Abstract
The Islamic missionary movement Dawat-e Islami is headed by the Memon business man and Barelwi scholar Muhammad Ilyas Qadiri Attar and aims to confront the Deobandi-affiliated Tablighi Jamaat in spreading Sunnah, the lifestyle of the Prophet and the Salaf. Since 2008 Dawat-e Islami has used its own TV station—the Madani channel—to advertise Sunnah-centric Sufism and popular piety through Sunnaization: the Islamization of clothing style, speech and behaviour. Fostering lay leadership and missionary journeys, the brotherhood reinforces a more general trend of making Islamic lifestyles market-worthy, i.e. capable of catching attention and attracting demand, thereby standardizing Sunnah, individualizing Islamic mission, and branding Barelwiyat. Its strategies of mobilization are thus described by applying the metaphors of religious economics.
Around 31 per cent of the world Muslim population is located in South Asia, 80 per cent of which are Sunnis. Sunni Islam in South Asia subdivides into several schools of thought, the largest being the Barelwis and the Deobandis. These two Islamic reformist movements compete with each other for members, resources, authority and impact in society.
The purist reform movement of Deoband is based upon a seminary founded in the North Indian city of Deoband in 1866 and strives to purify the custom-laden style of South Asian Islam of alleged Hindu influences. Around 1880 a counter-reformist movement emanated around Ahmad Riza Khan (1856–1921) from Bareilly, India (Sanyal, 2005). This Barelwi school is close to folk Islam and Sufism. Barelwi scholars underline the value of traditional rituals revolving around saints and shrines and highlight the veneration of the Prophet Muhammad. Both schools of thought are reformist in the sense that they locate responsibility for salvation in the individual. They have meanwhile developed tradition-specific new religious movements of piety and self-improvement, which show to some extent characteristics comparable with the religious change promoted by pentecostalisms. World religions have undergone major transformation during recent decades with consumers’ preferences for new religious goods and services shaping the religious change (Graf, 2003). The religious change that translates and reframes religious symbol-systems seems to be similar in different traditions of faith. The adoption of a market perspective in our analysis helps to highlight certain characteristics of the transformation processes of religious traditions seeking to adapt to increasingly pluralistic religious markets. Stressing “lay” leadership, new voluntarism, individual transformation and the increasing imperative to share one’s faith with “unbelievers”, these traditions are transformed into lived, experienced traditions. Tradition becomes an activity.
1. Adaptive Emergent Religion: New Sects, New Strategies, Old Patterns
The Deobandi-trained scholar Muhammad Ilyas (1885–1944) founded the Tablighi Jamaat in 1926 as a movement for faith renewal. Tablighi lay preachers travel in groups of 5–10 to nearby mosques, where they eat and sleep and preach basic knowledge about Islam. They deliver inspirational religious talks and urge the audience to volunteer for missionary journeys. A basic missionary trip lasts three days; other missionary journeys can last weeks, months, or a whole year. When Tablighi missionary activities began to expand globally in the late 1960s, Muslims in Pakistan and India also joined missionary journeys to foreign countries.
When highly religious young Muslim men with a Barelwi background started joining Tablighi trips, a few Barelwi scholars like Arshad ul-Qadiri (1925–2002) and the JUP (Jamiyat-e Ulama-ye Pakistan) “saint-politician” Shah Ahmad Noorani (1926–2003) (Malik, 1990) strove to set up a rival Barelwi organization to support transnational missionary journeys for highly religious young men in the framework of Barelwiyat and protect Barelwi youth from Tablighi proselytization (Gugler, 2010). They invited other Pakistani Barelwi scholars to collectively agree on establishing the Dawat-e Islami (Call towards Islam) as the Barelwi version of Tablighi Jamaat (Conveying Group) in Karachi in September 1981. The Barelwi scholar Muhammad Ilyas Qadiri Attar (born 1950) was installed as its leader. His being a member of the Memon business community made it seem likely that he would succeed in attracting funds from the Karachi business elite. The Barelwi tradition was forced as a consequence to redefine itself against the new players on the “market” by cultivating specialized identities serving a small “market niche”. The paradox is that markets are not very kind towards the preservation of traditions. Markets thrive on innovation, ephemeralness and “the next big thing”. The khuruj (lit. military expedition) missionary journey was until then a unique feature of the Tablighi Jamaat.
2. Reproducing Religious Rituals: Personal Piety, Pilgrimage and Pride
Both movements, Dawat-e Islami and Tablighi Jamaat, strive to Islamize individual dress, speech and behaviour by preaching the Sunnah of the Prophet portrayed in their specific hadith commentaries as a personal choice of lifestyle. Self-financed and self-trained lay preachers conceive and execute Islamic missions through personal involvement and face-to-face preaching, “Islamizing” everyday experience. I suggest the term Sunnaization for designating this rather apolitical neofundamentalist (Roy, 2007) and neofoundamentalist (Taylor, 2009) Islamic project. Individuals are drawn to these Islamic movements because they incorporate identities of Dawat-e Islami and Tablighi Jamaat, a modern Sunnah lifestyle advertised in their “salvation goods and services” (cf. Graf, 2003).
