Jahiliyah

Jahiliyyah (Arabic: جاهلية‎‎ ǧāhiliyyah/jāhilīyah "") is an Islamic concept of the period of time and state of affairs in Arabia before the advent of Islam. It is often translated as the "Age of Ignorance". The term jahiliyyah is derived from the verbal root jahala "to be ignorant or stupid, to act stupidly". In modern times various Islamic thinkers have used the term to criticize what they saw as un-Islamic nature of public and private life in the Muslim world. In current use, Jahiliyyah refers to secular modernity, as in the work of Abul A'la Maududi, who viewed modernity as the “new jahiliyyah.”Sayyid Qutb viewed jahiliyyah as a state of domination of humans over humans, as opposed to their submission to God. Radical groups have justified armed struggle against secular regimes as a jihad against jahiliyyah.

The term Jahiliyyah is used several places in the Quran, and translations often use various terms to represent it:

This term can be used in reference to the Arabic culture before the arrival of Islam.

Before the Islamic conversion the Arab tribes were nomadic, with a strong community spirit and some specific society rules. Their culture was patriarchal, with rudimentary religious beliefs. Although there were some traces of monotheism in the "hanifs" figures, their religious beliefs were based mostly on idol adorations and social congregations once a year around the Kaaba for trading and exchanges. Since the term is, in its deep sense, used as a condition, and not as an historical period, the Jahiliyya is used to describe the period of ignorance and darkness that preluded the arrival of Islam. It refers to the general condition of those that haven't accepted the Muslim faith.

After the Bar Kochba Revolt of 132-135 CE, the Romans engaged in mass executions, expulsions, and enslavement, destroying large numbers of Judean towns and forbidding Jews from settling in Jerusalem, which was renamed Aelia Capitolina, or its environs (Dio Cassius, Roman History 69.12-14); there was no further Jewish government or overarching legal system thereafter in Judea, became normatively known as Syria Palestina; this effectively turned the expatriate Jews of the Diaspora into a permanently exiled people, deprived of their homeland. The exiled Jewish population went out of the Roman territories to the exile in Arabia Deserta.

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