THE EVOLUTION OF DEFECTION: HOW EIGHT DECADES OF IDEOLOGICAL FRACTURE AND POLITICAL REALIGNMENT SHAP

Abstract

Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan’s political and intellectual journey reflects the enduring tension between revolutionary idealism and organizational rigidity. Across eighty-four years, successive generations of scholars, bureaucrats, activists, and reformists entered its fold seeking to build an Islamic moral order—only to leave disillusioned by internal autocracy, ideological stagnation, or shifting political realities. The following chronological account of forty key departures reveals the movement’s structural paradoxes and traces the intellectual evolution of Islamic political thought in South Asia.