Atlas / Organisations / Jamaat-e-Islami

Jamaat-e-Islami

Maududi · 1941– · Pakistan, Bangladesh, India · Islamist · Electoral party · coding confidence medium

−01ECcollective
+09CUtraditional
+06AUmonist
+04SCcentral
+07IDascriptive
+01CHcoercive

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

The state as an instrument of divine sovereignty, built by a disciplined vanguard of the pious rather than by mass conversion.

Economic model

Interest-free banking, zakat welfare, charitable networks, small-trader base.

Organisation of powers

Contests elections where permitted; internally cadre-based with a tightly controlled membership.

Reading note

Maududi's writings are the single largest doctrinal influence on twentieth-century Sunni Islamism, including on movements that later rejected his electoralism.

Check a claim about Jamaat-e-Islami. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored −01

Coded −1: interest-free banking and zakat welfare with a small-trader base.

  • Documented act or statuteThe movement built charitable and educational networks as its principal presence.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +09

Coded +9: divine sovereignty over the whole of social life.

  • Programme textMaududi's theory of hakimiyya makes God's sovereignty the constitutive political fact.

AU · Organisation of power · scored +06

Coded +6: a disciplined cadre vanguard that contests elections where permitted.

  • Documented act or statuteMembership is tiered with a probationary rank, and the party has contested Pakistani elections since 1951.

SC · Scale of decision · scored +04

Coded +4: a national organisation within a pan-Islamic frame.

  • Documented act or statuteSeparate parties operate in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India under a shared doctrine.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +07

Coded +7 after the v2.2 review: confessional and acquirable, and tied to blasphemy statute.

  • Documented act or statuteThe Bangladeshi wing was barred from elections in 2013 over its charter's incompatibility with the constitution.

CH · Method and tempo · scored +01

Coded +1: electoral in most contexts, with a documented wartime paramilitary role.

  • Documented act or statuteIts Bangladeshi leaders were convicted by a war crimes tribunal for 1971 killings.

Where it came from, and what came after

Scores that have been revised

ID +08 → +07Confessional and, in the Pakistani case, tied to blasphemy statute that penalises the excluded. Reduced from the ancestral tier but held near the top of the confessional one.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Bangladesh · India · Pakistan

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Jamaat-e-Islami. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/jamaat/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.