No one in my family of the past 80 years spent time in tableegh. I was the first person in my family who when came across these people decided to spend time with them few years ago, while in search of truth, and Alhamdulillah now many people in my family are learning from them and following the teachings of Islam.
From all the time I spent with them I realized that the points you mentioned are correct. In every markaz, there are proper instructions given to every jamaat regarding do’s and dont’s before they leave for any place. Never ever did I hear in any instruction given to any jamaat something that I found unreasonable such as the behavior mentioned in the article.
But I realized that out of the illiterate people who join the jamaat very few of them at times don’t follow/understand the simple instructions given to them and do what ever their heart feels tempted to and their own mind understands. Such people bring a bad name to the whole jammat in front of the people who are hungry to see a mistake and portray it to be the act of the whole Tableeghi Jamaat.
The percentage of reasonably behaving people I saw in Tableeghi jamaat, I didn’t see in any other group I came across related to any field of life. Also, I haven’t seen any group where people from all the fields of life join and peacefully follow the rules.
Our prophet Muhammad (SAW) gave dawah to everyone, but the conversion comes from Allah (SWT). Dawah is invitation and since his (SAW)'s teachings were open to everyone it was up to them whoever they were to accept Islam and they did based on the Qur’an, brotherhood, miracles, etc.
It is not our task to go to people on their death bed … assuming this article is true. How would a person be able to make a conscious decision about imaan, when he is suffering the pangs of death?
The article is a poor one from the oneset … there has been no attempt at interviewing the people and no attempt to providing the correct interpretation of Islam as seen by the journalist and in fact there has been no attempt to provide a balanced view of the affairs. The person writing the article, editing the article and distributing the article without context or primer should realise the way forward is not to make religious prudence into an evil, but to sift through how religious prudence is being undertaken and provide the best way for it. In my humble opinion the problems we find in religious social enclaves is not going to be solved by liberals bashing them. It will only be solved by other truly religious persons with insight indulging in wise discussions with them to arrive at optimum solutions.
What I need to add here about Dawateislami is that this movement is a pure non-political movement and at many occasions it has been stated by Dawateislami that anyone who wear Green Tribe does not relates himself to Dawateislami. Anyone can wear such green tribe and do something wrong to hurt the image of Dawateislami.
Therefore, I consider this as a strong move against Dawateislami who is preaching Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).
To play devil’s advocate again, isnt it the case that a hadis goes along the lines of a person knew he was going to be killed in battle by a sahabi and said the kalima, the sahabi killed him anyway because it was coerced, and the Prophet was angry at the sahabi for killing a ‘convert’?
With respect to this, I dont think the journalist is in a position to give her interpretation of Islam, as she is not a Muslim. Also that would be more of a opinion piece than a reporting piece.
Now that the issue has been reported on, truly religious persons with insight can discuss the issue wisely. Having said that, I am pretty skeptical of the impact of such truly religious persons, as the people involved in all this activity tend to be quite inaccessible to wise discussions. It is unfortunately something we can comment on without solving.
Exactly queer. The only possible argument that I can see against this practice from a religious point of view is the distress caused to the people who reject the conversion. But surely, on a simple calculus of distress… risking momentary distress is better than an eternity of distress.
Now i dont the whether it is based upon Hadith or Quran or any fatwa etc but i have heard from people that if some one is on his deathbed dont tell them to recite Kalima just recite it yourself slowly and if a person is momin and is able to speak he will recite it, but dont psh anyone to recite kalima.
Yes this is the situation turned on its head. In this case the person fighting is willingly reciting the kalimah, this person recited the kalimah a few times and after each time started to fight against the Muslims again. So in the end the Sahabi (RA) killed him thinking that the enemy was making a mockery of the “get out clause”. The Prophet (SAW) was upset because we do not know the hearts of men and we must trust what they say even when we suspect it is out of a sense of straw clutching.
Note: The Sahabi (RA) is not urging the person to accept Islam, but was giving him the benefit of the doubt each time he did recite it.
Indeed provided the truth is what is reflected in the article.
Here the Jewish boy was the servant of RasoolAllah (SAW) and in a position subordinate to him (SAW), and although this was done by RasoolAllah it does not become hukm for us to do the same especially to complete strangers, unless RasoolAllah (SAW) has told us to do the same or the salaf or the scholars provide the reasoning to do so. This is because much of the actions undertaken by RasoolAllah (SAW) were a result of divine inspiration and not repeatable by us.
The hadith quoted is one cited in Book 70 “Patients” Sahih Bukhari there is no purpose for this hadith that we can extrude other than visiting the sick. If we want to justify telling the sick to embrace Islam by this hadith then we need to look at all of the hadith that cover the giving of dawah to contextualise the manner in which dawah should be done and to whom.
The question is mute because we are not saying that it is acceptable to convert by any means. The problem is with the article not our method of dawah. If there is a problem with the method of dawah it will be isolated to a few individuals not a common practice and it will not be a consensus method.
My intent wasnt to draw a parallel in how the molvies are converting, but on questioning the motivations of those who do convert, whether it is a conscious decision or not.
I see.. so you feel the special status of the Prophet precludes us from generalizing this hadis. Fair enough..would you agree this is something that can be interpreted both ways though?
We can’t question the motives of those who convert because there is no such process in Islam. We don’t convert … we give dawah. Those who say convert now to others if it is true are wrong.
Look this hadith cannot alone allow ahkam to be drawn from it. If anyone does so it would be wrong. The question about the Jewish boy and his relationship with RasoolAllah would at least make us assume that he was fully aware of RasoolAllah (SAW) and who he (SAW) was. The hadith does not detail any previous dialogue the child had with RasoolAllah (SAW). The hadith also does not tell us to do the same - rather it states simply something that was done by RasoolAllah (SAW). It’s not only because of the special status of Muhammad (SAW) that makes the interpretation specific.
Let’s use reason … How many people will be able to make a conscious decision about faith when they are either in desperate pain or in some sort of psychological agony? And if they did convert in this state would that not be cause for them to convert back when they were better?
I’m not in the game of things being “interpreted both ways” if you get 100 random people together to read the Qur’an they will interpret the verses in different ways. The only way that matters is the one of scholarly consensus..