Barrister Abdur Razzaq’s unfinished argument with Jamaat

On September 18, 2026, University Press Limited launched Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami: Its History and Politics, a book my father wrote during the final years of his life. It is at once a memoir of his years within Jamaat-e-Islami, an account of the party’s political history, and an argument about what its future might look like. 

The coverage before and after publication concentrated, understandably, on 1971. My father had long argued that Jamaat should apologise for its role that year, and the book records both his attempts to persuade the party of this and the resistance he encountered.

That question is unavoidable but to read the book principally through 1971 is to miss much of what he was trying to do. Its more interesting arguments, particularly in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, concern a different question on what should an Islamic movement actually be? 

Must it organise itself around the pursuit of political power, or can its religious and social purposes be pursued through institutions outside party politics? 

This distinction runs through the later chapters and gives the book a significance beyond Jamaat itself.

From party history to political argument

The opening chapters are more conventional. My father examines Jamaat’s philosophy and organisational structure, its entry into electoral politics and what he describes as its eventual political annihilation.

His history begins with the 1957 meeting at Machhi Goth in Punjab, where Jamaat decided to participate in politics, and moves through the party’s later struggles in Bangladesh. Inevitably, some of this history is also personal. 

He recounts defending Professor Ghulam Azam in the citizenship case, representing Jamaat leaders before Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, and fighting the constitutional case over the party’s registration. 

Chapter 4 turns to reform within Jamaat. It is the section that has received the most attention because it contains his efforts to persuade the party to confront its role in 1971. But the three chapters that follow mark a change in the book. Here he moves from the history of one party to the larger intellectual problem of Islamic politics.

The conventional premise of many Islamic political parties is that the establishment of an Islamic state constitutes their ultimate political objective. My father questions the premise itself.

Islamic awakening, he argues, can take many institutional forms: political parties, certainly, but also dawah centres, organisations for training da’ees, research institutes, professional bodies and media organisations. Drawing on Muhammad Asad, Hassan al-Banna, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Hashim Kamali, he makes a distinction between an Islamic state as an end and as a means. 

His conclusion is that it is the latter: one possible instrument for pursuing a larger moral and religious purpose. 

That distinction changes the argument considerably. Once the state ceases to be the ultimate objective, party membership also ceases to be the principal measure of participation in an Islamic movement.

My father therefore rejects the proposition that a Muslim must belong to an Islamic political party in order fully to discharge his or her religious obligations. A judge, civil servant, teacher, researcher or da’ee may remain outside such a party and still contribute to justice and Islamic values through the proper exercise of a profession or public duty. 

Political organisation becomes one avenue among several, rather than the institution through which all others acquire religious meaning. This is among the book’s more consequential arguments because it loosens the connection between religious commitment and partisan affiliation.

What is an Islamic party for?

My father does not argue against Islamic political parties. His position is more qualified.

He accepts that politics can be an effective instrument of social change. A political party can offer a programme for incorporating Islamic values into public life, while participation in electoral politics can demonstrate that religion need not be confined to private observance.

But he also identifies costs. Religious slogans can become instruments for obtaining votes. Electoral defeat can be represented, by supporters or opponents, as a popular rejection not merely of a party but of Islam. And much of the routine business of government is religiously neutral, raising the question of why it necessarily requires a specifically Islamic party.

His answer is deliberately contingent. Islamic thinkers and political leaders should decide the appropriate degree and form of political participation according to time, place and social circumstances. An organisational model suited to one country, or one historical period, may be unsuitable in another.

This is a significant departure from treating a particular party structure as the natural political expression of Islam. It substitutes judgment for prescription.

The same reasoning informs his discussion of social change. He does not propose abandoning the familiar top-down attempt to influence the state. He argues instead that it should be accompanied by a bottom-up effort to build institutions capable of shaping society independently of electoral politics.

His list is broad: think tanks and research institutes, dawah organisations, economically influential but politically independent institutions, human-rights groups, media organisations and professional bodies. In Muslim-majority countries such as Bangladesh, where Islamic political parties already exist, his contention is that parties alone cannot produce durable moral, intellectual or social change. 

The implication is worth dwelling on. A political movement tends to measure time in elections or governments. Institutions concerned with scholarship, education, professional standards or religious instruction work to different rhythms. To place all of them under a political organisation is to risk making the short-term imperatives of the party the organising principle of the wider movement.

Dawah and the demands of politics

This problem leads to perhaps the book’s most concrete institutional proposal: the separation of dawah from party politics.

My father’s argument is practical rather than abstract. When political and dawah work occupy the same organisation, periods of political turmoil inevitably reorder its priorities. Elections and political movements can consume the organisation and its workers for months or years. Religious instruction, training and sustained dawah then become secondary. 

He found an alternative model in Morocco, particularly in the relationship between Al-Haraka al-Tawhid wal-Islah and Hizb al-Adala wal-Tanmia. He regarded the organisational separation between the dawah movement and the political party as an important element in the Moroccan experience. 

He also notes that Professor Khurshid Ahmad, a Naib-e-Ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, had proposed a similar division, though unsuccessfully. 

For my father, the problem was larger than administrative efficiency. Once dawah and party politics become indistinguishable, the fate of a political organisation can become confused with the fate of the religious project it claims to represent. 

Electoral success acquires religious significance; electoral failure can appear to signify religious failure. Meanwhile, work intended to survive political cycles becomes subject to them.

His proposed separation is therefore also a division of functions. Politics concerns power, representation and government. Dawah concerns religious, moral and educational work. They may share objectives without requiring a single organisational structure.

An argument from inside

There is an unavoidable tension in a book of this kind. It is both an insider’s history and a criticism of the institution to which the author once belonged. My father does not write as an opponent of Jamaat’s underlying religious objectives. Nor does he offer a repudiation of Islamic politics. 

His disagreement is principally over means: the concentration of too many functions within the political party, the elevation of the Islamic state from instrument to objective, and the assumption that political organisation should dominate the wider Islamic movement.

This helps explain why the book may discomfort both defenders and critics of Jamaat. Those looking for a defence of the party will encounter an account of its deficiencies and arguments for substantial reform. 

Those expecting a rejection of its ideological premises will find instead an attempt to preserve many of its religious objectives while radically reconsidering the institutions through which they should be pursued.

The book was written with disagreement in mind. My father explicitly anticipated criticism and regarded it as useful. As he put it, his hope was to provoke “necessary introspection and reforms” and “genuine discussion about Jamaat’s role, its challenges and its future.” 

That disposition was familiar to those who worked with him. During preparations for a case, he would state his own position and then ask his juniors to dismantle it: “What is your counterargument? Argue against me.” 

The habit is relevant to how the book should be approached. Its proposals need not be accepted as a programme. They are better read as arguments to be tested.

My father remained committed to many of the broad objectives he had shared with his former colleagues. What changed was his understanding of the means. He wanted the next generation to consider whether the political party had been asked to carry too much: religion, dawah, social reform, education, political mobilisation and the pursuit of state power.

As his family, we believed the manuscript should be published. Its publication was always likely to unsettle some readers precisely because it examines a political organisation from within while questioning assumptions that its members may regard as settled. 

That is also why the book should not be reduced to its most contentious historical chapter. Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami: Its History and Politics is certainly an insider’s account of Jamaat and its failures. 

But its larger subject is the relationship between faith, institutions and political power: where an Islamic movement ends and a political party begins, whether the two should occupy the same institutional space, and what is lost when they do.

Those questions extend beyond Jamaat. The book’s value lies in placing them plainly enough to be argued over.

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Imran Siddiq is a practising barrister and a Senior Advocate of the Bangladesh Supreme Court.