As missionary efforts of internal conversion aim to protect Muslims from secular lifestyles, members are encouraged to Islamize—or more precisely “Sunnaize”—clothing style, speech and behaviour in their everyday lives, staging their imitatio Muhammadi in public spaces. This is done to press for the conversion of “classical” conservative Muslims, portrayed as being “not-good-enough”. Methods of Sunnaization are codified in their Sunnah-handbooks, the Fazail-e Amal (Tablighi Jamaat) and Faizan-e Sunnat (Dawat-e Islami), which spell out the spiritual benefits of the lifestyle of the Prophet and his companions.
To experience Islam under the dominant leitmotiv of personal filial submission to the Prophet, new voluntarism and lay leadership (cf. Sageman, 2008) are fostered in an atmosphere of unconditional emotional and social support. Acknowledging this strong group love is important in understanding the dynamics of internal conversion of these new communities, which preach universal brotherhood and ask Muslims to repent their personal shortcomings in order to individually experience the Madani Revolution (spiritual transformation) within their hearts and minds.
The official slogan of Dawat-e Islami is “I have to rectify myself and the people of the whole world.” In order to realize this project, two piety systems are devised. For the betterment of the self, there are 72 spiritual rewards (Urdu: Madani Inamat, lit. Rewards of Madina) stemming from as many actions to be performed every day. These count as “paradise points” which are computed monthly and transmitted to a designated supervisor and feed an on-going “status”. For the betterment of others, there are the missionary journeys (Urdu: Madani Qafila, lit. Caravan of Madina). Every member shall participate in a three-day missionary journey to a nearby village once a month, and once a year a 30-day missionary journey is recommended (preferably to a foreign country). These endeavours aim to teach Sunnah in practice, spread its understanding to others and recruit volunteers for further educational journeys in a snowball effect.
For both, betterment of the self (through the Madani Inamat) and betterment of others (through Madani Qafila), tawab (reward in heaven) is promised. Tawab is also generated by making another person, for example a member of one’s family, a “real” Muslim. Similarly, every correct prayer and every pious action in daily life generates tawab for its author as well as for the proselytizer. Businessmen, politicians or others who are unable to participate in missionary journeys themselves, can earn the tawab for a mission by paying someone else’s travel costs. Full-time members and students who are unable to pay the expenses for their missionary journeys themselves can thus receive funding for national and international journeys. Funds are also used to set up and maintain an international chain of Faizan-e Madina centres, each of which hosts a shop of the Dawat-e Islami chain called Makabat al-Madina. This publisher distributes over 700 print publications, DVDs, Islamic software (like searchable fatawa-collections), Islamic fashion and body products (alcohol-free perfumes, kohl, etc.) and travel utensils. Their “non-profit” policy intends to make sure that gains are reinvested exclusively into the expansion of the affiliated Faizan-e Madina.
3. Commoditizing Religion, Creating Certitude: Counting Blessings Every Day
Tawab and faiz are overlapping concepts of otherworldly rewards. Lay preachers of the Faizan-e Madina (lit. Overflowing Grace of Madina) chain of religious centres advertise their mosques, madrasas and maktabas by emphasizing faiz-economy. Faiz, or “spiritual grace”, is a divine energy emanating from God`s and Muhammad`s attributes, often explained in the metaphor of spiritual electricity with the properties of a nurturing light: an invisible enabling energy believed to exist beyond all moving beings (Buehler, 1998: 117–20). In this world, faiz is flowing like subtle rays from specific sacred localities and agents to the person who is striving towards respectiveness. Faizan, the plural, literally means “overflowing” or “abundance”, and is understood as a marker of sacrality, described in material terms as an electric charge or a surge of energy (Rozehnal, 2007: 33). For the Sufi lover, absorbing faiz has both experiential and physical-cum-cognitive dimensions (Werbner, 2003: 170). To qualify for the absorption of faiz in the environment of Dawat-e Islami, participants are requested to abide by certain rules and regulations of Islamic etiquette, turning them practically into lay preachers. New members of the weekly congregation, usually taking place on Thursday nights, are invited to sleep in the mosque to make sure not to miss the morning prayer (Salat-e Fajr) as well as to fully benefit from the special faiz of this sacred space, time and community. There, they may be offered a Dawat-e Islami “uniform”, and there are calls to join Madina caravans (Madani Qafila) and collectively swear bayat (oath of allegiance) to the Amir-e Ahl-e Sunnat (leader of “real” Sunni Islam) Mawlana Muhammad Ilyas Qadiri Attar.
Several market metaphors offer interesting insights into modern methods of mobilization in increasingly pluralistic religious markets. Lay preachers are variably full-time funded missionaries, funding missionaries or observing sympathizers to Dawat-e Islami. In such consumer societies, lay preachers are, to apply the semantics of Bauman, simultaneously promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote (Bauman, 2007: 6). In other words, they try as hard as they can, using the means at their disposal, to enhance the “market value” of the salvation goods they “sell”. Lay preachers are drawn to the Faizan-e Madinas with the prospect of finding the tools and raw materials they may use in order to make themselves market-worthy (Bauman, 2007: 62).
Besides personal emotional experience, the most important means of faiz-absorption is the maximization of salvation-certitude. The lay preacher can optimize receptiveness to faiz by purchasing several Sunnah-items (symbols of the ideal Muslim), volunteering for character education courses and missionary services, filling in the Madani Card, etc. Prior to faiz consumption the consumer has to invest at least emotionally in making himself eligible to become a lover of the Prophet Muhammad. The relatively high investment at the starting point of faiz-absorption also helps to establish “consumer loyalty” for the specific salvation goods and services “sold” by the lay preachers.
Neatly dressed followers and a demonstrative culture of cleanliness and discipline are central elements of re-essentialized religious symbol systems. The imitatio Muhammadi is a means of generating not just tawab but also social capital and a feeling of authenticity. The Islamic dress code serves in the here and now as a freedom-ticket with which young Muslims can autonomously generate social capital that allows them to re-shape the Islamic religious field in their immediate environment. Sunnah codes for living are authenticity-acquisition techniques.
The modernity-specific increase of uncertainties prevents consumers from remaining satisfied. Through complex cognitive-emotional and fantasy processes, the Sufi Lover’s imitatio Muhammadi is a means to generate faiz and salvation-certitude and to increase self-love, self-esteem and self-power while shunning opposite feelings like hatred of oneself and of others, fear and suspicion (cf. Stein, 2010: 117). The lay preacher’s obsession with the potential horrors of death and Judgement Day successfully channels diverse anxieties and modernity-specific uncertainties into one single fear of God. The need for salvation-certitude, however, can never be fully satisfied as there is always an option of maximization. The 72 madani inamat are demanding to a degree that even full-time members, who completely commit their lifestyles to these paradise incentives, usually score around 30 to 35 points a month. The monthly madani points and additional pious actions act to quantify the love the Sufi master Ilyas Muhamad Qadiri Attar feels for the follower. Accumulating paradise points through donation and prayer approaches a fee-for-service religion (Soares, 2005: 246). The movement offers a framework of mechanisms and procedures commodified into missionary tasks with commensurate rewards. To speak in the semantics of religious economy, religiosity thus becomes a consumerized enterprise of accumulating spiritual savings supposedly being cashed out in heavenly rewards.
Religious identities also shape the economic habitus. Religious translocal communities reduce transaction costs (Schmidtchen, 2007: 265), especially when mercantile customs are grounded in religious trust and profit-unrelated morality. Money and goods flow faster when people in different regions trust in common goals, relying on specifically agreed religious norms. The Karachi harbour plays a key role in shipping goods produced in China to Muslim traders in South Africa or the Gulf countries. Dawat-e Islami members are in some cases successfully integrated in permanently expanding transnational trader-networks, thereby creating long-term social-structural processes of middle-class formation.
Contemporary “re-Islamization” is about the privatization of Islamic symbols and rituals and the triumph of individualistic conceptions of piety and the sacred over collective and socially mobilized Islamist projects (Mandaville, 2007: 343). Consumer culture can validate Sunnah-focused identity formation projects. As the market becomes increasingly a general mediation authority in shaping social bonds, traditional patrimonial identity commitments are declining. The market imposes rivalry and specific commodification processes on its members. In the market perspective, competition and plurality are a source of conflict as well as a protection from monopoly abuse. Religious traditions, which have always been in a constant state of change, sometimes seem as ephemeral as fashion trends in the post-traditional world of late-modernity. Strategies of change of religious traditions or processes of retraditionalizion seem to be highly rational and aim to implement change in ways that maximize membership and resources. The myth of homo religiosus as being pre-rational and “anti-”consumerist has become obsolete. As a Sufi movement, Dawat-e Islami has an advantage over Tablighi Jamaat in capitalizing on the feel-good factor and the love of the Prophet. It also makes missions fun (Bayat, 2007) through enthusiastic zikr and nat sessions, urs festivals and maulud celebrations. Under the condition of increasing consumer-autonomy, religious actors cultivate corporate identity and establish brand names by making the specific qualities of their salvation goods visible in public spaces (Graf, 2003). In a race for adherents, religious groups like the Tablighi Jamaat and its rival Barelwi firm Dawat-e Islami compete for impact and recognition, branding Muhammad and Madinah within the mass-marketed culture and highly individualized societies of late-modernity.