Tablighi Jamaat

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Meeting of the Tablighi Jamaat in Malaysia 2009

Tablighi Jamaat ( Urdu تبلیغی جماعت 'Mission Society' abbreviated TJ , also Persian جماعت تبلیغ Jamāʿat-i Tablīgh or Persian تحریک ایمان Taḥrīk-i Īmān , 'movement of faith') is a Sunni - Islamic piety and missionary movement, which was founded in 1926 by the religious scholar Maulānā Muhammad Ilyās (1885-1944) in British India and today operates worldwide. It is considered one of the largest transnational Islamic organizations. The aim of the movement is to lead Muslims who have no inner relation to their religion to alifestrictly based on the Koran and Sunna .

history

The Tablīgh call by Khwaja Hasan Nizami

The historical background for the emergence of the Tablighi Jamaat was the missionary efforts of the Hindu Arya Samaj community, which in the early 20th century, as part of its concept of Shuddhi ("purification"), strived to support Indian population groups who were part of the Muslim rule in India during the centuries Converted to Islam for Hinduism to regain. A particularly important target group of this Hindu mission were so-called “Nau Muslims” (from waqf-e nau , “new obligation”), who only nominally adhered to Islam but continued to practice Hindu practices. These included the Malkana Rajputs in northern India. By 1927, the Arya Samaj community had converted about 163,000 Malkanas to Hinduism.

Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1879–1955), an Indian Muslim scholar who was a Sufi and worked as a journalist and author in Delhi , called against this background in 1923 in a book entitled Dāʿī-yi Islām ("Caller to Islam") Brothers in faith to ward off the Hindu missionary efforts and demanded that for this purpose every single Muslim must act as Dāʿī . The book was immensely popular among North Indian Muslims and had five editions by 1926. As a means for the proclamation ( Tableegh ) of Islam Nizami recommended that the Chishtiyya belonged -Orden also Sufic practices such Qawwali chants and Ta'ziya -Prozessionen. In the early 20th century, Urdu came into its own as a prose language and Khwaja Hasan Nizami had a major impact on this development as an innovative linguistic stylist, especially in the fields of biography, autobiography and diary writing. It is believed that he owed his oratorical style and linguistic dexterity to Mughal princes, as he went to school with them. At the height of his career he had dealings with great Urdu writers, such as Shibli Nu'mani or Iqbal.

The Meo Mission of Muhammad Ilyās

While Nizami himself was only active as a journalist, another Muslim scholar, Muhammad Ilyās, put his demands into practice. In contrast to Nizami, however, he belonged to an Islamic movement that rejected the Sufi traditions. Through his family, Muhammad Ilyās was closely connected to the Deobandi movement, which had founded the Dar ul-Ulum of Deoband in 1867 , and in particular maintained relationships with the leadership of the Maẓāhiru l-ʿUlūm , a sister school of Dar ul-Ulum in Saharanpur . After returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, Muhammad Ilyās began missionary activities in 1926 among the Meos, a peasant ethnic group who settled in Mewat south of Delhi . Like the Malkanas, the Meos claimed Rajput ancestry and were considered Nau Muslims. After Ilyas had built up a following in the town of Nuh, he formed a group of six Meos, whom he commissioned to regularly visit the neighboring Meo villages about the kalima , i.e. H. the Islamic Creed , and preaching the ritual prayer . From the end of the 1920s, groups of newly converted Meos began regular missionary trips in the region, which they also used to receive religious instruction in the centers of the Deobandi movement.

After another pilgrimage to Mecca in 1932, Ilyās called more than 200 of his Meo followers together in Delhi in the winter of 1933, where he and Hussain Ahmad Madani, the rector of the Madrasa of Deoband, gave them a speech about the importance of tablīgh. The most important religious opponent continued to be the Arya Samaj community, which had converted a large number of Malkanas to Hinduism by 1934 and made efforts to expand their missionary work to include Mewat. In order to suppress the influence of the Arya Samaj, Ilyas called a large gathering (Panchayat) of Meo leaders in 1934, at which he committed them to the principles of Islam. Until his death in 1944 Ilyās succeeded in anchoring his faith movement ( tahrīk-i īmān ) firmly in the Meo society. At a meeting of the movement in Nuh in November 1941, about 25,000 Meos attended, including several well-known ʿUlamāʾ .

Globalization of movement

After the death of Muhammad Ilyās, his son Mawlānā Yūsuf was elected by the elders of the TJ as the new Amīr of the community. He was a gifted organizer and until his death in 1965 expanded the TJ's area of ​​operations to include the entire Islamic world. As a non-political movement, it was able to spread through its missionaries to the Arab countries, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Turkey and Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1970s, the TJ established its own madrasas and religious centers in the Malay states of Kelantan and Terengganu .

Religious orientation and organizational structure

The TJ is characterized by its anti-intellectualism. For the TJ activists, Islam is above all a "practical activity" ( ʿamalī kām ) and less something to be talked about, written or read about. Scholarship is viewed as something that poses a constant threat to the community because of the risk of it taking the place of practical work. Therefore, this temptation must be constantly met. Mawlānā Yūsuf, the second Amīr of the TJ, is reported to have rejected a follower's request to write a book about the movement, arguing that religious practice ( ʿamal ) is far more important than intellectual activity. The only intellectual activity advocated is the oral transmission of the prophetic tradition.

The followers of the TJ regularly carry out missionary activities, the purpose of which is the Islamization of society and the change from a society shaped by Western values ​​to an Islamic form of society. One of the compulsory duties of the TJ followers is to be regularly, voluntarily and unpaidly active in missionary work, on the one hand to spread the faith and on the other hand to attain a special piety as a preacher himself. The followers of the community are encouraged to undertake a mission trip of at least three days each month, especially in the vicinity of the home mosque or the neighboring cities. In addition, a 40-day mission trip is to be carried out at home or abroad every year. Finally, a four-month missionary trip for the purpose of further training on the sources of the movement, i.e. Bangladesh , India and Pakistan, is mandatory for all members once in a lifetime.

As part of their pilgrimages , the TJ supporters particularly visit mosques . There they preach and do their missionary work . In addition, one-on-one conversations with Muslims are also held in private.

The TJ rejects violence on principle and sees itself as apolitical. Because of this orientation, the movement has also been criticized by other Islamic groups. For example, Tabish Mahdi, a leading ideologue of the Indian Jamaat-e-Islami , accused this movement in a book specially dedicated to the TJ of the "true" with its political restraint, its neglect of jihad and its excessive ritualism “Violating teachings of Islam.

The World Center ( ʿālamī markaz ) of the Tablighi Jamaat is located in New Delhi , in the village of Basti Hazrat Nizamuddin, in a multi-storey building that includes a mosque, an Islamic seminary (the Madrasa Kashf al-ʿUlūm) and numerous rooms for visitors. The elders ( buzurgān ) also live here. Until 1995 this world center was headed by an amīr , also known as Hazratji. After the death of the third amīr Inʿām al-Hasan in 1995, the leadership was transferred to a three-member consultative body ( Shūrā ). In addition, the TJ communities in Pakistan and Bangladesh became more independent. The center of the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan is in Lahore , the capital of the Punjab province , but Raiwind, 30 km to the south, is also referred to as the spiritual center. The annual general assembly in Pakistan is considered to be one of the largest global Muslim gatherings after the pilgrimage to Mecca. The European headquarters of the TJ, the 'Institute of Islamic Education', is located in Great Britain in Dewsbury in the north of England . There young Muslims are trained to become 'Islamic scholars' in the sense of the TJ. The center is headed by the high-ranking TJ official Sheikh Said Muhammad Patel, who takes part in national and international TJ events and acts as a speaker.

The TJ in Germany

The Tablighi Jamaat has also been active in Germany since the 1960s. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (as of 2011) assumes around 700 TJ members. TJ institutions exist in Berlin , Bochum , Cologne , Hamburg , Hanover , Munich and Pappenheim , but these associations or mosques do not refer to the TJ in their statutes.

