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MIRROR

Muslims Need To Be True To Themselves Tablighi Jama’at is a preaching group of Muslims that has been systematically inviting Muslims to be true Muslims who are sincere in their seeking pleasure of Allah and His Messenger. The Jama’at is the world’s largest group volunteering for a religious purpose.

By A Hameed Yousuf

attention to it. Similarly, they have also exerted efforts to themselves become practicing Muslims and make their fellow Muslims become so.

Islam lays much emphasis over selfreform which is a crucial step towards building a healthy society. Without good individuals there cannot come into existence any good social order.

Muslims who caused the spread of Islam worldwide first changed themselves and then changed the world.

Inter-community preaching is an important aspect of Islamic Da’wah which cannot be ignored under the pretext that there is no benefit to preach to those who are already Muslims.

Inter-community preaching invites those already Muslims to become more pious and God-fearing.

Since Islam is a religion for all, Muslims have always tried to preach this peaceful religion to those who are not aware of it. Preaching Islam to nonMuslims is an obligation which must be carried out necessarily by some Muslims on behalf of the others.

Muslims throughout the ages have paid

Tablighi Jama’at is a preaching group of Muslims that has been systematically inviting Muslims to be true Muslims who are sincere in their seeking pleasure of Allah and His Messenger.

The Jama’at is the world’s largest group volunteering for a religious purpose.

The volunteers of Tablighi Jama’at are

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the volunteers in true sense; they are not paid volunteers. They volunteer their wealth and time to reach out to Muslims inviting them to adapt their lives as per the Islamic Shari’ah. They insist upon a modus operandi that provides 24x7x365 volunteers working under the guidelines of the Jama’at.

Whosoever has been volunteering for the ‘preaching’ tries to urge others to work as Tablighi volunteers. Most of them succeed and so, usually, there are new volunteers preaching under the banner of Tablighi Jama’at for a duration spanning from three days to a complete year.

Anyone volunteering himself/herself to call people to reform their lives has to work under a hectic, well-disciplined and well-executed 24-hour schedule.

MIRROR Beginning their activities at dawn the volunteers are fully engaged, of course with periodical refreshing recesses, until they go to bed sometime after offering Isha prayer. During this they learn to preach and preach to learn. The aim is self-correction, reminding themselves of the basics of Islam in a way that they are perforce inclined to come closer to the true spirit of Islam.

The Jama’at has been working on the guidelines laid by its founder Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalwi. The Maulana was a pious, learned religious leader and a teacher, before he realized the need for some additional effort to reform the community from within..

Why he gave up teaching and took up to ‘tableegh’ (preaching) explains all about the genesis of the Jama’at.

When the Jama’at had got established and the worldly sojourn of Maulana Ilyas was about to end, a friend of him came enquiring about his health.

Maulana Ilyas greeted his friend by telling him. “People out there are burning in the fire of ignorance and you are wasting your time here inquiring after my health!”

The ignorance among Muslims about Islam and their vulnerability to the antiIslam plots kept Maulana Ilyas restive.

Writes Ghauth Seewani in his article Tablighi Jama’at, an International Islamic Movement: “The Jama’at opened its first office in Bangla Wali

Islam is not just a collection of a few moral teachings. It is a complete constitution that has laws about every aspect of life.

Tablighi Jama’at has successfully reformed the lives of thousand of Muslims. This reform in many of the cases is undoubtedly as is required by the Shari’ah and praiseworthy.

In fact, instilling the fear of God in the hearts, is what this group tries to do.

Masjid, Delhi, in 1926. Until then it was in its initial days and had started working in Mewat, Haryana. It was founded by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalwi who was pure in his intention. In Mewat region, a large number of Meo Muslims reside who are Rajput Muslims. They accepted Islam at the end of the middle ages and were waiting to get reformed further. They were semi-Muslims and semi-Hindus.

It was during the time that Shuddhi Movement took momentum and the efforts to revert Muslims back to Hinduism intensified. Besides, the Christian missionaries had been active to convert Muslims to Christians. These two movements had been successful in some of the cases. Both Islam and Muslims were under threat.

Maulana Ilyas felt the enormity of the situation; he gave up teaching in Madrasah Mazahir Uloom, Saharanpur and started working for Muslim reform.

He felt that Muslims’ religions training and instilling in them the fear of Allah was the only way to rescue them.”

The Maulana then dispatched his disciples to spread a net of Islamic institutions in the region and teach people Islam.

The Tablighi Jama’at, in fact, was started to teach Muslims about Islam and it continues working on the same lines. For this, the Jama’at works on the grass root level giving much emphasis over one-to-one dialogue about Islamic principles. One of my Muslim friends who was approached by the Jama’at people for the first time observed: “Huh! They had come to make me Muslim!”

