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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
Joukowsky_Institute@brown.edu
This term refers to "Days of Ignorance" that preceded Allah's divine intervention through the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an; it is a concept describing the state of ignorance of God's divine guidance and thus seeks to describe the state of anyone not following the Qur'an. Further 'jahiliyya' suggests an element of barbarity that is similar to that associated with pre-Islamic Arabs and which also differentiates Muslim from non-Muslim.
Posted at Apr 12/2009 09:13AM:
ian: It raises the question of how the emergence of an Islamic polity and its culture marked a rupture with an Arab past. Did the Umayyads for instance embody this?