The TJ does not have a comprehensive, fixed organizational structure in Germany; their activities are controlled and coordinated through informal contacts among the supporters. The primary target group of the TJ in Germany are economically and socially disadvantaged young Muslims. The TJ regards them as very receptive to their messages. In addition, the TJ's target group also includes young converts to Islam who are recruited in intensive personal discussions.

In April 2005, a one-week meeting of the TJ with around 1000 participants from Germany and abroad was held in Hamburg. As guests for this event were u. a. high-ranking preachers from India and Pakistan invited. At the end of the event, groups were put together and sent on mission trips, which should be voluntary, regular and free of charge.

According to its 2006 report, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution sees the danger that the TJ will promote Islamist radicalization processes due to its strict understanding of Islam and its worldwide missionary activities. Accordingly, there are documented individual cases in which the infrastructure of the missionary movement was used by members of terrorist organizations for travel purposes.

literature

  • Mumtaz Ahmad, Dietrich Reetz: Tablīghī Jamāʿat . In: John L. Esposito (Ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. 6 volumes. Oxford 2009, Volume V, pp. 293a-299a.
  • Muhammad Khalid Masud (Ed.): Travelers in Faith: Studies of the Tablīghī Jamāʿat as a Transnational Movement for Faith Renewal . Leiden 2000.
  • Farish A. Noor: The Tablighi Jamaʿat as Vehicle of Discovery. Conversion Narratives and the Appropriation of India in the Southeast Asian Tablighi Movement , in R. Michael Feener, Terenjit Sevea: Islamic Connections. Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia. Singapore 2009, pp. 195-218.
  • Farish A. Noor: Islam on the Move: The Tablighi Jama'at in Southeast Asia . Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2012, ISBN 978-90-8964-439-8 .
  • Yoginder Sikand: The origins and development of the Tablighi Jama'at, 1920-2000: a cross-country comparative study . Hyderabad 2002.
  • Yoginder Sikand: The Tablighī Jama'āt (sic!) And Politics: A Critical Re-Appraisal . In: The Muslim World , 96, 2006, pp. 175-195.
  • Mareike Jule Winkelmann: Informal links. A Girl's Madrasa and Tablighi Jamaat. (PDF) In: ISIM Review , 17, 2006, pp. 46–47 (connection to a girls' Koran school in India)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rüdiger Lohlker: Islam. A story of ideas . Vienna 2008, p. 214 .
  2. ↑ Sikand 2002, 35th
  3. ^ Marcia Hermansen: A Twentieth Century Indian Sufi Views Hinduism. The Case of Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1879–1955). In: Comparative Islamic Studies, Volume 4, No. 4.1 / 4.2, June 2008, p. 157
  4. ↑ Sikand 2002, 49-54.
  5. ↑ Marcia Hermansen: A Twentieth Century Indian Sufi Views Hinduism: The Case of Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1879-1955) . Ed .: Comparative Islamic Studies. tape 4 . London 2008, p. 158 .
  6. ↑ Noor 197.
  7. ↑ Sikand 2002 135th
  8. ↑ Sikand 2002 137th
  9. ↑ Sikand 2002 138th
  10. ↑ Sikand 140.
  11. ↑ Sikand 2002 141st
  12. ↑ Marc Gaborieau: The Transformation of Tablighi Jama'at into a transnational movement . In: Masud 2000, pp. 121-139
  13. ↑ Noor 201, 210.
  14. ↑ Sikand 2002, 5f.
  15. ↑ Sikand 2002, 99.
  16. ↑ Sikand 2002, 80-83.
  17. ^ Rüdiger Lohlker: Islam. A story of ideas . Vienna 2008, p. 214 .
  18. ↑ Constitutional Protection Report 2011 (preliminary draft). ( Memento of October 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) p. 264
  19. ^ Constitutional Protection Report 2006, Berlin 2007, ISSN  0177-0357 , p. 256.