The Bishwa Ijtema (or Bisho Istema), (Bangla) or (World Congregation or Global Congregation or Meeting) is an annual Tablighi Jamaat Islamic movement congregation held at Tongi, Bangladesh by the river Turag. The event focuses on prayers and meditation and does not allow political discussion[1]. The local police estimated the number of attendees of 2007 ijtema to be 3 million[2] while in 2010 the number of attendees was 5 million.
The first meeting was reportedly held in 1946 [4] (although various sources indicate other dates for this) and continues to be organized by the Bangladesh Tablighi Jamaat. It lasts three days and is attended by over five million Muslims[5], making it the second largest congregation after the Hajj to Mecca but Hajj is farz (must) on the other hand Ijtema is not Farz. The program concludes with the Akheri Munajat, or final prayer. The tradition of Ijtema was initiated by an Indian savant named Muhammad Ilyas al-Kandhlawi and began as a small group of religious-minded individuals gathering at a local mosque. For forty-one years Tongi has been the chosen location, although similar programs are held on a lesser scale in other countries. The Ijtema is non-political, and therefore perhaps it draws people of all persuasion. Prayer is held for the spiritual adulation, exaltation and welfare of the Muslims community. This immensely popular program gives the people of Bangladesh an opportunity to interact with Muslims from other countries and is commonly attended by prominent political figures.
The congregation takes place at an area comprising 160 acres (0.65 km2) of land (0.25 square mile). Devotees from approximately 80 countries, including the host country, Bangladesh, attend the three-day Ijtema seeking divine blessings from Allah. In recent years, over seven thousands foreign delegates attend the congregatation each year.
Despite the large number of devotees living within a confined space, generally there is very few problems of sanitation, cooking, and internal movements. It is believed to be possible because of the minimalist approach adopted by the devotees. Devotees have reduced their own requirements and developed a respect for others’ requirements.
Muhammad Ilyas revived the Tabligh movement in 1927 at Saharanpur of Uttar Pradesh, India and at the same time organized regional congregation or Ijtema. In course of time, Ijtema movement spread throughout the subcontinent and also influenced other regions. After the partition of Bengal in 1947, three Ijtema centres developed in three parts of the subcontinent – India, West Pakistan and Bangladesh. Biswa Ijtema at Tongi is the annual Tabligh congregation of the current Bangladesh. In addition to Tongi, Ijtemas are now held in Raiwind, Pakistan and Bhopal, India. However, in terms of popular attendance, the Tongi Ijtema is the largest of all these congregations. To hear the Boyans/Speechs of Tongi, Ijtema, please visit the link here.
I love tabligh.
The Tablighi Quagmire
(Constructive reading for sociable Muslims and concerned members of the Umma.)
Introduction:
The Tablighi Jamaat in South Africa is characterised by:
? Grass roots effort.
? Substantively unstructured.
? No Scientific advancement.
? Very limited knowledge based programs.
? Always seeking new recruits.
? Colossal effort to remain at grass roots level that risks drawing away from scientific advancement.
Their approach to dawah involves:
1. Repetitive and institutionalised mosque camping throughout the year, travelling through towns and cities, and across countries and continents.
2. Repetitive visitations to Muslims homes to (in their words) invite.
Institutionalised mosque camping and repetitive visitations to Muslims homes are justified in their minds by an artificial dichotomy between deen and dunya, that is to say, between religion and world.
In over 30 years the Tablighis have:
? Institutionalised mosque camping,
? Made a fist long beard obligatory,
? Formalised the wearing of the kurtah,
? Repeatedly suppressed the advancement of women as income earners and as leaders and active role players in society beyond the home, and
? Marginalised society by emphasising the nikab.
A Breeding ground for Shrewdness, Cunning and Deceit:
The common misconception about the Tablighi jamaat is that they are backward. What appears to be backward is an unstructured melting pot of old stalwarts and new recruits, all subsumed in the same simplistic mimicry. There is no openness to any kind of structure. Meeting are always conducted in hushed tones, usually in isolated corners of the musjid.
On a Thursday night they will come to your home, give a brief talk/lecture and then they will invite you to a programme in the musjid after esha salaah (women are not invited, by the way). When you go to the mosque, the speaker stands up after esha salaah and begins his talk. And what is the talk? The talk is the same talk and invitation that was already given to you in your own home when they visited your house at supper time, before esha salaah.
