EXCERPTS: Quest for a bottom-up approach
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/books2.htm
By Yoginder Sikand
The Tablighi movement, which has the largest following in the Muslim world, does not aspire to capture political power to set up an Islamic state, writes Yoginder Sikand.
The twentieth century has witnessed the emergence of a number of movements for religious revival, revitalization and reform among Muslims all over the world. Much has already been written about this phenomenon by various scholars. Of particular concern in writings on global Islamic revival have been the ‘Islamist’ movements, whose foremost agenda is the struggle to establish an Islamic state based on Islamic law or shari’at. Islamist movements, such as the Jama’at-i-Islami in South Asia, or the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimun in Egypt, figure prominently in contemporary discussions and debates about what is seen in some quarters as the threat of ‘Islamic fundamentalism’.
The high profile that these movements have often maintained for themselves has, perhaps inadvertently, served to restrict the attention of most scholars of contemporary Islamic revivalism to them. Consequently, movements for Islamic revival that steer clear of direct involvement in affairs of the state and shun publicity and the scrutiny of governments have not received the attention that they deserve. One such movement, the Tablighi Jama’at (TJ), is the subject of this study.
The TJ, as numerous writers have testified, is probably the most popular and widespread Islamic movement in the world today. In 1992, one scholar observed that the TJ had spread to around 165 countries. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the movement is today active in almost every country where Muslims live…
Like any other social movement, the TJ has undergone a process of evolution over time. There have been subtle changes in emphasis and direction that are often not visible to those who, like many participants in the movement themselves, tend to stress an unchanging Tablighi essence. In its present form the TJ shares some features with Islamist movements, though their differences are perhaps more striking than their similarities. The TJ, like Islamist movements, see the reform of Muslim society on the lines of the dictates of the shari’at as its ultimate goal.
It is the details of this project and the means adopted in furtherance of this aim that set the TJ apart from Islamist groups. Unlike in the case of the latter, the immediate concern of the TJ (as it has come to be today) is not the capture of state power and the establishment of an Islamic state, but rather, the moral reform of individuals, often described as ‘making Muslims true Muslims’.
Indeed, Tablighi activists are advised not to hanker after political power, for that is a gift given by God to whomsoever He wills. As the late Umar Palanpuri (d. 1996), a senior Tablighi leader put it, when Muslims cannot regulate even their own personal lives in complete conformity with the shari’at, aspiring to capture political power to set up an Islamic state is absurd. In this regard, the TJ’s ‘bottom-up’ approach is in striking contrast to the ‘top-down’ approach of many Islamist groups, for whom the establishment of the Islamic state is a necessary prelude to the enforcement of the Shari’at in the personal and collective affairs of Muslims.
In Islamic terms while the Islamist agenda is based on the model of the political community established by the Prophet at Madina, that of the TJ corresponds to the Prophet’s earlier years in Makkah, where he devoted himself simply to preaching.
The study of the TJ presents numerous hurdles. The most vexing of these is the extreme paucity of written material that can be said to represent the official Tablighi position. This is because it is believed that personal communication is a far more effective means of putting the Tablighi message across than the written word, for it allows face-to-face interaction between the missionary and the person he is addressing, making it possible for the former to modify his approach to suit the temperament of each listener.
Consequently, Tablighi leaders have generally paid little attention to producing written material. Thus, a Muslim critic of the TJ complains that he wishes to write a book to refute Tablighi doctrines but his most frustrating problem is the lack of adequate written source material. “In the Tablighi Jama’at,” he tells us, “all work is carried out by word of mouth” and all decisions are taken “on the basis of dreams (khwab) and divine inspiration (basharat)”.
The TJ is deeply rooted in an oral tradition that can be traced to its links with South Asian Sufism. Tablighi leaders have exhibited considerable hostility to publicity, particularly to writings about the movement by both outsiders as well as movement participants. Thus, for instance, Wahiduddin Khan writes that once, when a newspaper published a report on a local Tablighi gathering, senior Tablighi leaders met with the editor ‘to protest about it’.Manzur Numani (d. 1997), a senior Tablighi leader based in Lucknow, notes that ‘things have reached such a point that the TJ does not want papers to write anything about its work’. Consequently, as a matter of strict policy, the TJ has no official publications of its own. Even the Faza’il-i-'Amal, a tome containing numerous stories concerning the Prophet and his companions and used widely in Tablighi circles, cannot be strictly said to be an official publication of the movement. The TJ produces no journals, newspapers or books of its own. Even for its vast rallies in different parts of the world, which attract large crowds, it issues no pamphlets or posters, the news about the event being spread simply by word of mouth.
For Tablighi activists, Islam is seen, above all, as ‘practical activity’ ('amali kam), and not something to be talked, written or read about. Scholarly involvement, it is feared, constantly threatens to take the place of ‘practical work’ and, therefore, the temptation must be constantly guarded against. The Prophet and his companions, it is claimed, did tabligh or missionary work not through writing or reading books but by word of mouth. Since Muslims must strive to strictly follow the path (sunnat) of Muhammad, they too should abide by his method of preaching. Adoption of ‘western’ or ‘modern’ techniques of communication of the message are to be particularly avoided because this may ‘have [an] impact on the spiritualism … of the movement’, as a result of which the attention of its activists might ‘be shifted from the fundamentals to the incidentals’…
While Tablighi ideologues and activists have, over the years, produced some literature on the aims and methods of the TJ, they have shown little interest in exploring the history of the movement. All that exist are a few biographies of the founder of the TJ, Muhammad Ilyas (1885-1944), and his son and successor, Muhammad Yusuf (1917-65). In many respects these texts carry on in the tradition of the Sufi hagiographies, providing little material for constructing the history of the TJ as such.
‘The world is like a prison-cell’ is an oft-heard refrain in Tablighi circles… With Tablighi attitudes towards worldly affairs being the way they are, it is hardly surprising that reading or writing history - the story of human involvement in this world - is seen as somehow fundamentally opposed to one’s single-minded pursuit of the din and ‘success in the hereafter’.
If at all any history is considered to have instructional value, it is that of the Prophet and his companions, and, to an extent, the amirs or leaders of the TJ. The rest of the long history of humankind is largely irrelevant, for it is but a story of growing deviation from ‘true’ Islam, and so deserves no mention. In a sense, then, Tablighi concepts of time differ sharply from the linear notion of history as a succession of events in the this-worldly realm. Because of this, Tablighi texts rarely deal with actual events in its own history, and, therefore, as sources for historical research they are of little value.
This book gives an account of the Tablighi-Jama’at which emerged from the environs of Delhi in the 1920s to become the most widely followed movement in the Islamic world. It has now established itself in over 150 countries but eschews involvement in politics.
Yoginder Sikand is a post-doctoral Fellow at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World at Leiden, the Netherlands.
Excerpted with permission from The Origins and Development of the Tablighi-Jama’at (1920-2000): A Cross-Country Comparative Study
By Yoginder Sikand
Orient Longman 3-6-276, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029, India
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ISBN 83-250-2298-8
310pp. Indian Rs595