Javed Ahmad Ghamidi

The Taliban say that democracy is a concept alien to Islam. The ideal way to set up an Islamic government in our times is the one that they adopted for Mullah Omar's government in Afghanistan. The constitution, the parliament, and elections are nothing but modern day shams...I can say with full confidence on the basis of my study of Islam that this viewpoint and this strategy (of Taliban) is not acceptable to the Qur'an. It prescribes democracy as the way to run the affairs of the state. The Qur'an (42:38) says: amruhum shūrā baynahum (the affairs of the Muslims are run on the basis of mutual consultation). 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) said: "Whosoever pledges allegiance to anyone without the collective consent of the Muslims presents himself for the death sentence". It is true that, in Muslim history, monarchy and dictatorship have often been accepted forms of government. Some people also believe that the head of government should be a nominee of God Himself. However, the principle the Qur’ān spells out is very clear.

Ghamidi believes that there are certain directives of the Qur'an pertaining to war which were specific only to Prophet Muhammad and certain specified peoples of his times (particularly the progeny of Abraham: the Ishmaelites, the Israelites, and the Nazarites). Thus, Muhammad and his designated followers waged a war against Divinely specified peoples of their time (the polytheists and the Israelites and Nazarites of Arabia and some other Jews, Christians, et al.) as a form of Divine punishment and asked the polytheists of Arabia for submission to Islam as a condition for exoneration and the others for jizya and submission to the political authority of the Muslims for exemption from death punishment and for military protection as the dhimmis of the Muslims. Therefore, after Muhammad and his companions, there is no concept in Islam obliging Muslims to wage war for propagation or implementation of Islam. The only valid basis for jihad through arms is to end oppression when all other measures have failed. According to him Jihad can only be waged by an organised Islamic state, that too only where a leader has been nominated by the previous leader or by the consensus of the ulema if the state is newly established. No person, party or group can take arms into their hands (for the purpose of waging Jihad) under any circumstances. Another corollary, in his opinion, is that death punishment for apostasy was also specifically for the recipients of the same Divine punishment during Muhammad's times—for they had persistently denied the truth of Muhammad's mission even after it had been made conclusively evident to them by God through Muhammad.

Ghamidi had appeared on several TV channels and appears regularly on dedicated programs. His television audience consists of educated, urban-based middle-class men and women between the ages of 20–35, as well as lay Islamic intellectuals and professionals. Ghamidi's religiously oriented audience tends to be dissatisfied with the positions of traditional ulema and Western-educated secular-liberal elite, and find his interventions and ideas more sensible, moderate, and relevant.

Ghamidi left Pakistan in 2010 as a result of strong and violent actions against his work. In a 2015 interview with Voice of America, Ghamidi explained his reason for departure was to safeguard the lives of people near him including his neighbours who had begun to fear for their safety. Some of his close associates had already been killed like Dr. Muhammad Farooq Khan and Dr. Habib-ur-Rehman, the latter of whom was murdered in his clinic. Another close associate who was related to the work of Ghamidi's Risala, Syed Manzoor-ul-Hasan, one day after leaving Ghamidi's office was shot through the mouth but survived although the bullet still remains in his body. Ghamidi maintained that because of today's means of communication, his work of education does not get affected by his exile. Ghamidi, also regularly appears on Ilm-o-Hikmat, a Pakistani Dunya News show. He has also presented his desire to return in the future when circumstances change. Ghamidi has moved to Dallas, Texas, USA as of July 2019, to support establishment of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning, an initiative of Al-Mawrid US and an educational institute named after himself.

In 2009, Ghamidi was awarded Sitara-i-Imtiaz, the third highest civilian honor of Pakistan.

Jāvēd Ahmed Ghāmidī (Urdu: جاوید احمد غامدی ‎) (born April 7, 1952) is a Pakistani Muslim theologian, Quran scholar, Islamic modernist, exegete and educationist. He is also the founding President of Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences and its sister organisation Danish Sara. He became a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology (responsible for giving legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistani Government and the country's Parliament) on 28 January 2006, where he remained for a couple of years. He also taught Islamic studies at the Civil Services Academy for more than a decade from 1979 to 1991. He was also a student of the famous Islamic scholar and exegete, Amin Ahsan Islahi. He is running an intellectual movement similar to Wasatiyyah, on the popular electronic media of Pakistan. Currently he is Principal Research Fellow and Chief Patron of Ghamidi Center of Islamic Learning in Dallas, Texas, USA, An Initiative of Al-Mawrid United States.

