6 - Challenges and Affirmations of Islamic Practice: The Tablighi Jamaat

Summary

While Ede is a predominantly Muslim town, Islam is practised in many different ways. A study of the Tablighi Jamaat, one of several reformist Islamic groups in the town with a small but significant following, contributes to an understanding of the diversity and difference within Yoruba Muslim life. As different and contradictory debates and practices exist within Ede's Muslim community, any reflection on their religious interaction in everyday life must explore how this is experienced in the relationships between Muslims of different backgrounds and convictions. Relationships between different Muslim groups take place not only in the form of abstract theological debates but also in the negotiation of social relations, material interests and political ambition. Exploring the Tablighis’ relationships with other Muslims in Ede not only by looking at their theological arguments but also by exploring their everyday relations and practices, this chapter discusses the local meaning of the Tablighi insistence on travelling tours for daʻwa or proselytisation, as well as their rejection of traditional everyday Yoruba practices such as prostrating and kneeling on greeting. Also looking at non-Muslim views on the Tablighi Jamaat, this chapter emphasises the ways in which the interaction between different religious groups ‘is conceived and experienced indigenously within specific African societies’.

The Tablighi movement has expanded very successfully over the past decades and is known to have millions of followers in about 150 countries around the world, including West Africa. But despite the group's growing presence in Nigeria, recent studies on Islamic organisations in Nigeria, and particularly in the south-west of Nigeria where the group has been particularly successful, are silent on its activities. Perhaps because the Tablighi Jamaat has been studied primarily as a transnational movement, with relatively little attention to the way in which this movement is appropriated by different groups in the local context, its activities in Nigeria are associated with rumours and misconceptions. Often, the Tablighi Jamaat's membership, its activities and relationships with other religious groups in Nigeria are automatically considered to be politically radical without any close examination of the context in which they operate.