Tablighi Jamaat

TABLIGHI JAMAAT
Tablighi Jamaat, the world’s biggest Muslim mission, was founded
in India to purge the backslidden of British and Hindu influence.
Now it is here in force in the West, bent on building what’s been
dubbed a ‘megamosque’ in east London, and preparing the
faithful for paradise. Their ethos and purpose divide scholars and
puzzle journalists.
‘Very informative and interesting and a great help to journalists,
I’d have thought.’ Tom Holland. Author of In the Shadow of
the Sword.
‘In the context of polarised perceptions, Muslim and nonMuslim, about Tablighi Jamaat, this remains an accessible,
balanced and informative report - a model of its kind.’ Dr Philip
Lewis, Advisor on Interfaith Relations to the Bishop of Bradford.
Author of Young, British and Muslim.
Dr Zacharias Pieri is a political sociologist with extensive ethnographic research experience of British Muslim communities.
ISBN 978-0-9573565-0-4
Tablighi Jamaat — Handy Books on Religion in World Affairs
Handy Books on Religion in World Affairs. More fact than opinion.
Handy Books on Religion in World Affairs
Tablighi Jamaat
Zacharias Pieri
About this series
Globalization means that many news stories do not make sense without
understanding religion. Handy Books on Religion in World Affairs aim to provide
in one place, on a need-to-know basis, the backgrounders to running stories with a
religion dimension.
The publisher, LAPIDO MEDIA, is a charity founded by journalists for journalists and
opinion formers to demonstrate greater religion awareness in international affairs
and secular news coverage.
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ISBN 978-0-9573565-0-4
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Acknowledgements
This handbook is based on research carried out for a Ph.D. thesis at Exeter University,
The Contentious Politics of Socio-Political Engagement: The Transformation of the Tablighi
Jamaat in London.
Contents
Tablighi Jamaat: Need to know
09
Introduction
11
1 History of the Tablighi Jamaat
15
2 How is the TJ organized?
21
3 The TJ in Britain
27
4 Not looking at forbidden things: TJ spirituality
33
I would like, above all, to thank Professor Jonathan Githens-Mazer, who was my
doctoral supervisor and a member of the expert reading panel. Dr Philip Lewis, Tom
Holland and Dan Damon also made helpful comments on the final text.
5 Separatist or inclusive?
- TJ and women
39
44
6 The London ‘megamosque’
49
We are grateful to Interserve and other donors for their support of this project. While
wholeheartedly believing in the need for the series and its aims, Interserve wish to
make it known that the views expressed in it are not necessarily their own.
7 Opposition to the mosque
59
8 The Public Inquiry in 2011
67
9 Conclusion
73
TIMELINES: TJ in Britain
Megamosque development
27
52
Tablighi lexicon
76
References
78
I would like to thank Dr Jenny Taylor for her commitment, encouragement and
enthusiasm for the project, and for her insightful comments and constructive
feedback. I would like also to thank Claire Musters for her meticulous editing of the
document, preparing it for publication.
09
Tablighi Jamaat:
Need to know
Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) means ‘preaching
party’ and exists primarily to Islamize
lapsed Muslims.
It was established in India in
1926 to oppose Hinduism and
British imperialism.
TJ is the largest Islamic proselytization
movement in the world.
It operates in all countries – around
150 – where there are Muslims.
The movement derives from the
Deobandi (Sunni) school of Islam in
Uttar Pradesh in north India.
1 www.muslimsinbritain.org
UK Mosque Statistics / Masjid Statistics, 11/12/2011.
Tablighi Jamaat
The founder was Maulana Muhammad
Ilyas Kandhalawi (1885–1944).
Ilyas trained at Deoband, which also
spawned the Taliban.
There is no accurate account of the
number of TJ mosques in the UK.
There are 729 Deobandi mosques out
of a total of 1,642 in the UK. All TJ
mosques are Deobandi but not all
Deobandi mosques are TJ.1
TJ has been active in Britain
since 1944.
Tablighi Jamaat:
Need to know
The TJ does not principally proselytize
wider society, which it believes will fall
to Islam through its methodology.
