The Fundamentalist Moderate; The Boston Globe
The extremist case for Islamic moderation; Robin Moroney The Wall Street Journal
An Islamic fundamentalist we can support; Dinesh D'Souza(Stanford University)
tv-almawrid.org, Audio and Video debates and lectures
Ghamidi views on Ahmadiyya on YouTube
10 videos dealing with life and work of Ghamidi on YouTube.

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