Abstract
This chapter outlines and analyses the origins of the Tabligh Jama’at as a non-hierarchical and itinerant transnational Islamic revivalist movement. Exploring Tabligh Jama’at’s humble beginnings in socially depraved, economically deficient and religiously syncretised Mewat, the chapter reveals how the movement’s effort to make Muslims observant and faithful believers became over time its global endeavour and preoccupation. The establishment of British colonial rule and the spread of modernisation in India and other parts of the Muslim world created the context for the moral and spiritual reform of Muslims and their remaking. Enormous spiritual sacrifices have been made by the movement in the transformation of Muslims into righteous practitioners of Islam and its persistent efforts are evidently producing “good” Muslims in all corners of the world.
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- 1.
Tabligh Jama’at split into two factions over a leadership issue in 2016. We discuss the split briefly in a later section in this chapter but here we describe the movement’s old organisational structure and organisational functions at Nizam u’d-din because not much has changed at these headquarters since the split. We acknowledge, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, like elsewhere, Tablighi activities here have been suspended.
- 2.
Maulana Zubairul Hasan passed away in March 2014 leaving Maulana Saad the single head of the Tabligh Jama’at.
- 3.
Since the split in the movement in 2016, Nizam u’d-din headquarters is no longer the sole dispenser of instructions to all Tablighis. Tablighis from the breakaway faction receive their instructions from their headquarters mosque in Nerul near Mumbai.
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Ali, J.A., Sahib, R. (2022). The Origins and Evolution of the Tabligh Jama’at in the Globalised World. In: A Sociological Study of the Tabligh Jama’at. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98943-9_2
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