JAMIʿAT-E ISLAMI

Afghan Islamist political party.

Jamiʿat-e Islami (Islamic Society) was formed in Kabul in 1971 in reaction to the increasing secular and leftist trends in Afghanistan at the time. In 1975, after the government of Muhammad Daud came to power, the organization moved its headquarters to Peshawar, Pakistan, and became a political and guerrilla resistance organization dedicated to the overthrow of the Afghan government. In 1978, Burhanuddin Rabbani became its leader. Advocating the establishment of an Islamic government in Afghanistan and strict adherence to shariʿa (Islamic law), Jamiʿat-e Islami has connections with other international Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Jamiʿat-e Islami of Pakistan.

Jamiʿat-e Islami's greatest following has been among Afghanistan's northern ethnolinguistic groups, particularly the Tajiks, in part because the leader, Rabbani, is a Tajik. Jamiʿat-e Islami commanders have included the martyred Ahmad Shah Masʿud (1953–2001) and Ismaʿil Khan, who controls Herat province. In 1992, the Jamiʿat-e Islami returned to Kabul along with the other resistance groups to form an Islamic government, and in 1993 Rabbani became president of Afghanistan. Forced from power when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, the remnants of Jamiʿat-e Islami, including Rabbani and Masʿud, fled to the north of Afghanistan, where they formed the United Front to resist Taliban control. When, in turn, the Taliban were forced from Kabul in December 2001, the United Front was the first group into Kabul. As a result, the leaders of the Jamiʿat-e Islami now hold most of the key positions in the interim government of Hamid Karzai.

see also rabbani, burhanuddin; shariʿa.

Bibliography

Farr, Grant. "The Failure of the Mujahedin." Middle East International 476 (1994): 19–20.

Rubin, Barnett R. The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.

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