The TJ is trying to build a large mosque
in Canning Road in Newham, as a new
world centre.
The site is known as the Abbey Mills
Mosque, Markaz Ilyas, the Riverine
Centre or the ‘megamosque’.
A contested planning process was ongoing at the time of writing.
11
Introduction
History
of
Tablighi Jamaat
Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) is the world’s
largest Muslim missionary movement
with an estimated 80 million members
worldwide2 and is trying to build a new
world centre in east London. It has a
presence in almost every country on
the globe. The movement was founded
in 1926 by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas
Kandhalawi (Ilyas hereafter) in the
Mewat province of India (southwest
of Delhi).
The TJ is politically utopian. Its current
view of political power is that Muslims
are not yet ready for this responsibility.
If most Muslims cannot even follow the
basic principles of Islam, how then can
they be expected to assert control over
the polity? The path to power is long;
it will come only once all Muslims have
corrected their ways, accepted
the Sharia as a complete system of life
and abandoned their attachments to
worldly gains.
2 Figure provided by TJ witness at Planning Appeal,
Newham Old Town Hall, 7 February 2011.
Tablighi Jamaat
TJ in Britain
Since the early years of the movement,
London has featured as an important
strategic location, both as the then
capital of the British Empire, and now as
a bridge to expanding the movement’s
activities into the Western world.
The importance of Britain to the TJ
is reflected in the position as amir
(leader) in Britain, of Muhammad
Patel, a Gujarati Indian, who was
brought before the Kaba (holiest place
in Mecca) by Muhammad Yusuf – a
former international amir. Yusuf offered
‘supplications to Allah to make him
the instrument of winning the whole
of Britain to Islam’ (Ansari 2009: 348;
Sikand 2002: 225; Lewis 1994: 135).
TJ came to prominence in Britain in
2005 when developers announced
plans to construct a 70,000-capacity
mosque in London comparable to the
Introduction
TJ’s ideals
and aims
TJ’s aim was and is to combat the
perceived state of decay within society
and the eventual establishment of
societies based on the Sharia.
It sees Islam as a power that has
declined because Muslims have failed
to live up to the expectations of Islam.
The solution is for Muslims to turn to
a stricter implementation of the faith.
It is not enough simply to be Muslim
in name, but also in every action
taken, including dress and interaction
with others.
Introduction
12
Tablighi Jamaat
TJ today
TJ has grown from a fringe group
in provincial India to a transnational organization. Its annual
gathering in Tongi, Bangladesh,
called an ijtima, attracts the
largest number of Muslims on the
globe, estimated at five million
– roughly two million more than
the Hajj. It sees Britain as the base
for its missions across Europe and
further afield.
90,000-seater Wembley Stadium. This
caused some alarm. It would make it
the largest place of worship in Europe,
nearly thirty times the size of St Paul’s,
which seats 2,500. It was also at odds
with TJ’s stated preference of avoiding
interaction with mainstream society
and focusing on working within Muslim
communities, reinvigorating the spirit of
Islam at a grassroots level. TJ’s teachings
warn against integration into Western
societies, which are seen as dominated
by immorality and deviation from
scriptures. But in order to progress plans
for building the proposed mosque, the
Tablighi leadership in London have had
to start interacting with the wider society,
modifying the ways the movement
operates. TJ’s other-worldly teaching is at
odds with the practicalities of managing
a project that demands a high level of
professional engagement with officialdom,
and community interaction.
barely known and subject to multiple
misrepresentations. It also investigates
TJ’s plans to build its new world centre
in London. The evidence used stems
from the author’s doctoral research,
undertaken at Exeter University under
the supervision of Dr Jonathan GithensMazer. This research included two years’
observation at the Tablighi mosque in
West Ham, London, interviews with
members of the movement and an
analysis of TJ’s own literature.
About this book
This handbook aims to raise awareness
about an emerging religious and
social force in British life that is
RIGHT Mulitcultural Newham. Photo: Jeremy
Hunter 2011.
13
Tablighi Jamaat
2. How’s it organized
and who leads it?