Do you see any shifts emerging within Islamist movements in their approach to capture of state power, their attitudes to democracy and secularism and to relations with people of other faiths?
I think religious worldviews of people are often shaped by social and political contexts and conditions. So, as I said, colonialism provided the context and conditions for radical Islamism to emerge as a means to seek to challenge it. Likewise, today the demands of living as a marginalised minority in religiously plural India has forced the Jamaat-e Islami to make a major departure from Maududi s rigidly doctrinaire thinking. Maududi was vehemently opposed to democracy and secularism, branding them as wholly un-Islamic. But now in India the Jamaat is planning to launch its own political party, which would function under the Indian Constitution, and which would naturally have to accept the Constitution’s secular and democratic character. The Jamaat has realized that, given the context in India, there is no feasible alternative to this. So, it is the force of circumstance and the feasibility or otherwise of something that forces such changes, which then get translated into modifications
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