Followers of the Tablighi are apolitical, and other-worldly, writes Mary Fitzgerald in Lahore, but some say their worldwide networks have been used to hide extremists
The room is small and dimly lit. Thin mattresses cover almost every inch of its stone floor and freshly washed laundry droops from a line overhead. In one corner, rolled-up blankets lean against a neat row of rucksacks.
This spartan room, adjoining a large mosque complex in central Karachi, forms the living quarters of some 20 members of Tablighi Jamaat, the transnational Islamic missionary movement that emerged in rural south Asia more than 70 years ago. Outside, dozens of men crowd around a line of sinks to perform their ablutions before evening prayer. Their appearance marks them out as typical Tablighis.
Beards are grown long but the upper lip is shaved. The white robes and loose trousers hitched above the ankles are worn, as are the beards, to emulate the appearance and dress of the Prophet Muhammad in seventh century Arabia. Some men sport white turbans, others delicately embroidered prayer caps. One or two sit cleaning their teeth with a siwak, a type of twig used like a toothbrush at the time of the Prophet.
Tablighi Jamaat - the name is Arabic for "group that propagates the faith" - has come a long way since its humble beginnings in the last decades of British rule in India.
Founded by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas, a religious scholar who sought to rally Muslims against Hindu proselytising, the movement has, from the start, stressed personal piety, spiritual renewal and a strict adherence to Islam's basic tenets.
Deriving much of their philosophy from the Deobandi school - an austere interpretation of Islam similar to Saudi Wahhabism - Tablighis aspire to an ideal they believe to be exemplified by the Prophet Muhammad and the way he lived his life. Male Tablighis will refrain from looking directly at a woman to whom they are not related and music is frowned upon.
TODAY THE MOVEMENT fans out well beyond its south Asian birthplace, extending its network to Europe, the US, Africa, Malaysia, Canada and elsewhere. In the US alone, there are an estimated 50,000 followers.
In Britain, Tablighi members plan to build a mosque near London's Olympic complex in time for the 2012 Games. The proposed complex will hold more than 50,000 worshippers, making it one of the biggest mosques in the world.
The organisation's annual gatherings in Pakistan and Bangladesh draw millions of devotees. The largest, held every November in the Pakistani town of Raiwind, is believed to be second only to the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in terms of the numbers of Muslims it attracts.
Tablighi Jamaat's defining feature is what is known as the "tour" or "effort", a missionary drive in which groups made up of about 10 men travel to proselytise for an evening or a few days.
These informal preachers go door to door, visit mosques and university campuses or simply approach people on the street.
They travel light and usually sleep in mosques, a nod to the movement's strong ascetic streak. Some take it further by participating in prolonged trips lasting a month or more in their native country or overseas.
Female Tablighis tend to be the wives or daughters of members. They proselytise at women-only gatherings in private homes.
The movement has been compared to a Muslim version of the Jehovah's Witnesses. "There is some resemblance," agrees Khalid Butt, a Lahore-based plastic surgeon who became involved in his student days. "We go out and meet people face to face, calling on them to come to the mosque. There's a very strong social exercise aspect."
BUT WHILE TABLIGHI members hail its increasingly global reach, the movement has come under growing scrutiny in several countries after it popped up on the radar of security officials working on a number of high-profile terrorism investigations.
Some of those charged this week in connection with the alleged plot to bomb transatlantic airliners had attended Tablighi events in Britain.
Assad Sarwar (26), one of those charged with conspiracy to murder, became involved with the movement after dropping out of university, his family claimed.
"He was at Tablighi Jamaat, which is a sect in Islam which encourages the youth to grow beards, pray five times a day and, how the prophet lived on a daily basis, that's how you should run your life," his brother said in an interview. "He got actively involved in that and thought that religion is more important than study."
At least two of the London suicide bombers - Muhammad Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - attended the mosque in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where the movement has its European headquarters. Earlier this year, German authorities in Bavaria expelled a number of Tablighi members, alleging they were promoting extremism.
Several Americans known to have trained in al-Qaeda camps, including the so-called "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, are alleged to have been recruited into jihadi groups while travelling under the auspices of Tablighi Jamaat in south Asia. A number of other convicted terrorists, such as failed British shoe bomber Richard Reid, have been involved with the movement at one stage or another.
