Intention as the Bridge Between the Ideal and Contingent: Rabea Basri and the Women of the Tablighi Jamaʿat

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/reorient.5.2.0183
• Published date: 01 April 2020
• Date: 01 April 2020
• Pages: 183-197
• Author: Darakhshan Khan
• Subject Matter: Tablighi Jamaʿat,reform,piety,gender,women,self-fashioning

ReOrient 5.2 Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals

Newcastle University, UK

INTENTION AS THE BRIDGE BETWEEN THE

IDEAL AND CONTINGENT: RABEA BASRI AND

THE WOMEN OF THE TABLIGHI JAMAʿAT

Darakhshan Khan

Abstract: The itinerant men of the Tablighi Jamaʿat, an Islamic reform movement that

urges its followers to travel in the path of Allah, have drawn the attention of journalists

and scholars alike. Dressed in loose trousers that expose his ankles, a long, flowing beard

and a duffel bag slung over his shoulders, the Tablighi man has been the subject of count-

less inquiries. The heightened visibility of the proselytizing men in public spaces and in

the media has taken attention away from the fact that the Tablighi Jamaʿat is as much a

movement of women seeking to fashion a pious self. The unintended consequence of this

bias is that while public meetings of the Jamaʿat, especially the annual gathering of men

in Raiwind (Pakistan), Dhaka (Bangladesh), and Bhopal (India), draw a lot of attention, an

equally, if not more, important site of Tablighi self-fashioning, namely the home where

women convene for the weekly ijtima (meeting), is barely considered a topic worthy of

study. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among the women of the Jamaʿat conducted

in Bombay (Mumbai) between 2011 and 2012, this paper will make a case for foreground-

ing the domestic space—in all its articulations, imaginations and contestations—in the

study of the Jamaʿat. Framing the Tablighi Jamaʿat as a piety movement rooted in the

domestic opens the intellectual space to theorize about modern female piety as a bal-

ancing act between the ideal and the contingent. It also allows us, as this paper demon-

strates, to tease out the role of intention (niyat) in the fashioning of the pious female self.

Keywords: Tablighi Jamaʿat, reform, piety, gender, women, self-fashioning

The itinerant men of the Tablighi Jamaʿat, an Islamic reform movement that urges

its followers to travel in the path of Allah, have drawn the attention of journalists

and scholars alike. Dressed in loose trousers that expose his ankles, a long, flow-

ing beard and a duffel bag slung over his shoulders, the Tablighi man has been the

subject of countless inquiries (Metcalf 1997, 2011; Robinson 1997; Reetz 2006;

Masud 2000; Janson 2008; Noor 2012). The heightened visibility of the proselyt-

izing men in public spaces and in the media has taken attention away from the fact

that the Tablighi Jamaʿat is as much a movement of women seeking to fashion a

pious self. The unintended consequence of this bias is that while public meetings