With respect to time in an absolute sense, no era of jāhiliyyah exists after the mission of Muhammad—may God bless him and grant him peace—for a group from his community will unfailingly remain manifest upon the truth until the Day of Resurrection.
A confined or situational jāhiliyyah, however, can arise in certain Muslim lands and within many individual Muslims, as the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said: “Four traits in my community are remnants of jāhiliyyah,” and as he told Abū Dharr, “You are a man who still has some jāhiliyyah in you,” and the like.
Therefore, his statement in this ḥadīth, “Whoever seeks within Islam a practice of jāhiliyyah,” encompasses every form of ignorance—whether general or specific; whether Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Sabian, pagan; whether a composite of these traditions, a portion of them, or something derived from any of them.
(1) Accordingly, to apply such expressions to Muslims in general—or to any of their lands or communities—without tying them to a specific circumstance, deed, behavior, or individual is a mistake and a laxity the Muslim should avoid. The practice adopted by some writers, researchers, and thinkers of branding Islamic societies, or parts of them, as a “jahiliyya society” (society of pre-Islamic ignorance) without the legal restrictions and specifications required by the Sharia is unsound and contradicts both the principles of sacred law and the method of the early pious generations (salaf).
(2) MS B reads: la-yazal (“continues to be”).
(3) MS B reads: zahirun (“manifest / victorious”).
(4) Printed edition reads: wa-fi kathir min al-muslimin (“and among many of the Muslims”).
(5) See hadith (1/234).
(6) See hadith (1/236).
(7) MS B reads: wa-muttabaʿ (“and is followed”).
(8) MSS C and D read: tandarij (“is subsumed”).
(9) Printed edition reads: aw ghayra muqayyada (“or unqualified”), a reading that disrupts the sense.
(10) MS D reads: aw Sabaiyya (“or Sabian”).
(11) Printed edition reads: aw shirkiyya (“or polytheistic”); MSS C and D read: aw mushrikiyya (“or idolatrous / polytheistic”).