This whole exercise is repeated week after week and year after year, and it?s been going on for decades (no exaggeration). It?s like a messenger that came to your home and told you that an important letter had arrived for you from a distant land and that this letter took many months to reach you and it changed many hands and that its importance is of the utmost. When you ask for the letter you are told the letter will be presented to you in the musjid. So you go the musjid and there you meet your neighbour and other people from your locality and they too have come to receive this letter. After esha salaah, a speaker stands up and begins to talk about the letter. He does not open the letter and read it out to you, he only talks about the arrival of the letter and talks about its importance. Then he talks about the people whose hands the letter exchanged and he give a brief account of their personalities and their trials and tribulations. All these side stories create and build up the excitement of the letter.
After a while you realise that the letter is not getting opened. Naturally as the recipient of the letter you are getting frustrated and becoming bored with this speech, because you already heard of the letters importance and where it came from and how many hands it exchanged, etc when the jamaat came to your home at supper time before esha salaah and told you about it. Eventually the speaker ends his talk and everyone goes home. The letter was never opened.
Again next week, there is a knock on the door and again there is a man standing there with a very serious and dire expression on his face. What? What is it? What has happened? What is the trouble and the urgency? Again you told that a letter is awaiting you in the musjid and that it came from a distant land and that it exchanged many hands to reach you, and the strange thing about some Muslims is that they keep going back to receive the letter – the same letter that was not opened last week after esha salaah. And week after week he goes back and week after week the letter is still unopened after esha salaah. And again the strange thing about this group of Muslims is that the recipient of the letter, in the language of the CIA, is brain washed to the point that he forgets about opening the letter and he too joins the speaker after esha salaah. So come next Thursday, he puts on his turban and kurtah and he is now joining the jamaat going from Muslim home to Muslim home in different localities, to tell more people about an important letter that is awaiting them in the mosque after esha salaah – the same letter that he forgot to ask to be opened.
So my readers I want to tell you that the letter is the message and the message is the favour of Allah and the favour of Allah is the honour of Muhummed (s.a.w.) to be its messenger and the honour of Muhummed is the Quran and its teachings, of nature, science, morality, social development, charity, etc.
Initially, I and so many others like me, having attended many tablighi programmes, had drawn the deduction that the tablighis were backward in their repetitive exercise of Muslim house visiting to notify of a letter and then week after week the letter it not opened. But I have prepared this article to say to people stop calling the tablighis backward. They know they are not going to open the letter. The letter (the Quran) is structured and the place that exemplifies the letter (that is the Quran) is the university with its diverse faculties and specialised department in the sciences and social sciences.
In many different cultures and throughout history you will find that when people coveted greed and power, the best hiding place for their agenda is humility. To call a people backward is to place humility on them. The backward label is tolerated by the tablighis because they understand that when people are laughing at them then the people?s scepticism and suspicion is not on them. Herein is the vital boost and freedom that the tablighis enjoy to spread and grow their sect quickly into thousands of followers without opposition. They become a cultural tour de force in their own right.
I will tell you one thing that has happened in the last 30 years. More and more people are joining the farz salaah in the musjid. And the tablighis are not just aware of this they want this. They genuinely want to have the mosques filled for farz salaah and this is not a bad thing, But if you stay at home and read salaah in your home that?s also not a bad thing too. If this is their true objective then look at their modi operandi – their methods. They are not openly and simply saying ‘come to the musjid for farz salaah’. Why? They know that this is the job of muezin, in the azaan that he gives 5 times a day.
Instead of simply saying ‘come to the musjid for farz salaah’ the tablighis are calling you to a letter that is never opened and to an artificial dichotomy between deen and dunya. This tablighis modi operandi and their approach to dawah that I have stated above has a social cost attached to it. The social cost is that the tablighi jamaat becomes a breeding ground for shrewdness, cunning, and deceit. And shrewdness, cunning, and deceit is the psychological foundation to dominance, control and amassing power in followers.
Unstructured and Simple:
In the last 30 years of the tablighis jamaat there are no ongoing structured workshops and structured symposiums and conferences on the sciences of the Quran and on the implementation of social development programmes. Week after week, year after year and decade after decade they still preaching an artificial dichotomy between deen and dunya and they still recruiting more people to camp in the mosque and to go from Muslim house to Muslim house to call men to the musjid for a letter that is never opened.
Simplicity is essential to reach a larger audience. People come from different backgrounds and culture and so to satisfy everyone at the same time the best approach is keep things simple. Hence their book readings after the farz salaah is all but parrot reading. Properly structured book readings with discussions, analysis and references for self study and individual intellectual progression lets the seeker of knowledge go off on his own quest. But if people go off on their own quests then there are fewer people in the tablighi activities and gatherings and that means less power and less control.
A resilient virus is hard to kill because it multiplies and spreads so fast. And why does a virus spread and multiply so fast? Because it is substantively simplistic and unstructured. Similarly tablighis deliberately and shrewdly remain simplistic and unstructured to spread and increase followers at the lowest cost and in the shortest time.
