Antagonistic frontiers and rhetoric of ‘Islamic alternative’

In the previous chapter, I have demonstrated how Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) identifies ‘neoliberal capitalism’, ‘American imperialism’, ‘Indian State’ and the ‘ruling classes’ as a chain of antagonistic frontiers. In this chapter I will show how the Indian Jamaat further constructs its antagonistic frontiers against ‘non-Islamic ideologies’. The identification of antagonistic frontiers is very clear from its programmatic agenda on varied national and international issues, press statements and local political activities that JIH has been able to lodge. In this respect, JIH also claims to provide an ‘Islamic alternative’ to ‘non-Islamic ideologies’.

While criticizing the non-Islamic political and economic systems, the latest policy and programme of JIH argues that ‘(i)n the context of the national situation, Jamaat seeks to present’ “Islam as the only alternative” before the country and its masses. The JIH programme further states that ‘(t)he objective of JIH is the establishment of the Deen (the divinely ordained way of life known as Islam), which reforms individuals, both their inward and outward selves, and solves all problems of the human society in the best manner’ and argues that this Deen ‘also provides to all sections of society the best means for equity and justice, welfare and reform, and progress and prosperity, irrespective of race or colour, and region or language’. The Jamaat is, therefore, of the ‘firm conviction that Islam alone offers the best and most suitable solution to the problems’ that the country is faced with, ‘including the crises of thought and action’ that the fellow citizens ‘are passing in their moral, social, economic and political spheres of life’. According to the JIH programme, '(t)he Jamaat is striving for the establishment of Islam in the country. For the attainment of its objective, the Jamaat stands firmly committed to the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace be upon him).