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Tabligh Jama‘at in China: Sacred self, worldly nation, transnational imaginary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2018

ALEXANDER STEWART
ALEXANDER STEWART*
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article will evaluate how the experience of participating in the Tabligh Jama‘at affects the formation of Chinese Muslims’ subjectivities in relation to their local, national, and global communities by using data gleaned from interviews with participants in the movement and participation in Tabligh activities in and around Xining, Qinghai Province. Intensively structured practices make the movement seem restrictive, but observing the variety permitted in individual performances and autonomy allowed by grassroots governance reveals that the movement imbues participants with a high degree of agency. A sense of belonging in a pious transnational community grants individuals the means and confidence to reshape their everyday behaviours and comportment in a way that transcends traditional sectarian structures of authority and conflicts with the predominant materialism of modern China. The movement's inward focus and apolitical stance make the movement a subtle and peaceful means of tacitly undermining both atheist state and Muslim hierarchies, reinventing oneself, and expressing membership in the global ummah.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , July 2018 , pp. 1194 - 1226
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

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41 This is the general Tabligh procedure for walking, not specific to this activity, but certainly part of it.

42 Male jama‘atis only approach other males, but there are also jama‘ats for women which exclusively preach to other women.

43 All Chinese Muslims have a legal Mandarin Chinese name as well as an Arabic name. Tablighis exclusively used the latter during Tablighi activities.

44 Metcalf, ‘Living Hadith’, p. 602.

45 The smallest number recommended for a jama‘at is four, but one of our group could not make it. After organizers spent a couple hours trying to recruit a fourth member, the three of us decided to go with just three people.

46 Like most Chinese Muslims, these men learned not to eat pork and maybe some basic Arabic phrases as children. They probably celebrated Islamic holidays (at least when it became acceptable to do so after 1978), but they did not grow up performing prayer on a daily basis and never studied in a mosque or Islamic school.

47 Hadith describe the prophet sleeping always on his right side with his head to the north, the right hand under the cheek, and the left hand on one's side. Before going to sleep, Tablighis perform ablution and recite specific supplications and surahs of the Qur'an. This also includes a midday nap, which Muhammad reportedly encouraged.

48 During our stay, we met and studied with another jama‘at of nine men from Xinjiang who were staying at a nearby mosque for a few days during their 40-day trip.

49 A heated platform bed common in northern China.

50 These posters enumerated the Six Points of Tabligh with the benefits, methods, and motives of studying; things to pay attention to while travelling, including the ‘four don't talks’, ‘four protects’, ‘four stops’, ‘four seldoms’, ‘four oftens’, and ‘four don'ts’; four types of work for day and night; five types of work to be done in mosques; and proper etiquette for preparing to go on jama‘at, carrying out general and special visits, consultation, eating, sleeping, entering a mosque, speaking, putting on clothes, and using the restroom. Whenever possible, we would read the proper procedure aloud before each activity, and we all dutifully photographed these posters with our cell phones before we left.

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66 Sikand, Origins and Development, p. 260.

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68 Sikand, Origins and Development, p. 76.