![]() ![]() From this humble beginning the Tabligh network has today grown so vast that it has an imprint in nearly 150 countries, including such faraway places as Japan and Brazil, with adherents and activists running into millions. If one feared and remembered God adequately, in the light of the practices of the Prophet, then no worldly privation would matter. They would teach uninformed or illiterate believers - the majority were both - the five basic principles of Islam, exhort them to emulate the Prophet’s exemplary life, and be regular in prayer and remembrance of God. His mission was simple: enlist men who would volunteer to travel to do dawa, to spread the word in modern missionary style, but he kept his focus on Muslims alone. He inherited his well-off father’s madarsa at Nizamuddin in Delhi, where the Jamaat’s headquarters the Markaz now stands, and started sending his disciples out to different corners of India in order to acquaint Muslims with their faith and to call them to the mosque for prayer. But unlike the Arya Samaj, or other Muslim organisations, Maulana Ilyas steered clear of non-believers and concentrated on reforming Muslims alone. ![]() The Arya Samaj believed, before the term ghar wapsi was invented, that most Indian Muslims were converts from Hinduism and they needed to return to the fold. The Samaj propagated shuddhi and conversion to Hinduism, both new concepts, aimed at a general population rather than at individuals. He had his vision at a moment when undivided India was in the wake of intense religious wars spawned by the rise of revivalist movements such as the Arya Samaj. Maulana Ilyas began his movement after he had a vision on a trip to Mecca that he must spread God’s word. Founded in the 1920s by a Deoband-educated cleric Maulana Ilyas, it has been the Tablighi Jamat’s mission to make better Muslims of Muslims. ![]() This achievement owes much to the rise and influence of the Tablighi Jamaat. More Muslims pray five times a day than have probably ever done before. These attitudes persist in spite of the fact that in the vast Muslim world today there are more mosques per capita, and more Muslims per mosque, than perhaps ever before in the history of Islam. True Islamic piety and glory in this world, it is asserted, go hand in hand. In order for Muslims to prosper, they aver, it is not enough for them to be more conscious of their Muslimness in matters of the world. The mullahs, however, are convinced that the community is so steeped in carnal and material pleasure, now symbolised by the mobile phone, that it is indifferent to its true improvement. On the other hand, most modern and progressive Muslims (read secular, scientific, educated) believe the community is backward because it is hopelessly hoodwinked by the mullahs and their regressive understanding of Islam. It is an axiomatic tenet held by most believing Muslims that Muslims are not doing well in the world because they are not Muslim enough. ![]()
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