The Role of Tablighi Jamaat in Islamic Revivalism

By Moin Qazi, New Age Islam 5 September 2023 Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. – (Quran 3: 104) The Muslim world is in crisis, and a biased media has added its biased colour to it. The Tablighi movement is crucial to rectifying the misconstrued image of Islam. The Muslim world is in crisis and a biased media has added its biased colour. The negative stereotyping has created an impression that everything Muslim is evil. However, away from public glare, there was a silent revolution with Prophet Muhammad's mission placed at the top of all priorities – spreading the authentic message of Islam. Called da'wah – the concept of propagation of the Islamic faith- a massive cadre of preachers is silently striving to make Muslims more perfect practitioners of their faith. Da'wah and its Meaning and Importance Missionary activity has always been central to the propagation of the Islamic faith. The act of da'wah (Da'wat in its South Asian form), which means call or invitation, is enjoined by the Qur'an and is supposed to have been the way of the prophets throughout history. Call to the correct path has been more specifically described by the Qur'an as the twin duties of 'commanding good' and 'prohibiting wrong'. Da'wa is, hence, an integral part of the faith. Tabligh, derived from an Arabic root meaning 'reach', literally means 'intimate' and has been one of the terms associated with preaching historically. A tradition of the Prophet uses the same word while urging the faithful to transmit from him, even if one verse. Expectedly, such an understanding of Tabligh blurs the strict binary of internal reform and external conversion. Whoever is deemed wayward has to be brought back to the right path, be it nominal Muslims themselves. However, internal reform and Tablighi have taken precedence within the colonial context. Jamaat is one of the many such movements that emerged in this period. Islam is growing but ageing and slowing. That will change the world. Although the estimated demographic changes, which foresee the growth of the Muslim population as a possible threat causing poverty in the future in India, are not based on scientific data, some against the religion of Islam still try to cling to their estimations that are not based on any concrete fact. Renewal of Islam Islam is today the religion of 1.8 billion Muslims occupying a wide belt stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific across Africa, parts of Europe, and Asia. According to 2015 figures, Christians form the most prominent religious group by some margin, with 2.3 billion adherents or 31.2% of the world population of 7.3 billion. Next come Muslims (1.8 billion, or 24.1%), Hindus (1.1 billion, or 15.1%) and Buddhists (500 million, or 6.9%). Partly because of the importance of the Muslim habitat (or Dar el-Islam) in world affairs, the West has begun to take a particular interest in studying Islam and is trying to understand its relation to the life of the Muslim. It is no exaggeration to say that the Muslims themselves are showing a similar interest in studying the reality of Islam to know to what extent they may be able to adopt modern ways without losing their religion. Recently, there have been two parties amongst the Muslims: one maintaining that religion should be sacrificed for modernization, and the other that modernization should be sacrificed for the sake of faith. There is now a third between these two groups, whose number is increasing, which sees a possibility for reconciliation between modern life and the old religion. Contemporary Muslim thinkers believe that the principles of Islam have a flexibility that allows them to explain and interpret with the greatest freedom while still keeping the faith intact. Religions have jostled with each other for millenniums. Many of today's missionaries are returning to proselytizing practices that the mainline preachers abandoned long ago. Armed only with sleeping bag backpacks and a simple message, da'wah activists are going door-to-door in more than 200 countries. This mission evokes tales of Prophet Muhammad's companions who trekked hundreds of miles and braved bandits and armies to spread the word of Islam back in the 7th century. Islam has a simple but highly effective evangelical message that boils down to five points to mirror Islam's five cardinal pillars of a practice: Grasp the true Meaning and implications of the credal statement that there is no deity except Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger; pray conscientiously five times a day; acquire learning and engage in the frequent remembrance of God; honour fellow believers; and participate in missionary work (da'wah) by spreading awareness of Islam. Da'wah is God's way of bringing believers to faith. Historically, missionary da'wah accompanied commercial ventures or followed military conquests. The "invitation", or call, to accept Islam has to be extended to non-Muslims and Muslims who do not observe Islam in its complete form. Calling non-Muslims and "inconsistent" Muslims to Islam is considered by Muslim theologians to be an unconditional duty of every Muslim. Every Muslim is regarded as a missionary of Islam. The story of Maulana Kandhlawi The most accomplished modern missionary is Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi (1885-1944), a Puritan religious scholar. When he began his revivalist movement called Tablighi Jamaat ("Proselytising Group ") in a rural setting in Mewat in northern India in 1927, it was a response to a dominant Hindu culture influencing Muslims and their way of life. However, the seeds germinated in British-ruled India, emerging from the Islamic Deoband movement active in South Asia. From its inception in 1867, the Deoband movement fused some aspects of Sufism with the study of the hadith and strict adherence to sharia, as well as advocating non-state-sponsored Islamic da'wah (missionary activity). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Muslim minority in British India felt caught between the resurgent Hindu majority and the small but British-supported Christian missionary agenda. Kandhlawi graduated from the central Deoband madrassa in 1910 and, while working among the Muslim masses of Mewat, India (just south of Delhi), questioned whether education alone could renew Islam. He eventually decided that "only through physical movement away from one's place could one leave behind one's esteem for life and its comforts for the cause of God." Indeed, some have even described his movement as the missionary arm of the Deobandis. Other Muslim groups in the subcontinent, notably the Barelvis, had previously developed the idea of itinerant missionary work—Tabligh—to counter Hindu (and Christian) conversions of Muslims. Still, it was Ilyas's genius to teach that Tabligh should be the responsibility of every individual (male) Muslim. He aimed to recapitulate the alleged piety and practice of Muhammad and his companions in the 7th century A.D., and as such, was concerned not just with Hindu or Christian inroads into the Muslim community but with stemming the rising tide of Westernization and secularisation. Unlike other contemporary Islamic revivalists, Ilyas did not believe Islam could be reconciled with Western science, technology, and political ideologies. Ilyas wanted to take his teachings from the classroom to the ordinary people. The mission was meant to devote itself mainly to the business of preaching. The Meos, the community where Ilyas began his work, were Muslims but mostly followed several Hindu traditions. The adherents of the organization are popularly known as "Tablighis". The movement grew out as an offshoot of Deobandism, a socially conservative school of Islam. The Tablighis lead spartan lives, shunning the outside world. They strive to create a compelling ambience of spirituality, solidarity, and purpose for the youth. The Philosophy of Tabligh The Tablighi Jamaat is the most successful of the many such groups to form after the Mutiny (known to India, where it comes from, as the Uprising) in the mid-19th century. Eighty million strong today, the group shuns the harsh outside world, creating an atmosphere of spirituality, solidarity and purpose that proves highly compelling. Deobandi-inspired adherents are interested only in reviving the faith of weaker Muslims, thus helping to ensure a passport to paradise or the rule of Islam on earth, whichever comes soonest. Neither is the Tablighi Jamaat "ultraorthodox" –rather the opposite. Their reliance on unorthodox stories of mythical heroes, their other-worldliness and pietism, their adoration for the founder and his family, and their ritualization of certain select scriptures and practises like the Chhilla – a 40-day preaching tour all are obliged to undertake annually – has led one scholar to conclude that they function like a Sufi order, something that the "ultraorthodox" Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia for example thoroughly condemns. It is because they are not activist enough that frustrated young zealots become fodder for the shadowy jihadi groomers who infiltrate their ranks, Over the past century, what began as a revivalist movement has transformed into a global phenomenon. It has seen a massive surge recently, heightened by an intense religious zeal in the new generation of Muslims. Instead of adopting the frayed coarse discourses, the Da'is use exciting anecdotes from the Islamic scriptures to enthuse the initiates. The enlightened elders also engage in deep theological discussions. Transnationalism and travel are two distinct characteristics of this movement. It adopted global travel and physical movement as a means of da'wah. For God's sake, the most important and frequent activity of an adept of the Jamaat is going out. A combination of time and space, 'travel' has a special meaning in the Tablighi discourse. Tablighi Jamaat members leave the comfort of their homes for 3-4 months to serve God. The movement is comparable with the concept of hijra, both in the sense of migration and withdrawal. It is travel within one's self. One temporarily migrates from Dunya (worldly pursuits) to din (religious concerns), a favourite dichotomy among the Tablighis. It is a migration from corruption to purity, drawing away from worldly attachments to the Path of God. A spiritual period in da'wah work, in other words, reduces the desires for worldly pleasures and sets the individual on an authentic moral and spiritual path. Lessons of the Tablighi Movement In their lessons, drawn from Quranic verses and the recorded sayings of Prophet Muhammad, da'wah supporters lay out two simple aims. First, they encourage fellow Muslims to return to what they believe are the standards and morals of the Prophet's companions. Second, they recruit members to join da'wah and participate in Kharooj (preaching tours). Kharooj is a designated mission defined by the number of days involved in the spiritual journey, typically three days, 40 days, or four months. The exercise aims to lure the weak into the mosque, where they can repeatedly be subjected to the 'six points' programme. Tablighi Jamaat acts as a beacon to those lost in Jahiliya (the state of ignorance of guidance from God), but it stops short of that. As Travelers in Faith puts it: "Man is a ship in a tumultuous sea. It is impossible to repair it without taking it away from the high seas where the waves of ignorance and the temptations of temporal life assail it. Its only chance is to come back to land to be dry-docked. The dry dock is the mosque of the Jamaat." ----- Moin Qazi is the author of the bestselling book, Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He has worked in the development finance sector for almost four decades. URL: https://newageislam.com/debating-islam/tablighi-jamaat-islamic-revivalism/d/130602 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism