Islamist terrorism, the ideology of the supremacy of Islam and the Tablighi Jamaat?, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Islamist terrorism, the ideology of the supremacy of Islam and the Tablighi Jamaat?

What is the Tablighi Jamaat?

By Jenny Taylor

8 Sep 2009

He's right in that the Tablighi Jamaat copy Muhammad in all his customs, even it is reported, eschewing beds for sleeping and toothbrushes for cleaning teeth; they use a twig. But he is wrong about their interest in non-believers, indicating the serious religion "blind spot" that bedevils coverage of world affairs now.

If it were the duty of the Tablighi Jamaat to convert non-believers, there might be a freer debate than there is. The cut and thrust of open engagement might encourage a truer encounter between neighbours. As it is, the Tablighi Jamaat is a revivalist group – interested only in other Muslims and therefore particularly inward-looking – which accounts for their danger to gullible young men.

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, and creates an atmosphere of spirituality, solidarity and purpose among themselves that proves extremely compelling. Deobandi-inspired, adherents are interested only in reviving the faith of weaker Muslims, and thus helping to ensure either a passport to paradise, or the rule of Islam on earth, whichever comes soonest.

Neither is the Tablighi Jamaat "ultraorthodox" – in fact rather the opposite. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, founder of the Muslim Institute and godfather of the Quilliam Foundation, is against the huge 12,000-capacity mosque the sect wishes to build in Newham because, as he told me, he believes they peddle "fairy tales".

Their reliance on unorthodox stories of mythical heroes, their other-worldliness and pietism, their veneration for the founder and his family, and their ritualisation of certain select scriptures and practises like the chilla – 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 completely condemn.

http://newageislam.com/islamist-terrorism,-the-ideology-of-the-supremacy-of-islam-and-the-tablighi-jamaat?/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1744

How Britain's mosques foster extremism, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

How Britain's mosques foster extremism

As a child, I was unsure if I belonged to Britain, India - or both, or neither. In the day I went to a multi-faith, multi-ethnic state school in the East End of London. At school I was taught to question, think and see all religions equally. In the evenings, I attended Koran schools at a mosque on Brick Lane where I was forced to learn to read Arabic, but not to understand meanings of words. I was not allowed to question, but simply to bob to and fro and learn Arabic prayers without understanding. All our teachers were elderly Asian immigrant men, and we were not allowed to mix with girls. At school, our teachers were mostly English women and we were encouraged to mix with everybody.

I developed two personalities, two worlds, two allegiances: one at “English school” and another at the mosque. I was torn, confused and full of questions. But what now? Two decades on, surely Britain's Muslims are in a better place.

Today, there are between 1,200 and 1,600 mosques in Britain - no definite figure exists. Yesterday, the Charity Commission sought to gloss over the malaise in them by publishing figures on attendance, but not inquiring into difficult areas. At Quilliam, Britain's first counter-extremism think-tank, we commissioned a poll of more than 1,000 mosques in 2008, during Ramadan when mosques are busiest. Despite employing Urdu and Bengali-speaking researchers, we could poll only just over 500. Most British mosques don't maintain a reception or service to answer questions, and not every one we did reach was willing to answer.

Quilliam's report, Mosques Made in Britain, reveals the true extent of the mess. We found that 97 per cent of imams, or leaders, were from overseas and 92 per cent were educated abroad, mostly in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Almost all mosques are controlled by first-generation immigrant men, leaving most British Muslims - women and young people - out of the management structure.

http://newageislam.com/how-britain-s-mosques-foster-extremism/islamic-world-news/d/1210