Dr Jan Ashik Ali

University of New South Wales, Australia

Tablighi Jamaat in Australia

Abstract

The Tablighi Jamaat (Preaching Party) which was founded by a Deoband trained scholar – Muhammad Ilyas – in 1927 in Mewat, south of Delhi in India is an apolitical transnational Islamic revivalist movement. It is part of a global phenomenon of Islamic revivalism and is present in over 160 countries. The foundation upon which the Tablighi Jamaat is premised is pietism and spiritualism and its principal focus is to invoke Islamic zeal and encourage self-reform, particularly in nominal Muslims to become “better Muslims”.

In Australia Muslims who have re-adjusted their lives to strike a balance between material pursuit of happiness through their participation in the mainstream modern secular Australian society and spiritualism by espousing the Tablighi path, according to the Tablighi Jamaat, are the “true” Muslims. These “true” Muslims are the living models reflecting “true” Islam in their lives which other Muslims and even non-Muslims need to follow to create a fair, equitable, peaceful, and prosperous world.

This paper locates the Tablighi Jamaat in a particular context - Australia - and focuses on the movement’s approach to proselytisation as an inherent part of Islamic revivalism. It explores the Tablighi ideology and the Tablighi rituals and practices embodied in the khuruj (tour) to understand Tablighi proselytisation or what is more broadly called Islamic revivalism. The key aim of this paper is to examine why some Muslims in Australia, which is a secular and wealthy nation, are attracted to the Tablighi path as an embodiment of Islam. The paper argues that in Australia particularly, like many other ethnic, national, and religious groups Muslims largely find themselves in the periphery of Australian society through social and economical marginalized and discrimination and the Tablighi Jamaat offers them hope, a sense of belonging, and a clear sense of their “Muslimness”. The movement does this by giving Muslims an exclusive environment in which to learn and practise their faith and re-makes themselves into “better” and “true” Muslims. It further argues that the Tablighi Jamaat plays a vital and active role particularly through second-generation Muslims in reconstructing a de-ethnicised Islam in Australia. For the Tablighis the movement’s point of ideological reference is best understood in the context of “Islam is the answer” to their problems in Australia and malaise wreaked by modernity across the globe. It provides the most fundamental answer to who or what they are.

Bio

Jan Ali is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Macquarie University researching into the relationship between Muslim Communities and non-Muslim communities in Australia and Lectures in Contemporary Islam: Religion and Identity course in the Department of Studies in Religion at University of Sydney.

Jan’s PhD thesis entitled “Islamic Revivalism: A Study of the Tablighi Jamaat in Sydney” is a study of the re-emergence of Islam as a response to modernity. The study utilizes the Tablighi Jamaat (Preaching Party) as a case study to explore the phenomenon of Islamic revivalism and how Muslims, in their everyday living, go about carving out a space for themselves and their religion - Islam - in the modern world.

Jan’s main sociological interests are in sociology of religion (Islam), Islamic Movements, Sociology of Migration, Ethnicity, Globalization, and New Religious Movement and Church-Sect Theories.

Jan has published articles in a number of international journals and currently working on a book on Islamic revivalism in contemporary world.