Javed Ahmed Ghamidi resigned in September 2006 from the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), a constitutional body responsible for providing legal advice on Islamic issues to the Pakistani government. His resignation was 'accepted' by the President of Pakistan. Ghamidi's resignation was prompted by the Pakistani government's formation of a separate committee of ulema to review a Bill involving women's rights; the committee was formed after extensive political pressure was applied by the MMA. Ghamidi argued that this was a breach of the CII's jurisdiction, since the very purpose of the council is to ensure that Pakistan's laws do not conflict with the teachings of Islam. He also said that the amendments in the bill proposed by the Ulema committee were against the injunctions of Islam. This event occurred when the MMA threatened to resign from the provincial and national assemblies if the government amended the Hudood Ordinance, which came into being under Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization. The Hudood Ordinances have been criticised for, among other things, a reportedly difficult procedure to prove allegations of rape.

An avid reader, it was during his usual excursions to the library that he stumbled on the works of Imam Hamiduddin Farahi, a prodigious scholar of Quran. It was in this work did he find the mention to Amin Ahsan Islahi, the then torch bearer of Farahi's thought. Knowing that Amin Ahsan Islahi was resident in Lahore during those days, he set out to meet him the very day he had first read his mention. It was this meeting that changed Ghamidi from a man of philosophy and literature to a man of religion. In 1973, he came under the tutelage of Amin Ahsan Islahi (d. 1997), who was destined to who have a deep impact on him. He was also associated with the famous scholar and revivalist Abu al-A‘la Mawdudi (d. 1979) for several years. He started working with them on various Islamic disciplines particularly exegesis and Islamic law.

Javed Ahmed Ghamidi has two elder sisters & he grew up in a Sufi household. His early education included a modern path (Matriculation from Islamia High School, Pakpattan), as well as a traditional path (Arabic and Persian languages, and the Qur'an with Mawlawi Nur Ahmad of Nang Pal). His father wanted him to have both traditional and modern education, splitting his time between school and learning Arabic and Persian. His first exposure to traditional Islamic studies was in the Sufi tradition. After matriculating, he came to Lahore in 1967 where he is settled ever since. Initially, he was more interested in Literature and Philosophy. He later graduated from Government College, Lahore, with a BA Honours in English Literature & Philosophy in 1972.

Javed Ahmed Ghamidi was born on 7 April 1952 to a Kakazai family in a village called Jivan Shah (near Pakpattan) in District Sahiwal, Punjab, Pakistan. His family village settlement was in a town called Dawud in Sialkot. His father, Muhammad Tufayl Junaydi was a Sufi & landowner by ancestral profession. After the death of his father, Nur Ilahi, Tufayl Junaydi became interested in medicine and spent the rest of his life in that area. To follow the path of tasawwuf (mysticism), Tufayl Junaydi stepped into this valley at the young age of about twenty, and for the rest of his life remained an epitome of commitment and sincerity to his chosen course. He died in 1986.

Like Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Maulana Naeem Siddiqui and Dr. Israr Ahmed, Ghamidi also worked closely with Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maududi (alternative spelling Syed Maudoodi; often referred to as Maulana Maududi) (1903–1979) and Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi. His work with Maududi continued for about nine years before he voiced his first differences of opinion, which led to his subsequent expulsion from Mawdudi's political party, Jamaat-e-Islami in 1977. Later, he developed his own view of religion based on hermeneutics and ijtihad under the influence of his mentor, Amin Ahsan Islahi (1904–1997), a well-known exegete of the Indian sub-continent who is author of Tadabbur-i-Qur'an, a Tafsir (exegeses of Qur'an). Ghamidi's critique of Mawdudi's thought is an extension of Wahid al-Din Khan's criticism of Mawdudi. Khan (1925– ) was amongst the first scholars from within the ranks of Jamaat-e-Islami to present a full-fledged critique of Mawdudi's understanding of religion. Khan's contention is that Mawdudi has completely inverted the Qur'anic worldview. Ghamidi, for his part, agreed with Khan that the basic obligation in Islam is not the establishment of an Islamic world order but servitude to God, and that it is to help and guide humans in their effort to fulfill that obligation for which religion is revealed. Therefore, Islam never imposed the obligation on its individual adherents or on the Islamic state to be constantly in a state of war against the non-Islamic world. In fact, according to Ghamidi, even the formation of an Islamic state is not a basic religious obligation for Muslims. Despite such extraordinary differences and considering Maududi's interpretation of "political Islam" as incorrect, Ghamidi in one of his 2015 interviews said that he still respects his former teacher like a father.