In Pakistan, some Tablighi members have been linked with home-grown jihadi outfits such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Authorities, while stressing that the organisation itself has not been accused of supporting terrorism, caution that the group's fluid, transnational nature and open door policy may leave it vulnerable to infiltration and even manipulation by more extreme elements.
"There may be groups that do not actually profess its basic ideology and profound religiosity and yet use the cover of the Tablighi Jamaat in order to evade scrutiny of the security forces," noted a Canadian intelligence report.
YOGINDER SIKAND, AN INDIAN academic who has written a book on the Tablighi, agrees that suspicions should not centre on the movement itself.
"To blame the Tablighi Jamaat is as ridiculous as blaming German universities for producing Nazis or American universities for producing skinhead racists," he says.
"The TJ does not have that sort of control over people who join its preaching tours. Any Sunni Muslim may do so, for any length of time, and there are no rules for 'admission' or 'expulsion' for such things do not exist in this very open-ended, loosely structured mass movement."
Some critics believe the organisation's promotion of a rigid Deobandi-flavoured Islam may leave impressionable young Muslims susceptible to radicalisation.
"The fact that the organisation exists within that Deobandi landscape, which the jihadis also adhere to, means there is a greater possibility of the two mingling even if it is unintentional," says Khaled Ahmed, a prominent Pakistani commentator.
In Pakistan, Tablighi Jamaat's congregations are often attended by politicians, high-ranking military officers, actors, cricket players and other celebrities, leading some commentators to consider it part of a trend dubbed "fundo chic".
In 2002, Junaid Jamshed, lead singer of one of the country's most popular rock bands, announced he was giving up the career that had made him a national heart-throb. "For 16 years I had loads of money, fame and publicity. People don't want to accept that I'm following the will of Allah and it just took me a long time to understand His will," Jamshed explained to shocked fans.
These days he devotes most of his time to Tablighi missions, his heavily bearded appearance a world away from the rock star posturings of before.
TABLIGHI MEMBERS TALK about the importance of self-improvement and discipline as well as the need to bring wayward Muslims back to the fold. Naushad Baig, a surgeon who attends the movement's mosque in Karachi, is typical in the way he describes the Tablighi effect, using language and imagery in many ways reminiscent of Western evangelists.
"Living in this material world, a man's heart gets rusted," he says, paraphrasing a well-known saying of the Prophet Muhammad. "The soul and spirit need to be fed regularly and that is exactly what Tablighi does for people."
His companion, Zubair Nagaria, agrees. A businessman whose brother is a neurosurgeon in Ireland, Zubair joined Tablighi when he was 18. "It is a reminder to us human beings that this is not the only world. We must live in the spirit of Islam and follow the way of our prophet," he says.
Siddique Javed Bhatti (25), the director of a Lahore-based textile company, first came across the movement when he was a student in England. He worries that people's perceptions of Tablighi Jamaat in the UK are misguided. One British broadsheet recently referred to it as the "Army of Darkness".
"It makes me despair," he admits. "I was drawn to Tablighi because their way of living was so appealing. They are honest, humble, polite and down-to-earth people. For us Tablighis, the only jihad is the jihad of the heart, the jihad against your desires and ego."
Barbara Metcalf, a University of California academic who has studied the Tablighi phenomenon, calls it "an apolitical, quietist movement of internal grassroots missionary renewal". The movement is avowedly non-political and members stress the emphasis is on changing the individual, not society.
"The TJ ideology is quite 'other-worldly', and in fact has been criticised by extremist Islamist groups for allegedly playing into the hands of the enemies of Islam by focusing only on rituals and ignoring physical jihad and even the very real political and economic problems of Muslims in large parts of the world," says Yoginder Sikander.
But other critics point out that it is the movement's very "other-wordliness" and disengagement from society that worries them most. "It is exclusively Deobandi-based and as a result there is a deep rejectionism at its heart," says Khaled Ahmed.
"It promotes a strict ideology that involves extreme isolationism from society and a rejection of modernity. That, in my opinion, is the main problem with the organisation. It has not faced the challenge of modern times."
Khalid Butt rejects that criticism. "Look at me, I'm a plastic surgeon who does liposuctions and I'm in Tablighi," he says. "There is this perception that we are rigid and unbending. There are perhaps some people like that but they are in a minority. For me it's about applying Islamic priniciples to the modern world, not rejecting that world."
• Mary Fitzgerald is the winner of the Douglas Gageby Fellowship. Her reports on "the Faces of Islam" appear in Friday's Irish Times.