Little do Muslims realize that the majority of them are regrettably not ideal Muslims; the characteristics of a true Muslim are not found in them! This validates, rather demands, such organizations should preach Islam only to Muslims. The non-practicing or selfdenigrating Muslims who do not believe in Islamic tenets unquestionably are logically selfconvincing! They do not care what they are doing or preaching with much fanfare. While a true Muslim is the one who blindly (read blindly) submits to the will of Allah and His Messenger, there is a large number of the so-called Muslims who weigh Islamic teachings by their limited and finite logic only to ultimately renounce them.

Such people need the purifier that removes the layers of excess appendage of the limited logic and open their minds to accept the revelations and guidelines by the Designer and the Creator of the brain, the five senses and the human body.

The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) is today the single largest Islamic movement in the world.

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The Tablighi Jama’at has been transforming thousands of lives. We have numerous examples wherein the

MIRROR simple methodology of the Tablighi volunteers using simple language and usual means has changed Muslims’ hearts into the ones yielding to the commandments of Allah and His Messenger unhesitatingly.

The six point action plan of the Jama’at: 1) believing in the oneness of Allah 2) to offer the five prayers daily prayers 3) gaining knowledge and the remembrance of Allah 4) to respect every Muslim and 6) sincerity of intention – all of which aim at nothing but to make the true Muslim out of a Muslim; to transform them into the Muslims who take pride in their Islamic identity and so ensure that Islam will remain till the Doomsday as a unique, natural and compatible religion.

Tablighi Jama’at is an Islamic movement. Islam, instead of being just for Muslims, is a universal religion. As it has been mentioned that preaching to only Muslims is only one aspect of Islamic Da’wah, the Jama’at should expand its activities to also include non-Muslims to familiarize others with the all-compassing tolerance, sincerity of devotion. In short, to love and embrace all for the sake of Allah (swt).

It is up to the office bearers of the Jama’at how they manage it.

They have started sending women preachers, something that was not initiated by the Jama’at founder.

Similarly, they can expand its activities to also include preaching to nonMuslims. The volunteers who have spent some time with the Jama’at, and

Tablighi Jama’at, as an organization, has its rules and regulations to carry out its work systematically. Some of these rules are derived from the Sunnah while a few are meant for better management. The Ta b l i g h i v o l u n t e e r s g o preaching to people, inviting them to reform themselves and sitting in circles to learn about the basics of religion. But they also lay undue emphasis over the number of days in a month/year or lifetime one should devote to work as per the guidelines of the Tablighi principles. they are many, and have learnt about Islam, can be used to spread the binding message of Islam and it will be more fruit-bearing if they work among nonMuslims.

So, the freshers may get trained by learning and then preaching it to Muslims. And when trained, they should be dispatched to non-Muslims.

If done so, it is expected that the Jama’at will be also the biggest Islamic movement preaching Islam equally to Muslims and also the non-Muslims.

The membership to the Jama’at is quite open. Any Muslim may volunteer to

People returning home from annual World Congregation of Tablighi Jamaat held at Tongi, Bangladesh.

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offer his/her service under the Jama’at management. This gives way to scores of Muslims volunteering for the Jama’at who do not know even the basics of Islam. They learn Islam through lectures of the Jama’at seniors and the prescribed religions books by the Jama’at like “Fada’il-e-A’mall” and “Muntakhab Ahadeeth”. To them, the Jama’at sermon givers and the authors of the book become the major source of Islamic knowledge. The uneducated Jama’at volunteers limit Islamic scholars to the few lecturers and the authors. Undermining other Islamic scholars is common among such Jama’at volunteers who little realize that the Islamic scholars who are not volunteering for the Jama’at are in fact rendering a greater service to Islam in the madrasas and the mosques and through other means.

It is unfair to criticize the Jama’at citing some stray examples of not-so-standard social behaviour. While Muslims have laid emphasis over worship and from this angle their condition is satisfactory to some extent, they do not care much about social behaviour. This is irrespective of whether they are associated with any Jama’at or not. A common criticism,not only of the Jama’at but of Muslims and their organizations in general is that they attach too much importance to “ibadah”, while neglecting, justice, fair play and tolerance in interpersonal and societal relations.

It is unfortunate that differences have emerged for the leadership of the Jama’at at Delhi. Anything affecting the activities of the Jama’at will be a great loss to the Muslim community, especially in the sub-continent. For this reason the seniors of the community have asked the Jama’at leadership to sort out the differences for the interest of the community. There is a scope for reform and change in the way of working of the Jama’at, but if its cost is fissures, insincerity and worldly interests it is never acceptable.