Another social cost of the tablighis unstructured and simplistic traits is that it lends them a greater propensity toward militancy, because nearly everything becomes a black and white issue. Structure, which is the letter opened (the Quran read and studied) shows the many shades of grey between that acts as a barriers against thoughtless and reckless actions. Not everyone one in the tablighi jamaat has a tendency toward militancy. Many are reserved and very passive in their religious stance.
The knowledge of the Quran is a reflection of the complex structures found in nature, and to study these complex structures of nature from the Quran itself and from direct scientific observation of nature, the Muslims must organise themselves into diverse structured groups, including hundreds of specialists groups and numerous generalists to facilitate integration of acquired knowledge which will lay the foundation for applied sciences and new inventions, etc.
Artificial Dichotomy between Deen and Dunya:
The tablighi mindset carries an artificial dichotomy between deen (religion) and dunya (world) and the tablighis are ritualistic toward their mosque camping and Muslim house visits.
When people are not taking part in these activities and when fewer people are gathering for these activities then deen is decreasing. This is the way they think. It matters not to them that the letter of Allah is not opened and that their book reading is all but parrot like with no structured discussions and analysis and no references, and no petitioning for self study at home with the objective of individual intellectual progression.
Those that don?t take part are watched and targeted because in their mind they are moving away from deen. It is the word deen that is used repeatedly to brainwash their followers. It does not matter to them that you are frustrated by the stagnation and the unstructured character of their activities. Their mindset prevents them from seeing the frustration. They only see what to them is a decrease in deen. The truth is that that if you not ritualistically participating in their activities then you out of their control and influence and that means less power for them.
Once again in want to say stop calling tablighis backward in their repetitive Muslim house visits and lecture programs after esha salaah. It?s all designed this way to amass power in numbers. The target, the dream and the prise for the tablighis is power and control over society in ideology, in religiosity, in business and trade, in politics and in law.
On the positive side another thing that has come out is that the tablighis have contributed to a revival of Islamic culture – the attachment to the Musjid (and to cleanliness, morality and sobriety), the pulsating and throbbing overseas jamaats criss-crossing continents and airport terminals in a blanket of white and the dawah has contributed to fostering an Islamic ethos, especially for those Muslims living in the west. This contribution is acknowledged. They are aware of their contribution and success and this has swelled some of their ranks with pride and conceit to the point that they have come to believe that their narrowness and substantively unstructured approach to deen is paramount and superior to the sciences ? the same sciences that the west and the Jews and Christians have mastered (not to say the Muslim are not capable of scientific advancement). This kind of attitude is dangerous. Some tablighis regard the sciences as mundane knowledge of dunya that is inferior to the knowledge of what in their dichotomised mindset is deen. They don?t realise that they doing a disfavour to the umma. The sciences are rooted in the Quran and the Quran is the structured message of Allah and the honour of Muhummed (s.a.w.) to be its messenger.
The spill over effect of the deen and dunya dichotomy is that it reaches into Muslims schools and it affects the way teachers and learners interact. It some South African Muslim schools the excitement is lost in respect of academic endeavour. Learners become less interested and less competitive in the sciences. As concerned members of the community what we don?t want is for our children to matriculate having no competitive advantage. We want leaders and achievers. Thus we find that many progressive young Muslim parents sense this and so they opt to send their children to non Islamic schools.
Conclusion:
In conclusion I want to say that participating in social development programs is good. Participating in dawah to the disbelievers is good. The truth is that you can spread deen without artificially creating a dichotomy between deen and dunya which manifests itself in unstructured mosque camping and without shrewd visitations to Muslim homes at supper time. We should all examine the diverse structure of nature (Allah?s created universe) – the same structure that is mirrored in the verses of the Quran.
There is an old saying (which is scientifically truthful) that if you put a frog in pot of boiling water it will jump out – corrective action is instantaneous. But if you put a frog in a pot of water that is at room temperature and then put the pot with frog inside on a heated stove the frog will stay in place. Eventually you will boil and cook the frog ? no corrective action. Death ensues. In the unstructured strivings of the tablighi jamaat this boiling frog syndrome applies to this Umma.
Tablighis need to ponder and think deeply on the consequences of their actions. In their unstructured actions are hidden costs ? costs which can weaken the umma from within like a silent and undetected virus.
May Allah guide us all.
May Allah protect us from those that are attached to narrow-mindedness over diversity and progressiveness.
May Allah protect us from those that put patronage and mimicry before honour.
May Allah protect us from those that succumb to confusion over structure and order.
Sincerely
Ziad Cassim (Author. Writing from South Africa)