The beginnings and the benefits of Tablighi Jamaat.

The beginnings and the benefits of 

Tablighi Jamaat.

Tablighi Jamaat began among the Meo peasants in educationally and economically backward Mewat in 1926. The Meos, who were Muslims, mostly followed several Hindu traditions. They practised pherasduring marriage, believed in the gotra system, and celebrated Holi the same way as they celebrated Eid.

There’s a theory that its birth was motivated by a desire among some Muslims to ensure that progressive Hindu movements and organizations (such as the Arya Samaj) did not succeed in converting Muslims to Hinduism. It propagated a return to the ways of the world and an itinerant preaching philosophy.

Maqbool Khan was 26 when he was introduced to the Tablighi Jamaat. Khan, in his late 40s now, was a student of commerce at Delhi University. His family was Muslim by birth, offered prayers, paid zakaat(alms to charity), but that would end at that. He says Tablighi Jamaat introduced him to Islam.

A year later, Khan and six other men went on a three-day khurooj (mission). Tablighi Jamaat members leave the comfort of their homes for 3-4 months to serve Allah. During these self-financed treks, the members travel to different cities, villages or towns, stay at a mosque there and go from door to door reminding Muslims to study Quran and pay more attention to Islam.

“After this, your desires for the worldly pleasures start waning. It almost goes away. You think about the world hereafter. That is eternal. This world will end soon,” says Khan. Still, he maintains that Jamaat prepares people to balance both worlds.

“How can we abandon the world? Who will feed us? Who will feed our families? Both my sons and daughter are studying in universities but at the same time they are a part of the Tabligh. We need to balance the two out,” says Khan. By day, Khan runs a business in Nizamuddin basti. His evenings are devoted to Tablighi Jamaat.

The Tablighi Jamaat has a hierarchical network. There is an ameer whose advice is sought by everyone. The full-time members, who are generally the elders, comprise the shura or the council. Younger members travel in missionary bands and go to destinations preaching what they have been taught. There is a daily mashoora (gathering) in the mosque for planning the religious life of the members.

Still, even other Muslims aren’t convinced about the Tablighi Jamaat’s ways.

“Tablighi Jamaat teaches you the ABC of the religion but to understand a language, you have to learn more than just the ABC. They are not involved in socio-political movements,” says Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. “I believe isolation is not right. Muslims cannot be aloof from the world. You have to criticize whatever wrong is happening around you.”

Zafarul Islam Khan, president of the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, a group of Muslim organizations in India, says the Tablighi Jamaat is a grassroots movement to correct the beliefs of Muslims but its scope is limited.

Yet, Tablighi Jamaat has its advocates too. “All the propaganda about Tablighi Jamaat is wrong. They have done a lot of good work. The popularity of the movement shows Islam cannot be spread using force but through good virtues,” says Ahmed Bukhari, Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid in Delhi.

It is not just men who travel on missions to spread the word of Islan, but the women too, albeit on shorter trips.

In a big hall at the Nizamuddin centre, the women sit in small circles, 4 to 6 in a group. Grey coloured, metal-slotted angle racks are placed on two sides of the room, filled with baggage, blankets, and pillows. The room has wooden almirahs with multiples copies of the Quran, Fazail-e-Amaal, Muntakhab Al Ahadees—literature that the group consults and reads every day.

In small groups, these women discuss in their own languages what they have learnt during their stay. Unless one is sitting really close to them, all one can hear is a murmur of the whispering voices.

“We not only learn how to offer prayers, we also understand how our religion teaches us to be good human beings. We are taught not to ever steal, not to lie, to be patient, to forgive and seek forgiveness and not to envy anyone,” says 38-year-old Fatima.

Fatima says that before joining the Jamaat eight years ago, even though she had everything in life—money, really good academic degrees—she felt everything was meaningless. The more she had, the more she wanted. And she was never happy. “Now Alhamdulillah (Praise to God), I am content. I am at peace,” she says.

At around 10.30am, Apa, one of the women in the group, who is not a scholar but has been associated with the Tablighi Jamaat for long, begins the taleem (instruction). She sits on a wooden stool, at a position slightly elevated from where most of the women sit listening to her very keenly. She talks aboutjihad (holy war) but a jihad which is quite contrary to what the world is obsessed with. It is jihad al-nafs, a fight with an individual’s own desires, a struggle against the self. There are many things in the world that are very tempting, she preaches, so tempting that people forget the hereafter.

That’s a common refrain in the Tablighi Jamaat’s philosophy.

Islamic scholar Akhtarul Wasey, whose parents sent him on a 10-day khurooj when he was in his teens, says: “I always tell my students that when you meet a Life Insurance Corporation agent or a Tablighi Jamaat member, both will begin their conversation with the same line—start thinking about what will happen after you die.”

After the day prayer dzuhr, the group with Indians in the first floor and Arabs, Algerians, Tunisians and Indonesian on the second, slips into the hallway, heading to another room for lunch. Plastic sheets are spread on the floor and plates filled with food are distributed to the Jamaat.

Tablighis are supposed to spend the least time on food, sleep, and gossip. Quickly the gathering finishes eating and heads for a brief siesta which is again followed by Quranic recitation.