مریم جمیلہ کا ذہنی و فکری ارتقا : ایک تجزیاتی مطالعہ ................................................................................................................ A Study of the Evolution of Maryam Jameelah's Thought and Ideas

Abstract

Maryam Jameelah was an American Jewish convert to Islam, who preferred Pakistan to America as her permanent residence after conversion. Similar to Jameelah, her entire family distanced itself from Judaism. Criticizing Jameelah's views about the Western civilization, modernism, and Islam, some scholars have argued that she was a conservative writer who devoted a big part of her life in presenting a conservative or rather fundamentalist view of Islam. However, the reasons of Jameelah's attitude have been often ignored. Moreover, scholars did not pay much attention to the fact that she tends to take similar position towards the study of other religious traditions as well. Therefore, various stages of the evolution of Maryam Jameelah's thought and ideas before her formal conversion to Islam has to be studied in detail. In this regards, questions like what motivated her towards the study of the world religions and why did she prefer to criticize the modern reform movements remain at the forefront. By analyzing Jameelah's American life and approaches towards the study of world religions, this paper will argue that her thoughts were influenced by a number of relationships, conditions, connections and situations that were multiple, dynamic, interactive and cumulative in their nature. During the different periods of her life, she had showed different attitudes. However, she tended to refute modernism and the Western culture in every phase of her life that later resulted in her criticism of the modern reform movements.