Personal Transformation

Tablighis are often quite rightfully perceived and described as Muslim missionaries. One of the major activities that they engage in their travels is to invite people to the mosques and remind them about the importance of Islamic practices. This invitation – dawah – is in the core of Tablighi ideology. However, the Tablighi narrative sees such invitation not as a final goal, but more as means to a goal. The final goal, as Tablighi claim, is one’s personal transformation. They propose that travel helps them to obtain new qualities, strengthen their iman (belief), correct their yakyn (conviction) and improve their amals (religious practices). On numerous occasions I’ve heard that the purpose of going on this path is not to change other people. Whoever thinks so, it was told, will waste his time. The purpose of going is to change everybody’s own qualities.

What makes this change possible? The first factor is distance. It is both physical distance from home, but also more abstract distance from everyday matters. One Tablighi with background in visual arts commented:

People in their daily routines don’t have many possibilities for looking at their life globally because they are busy with thousands of minute details. In travel they distance themselves from their daily trifles and see a large scale picture of their existence, just like artists have to stand away from their drawings or paintings in order to check proportions, balance and the overall impression[8].

This distance also produces a more abstract and detached from reality vision of the world. Such abstractness of thinking is important for comprehending many abstract religious concepts, such as ghoib (unseen), jannat (paradise), jahannam (hell). By disengaging from reality a traveler can develop more utopian visions.

The second factor is an opportunity to spend time alone, which is also an opportunity to rethink many matters in life. A regular day of a contemporary busy person involves lots of planning to maximize the efficiency and reduce the time wasted for doing nothing. Time for relaxation is also used actively for entertainment, sports or just sleep. In travel, people lose this control of time and become much more dependent on external events and circumstances. People get long pauses, when they have to wait and do nothing, like when they sit in the train, or at the airport. In the interesting account of everyday life titled The Secret World of Doing Nothing Ehn and Lofgren describe how important and rich in experience can be the seemingly useless times of waiting:

Above all it is the liminality of waiting that makes it a special kind of doing nothing. In-between events can make people feel stuck, but such events can also generate new possibilities. Waiting produces a “sleep-walking” mood, in which the asylum-seeker or the pregnant woman may feel removed from the world or flow of time. Waiting also makes some people see their material surroundings, the strangers next to them, and their own lives in a new light. Waiting can be the source of intense boredom but also of surprising insights.[9]

Similarly, Tablighis in their journeys spend significant time being by themselves “in the quiet”. That gives them opportunity to contemplate and make murakaba (a prominent Sufi concept of remembrance of Allah with heart and thinking about the ways He created the world). They don’t have many chances for doing this in their homes and work places.

One elderly Tablighi compared travel with an X-ray machine. He said, it shows people’s soul sicknesses just like X-ray shows their physical sicknesses and when they realize their mistakes – they have to make istighfar (ask for forgiveness from God). At the same time he said travel is like a clinique. Many people need to leave their environments in order to see their mistakes and improve by looking at life from a far – away from the circumstances that often become the causes of their wrongs: “In the path of Allah people cry at night over the ways they offended their family members, friends, colleagues and commit to living a better life”[10].

The fourth factor is time. I have been joining 3-day travels for several years, but only when I went for 40 days I realized that three day trips were not long enough to get a person out of the worldly matters. In a 40-day or longer trip, people really start feeling changes. During the first week, a person keeps remembering various worldly matters. But because the inflow of old information is almost completely absent (in the trip it is recommended to turn off mobile phones and not call home), the new information slowly replaces the old and gradually a person finds the rhythm to amplify the range of feelings and thoughts.

Finally, during journeys people also become stronger physically because they have to go through all kinds of difficulties and changes in the environments. Tablighis sleep on the floor, take daarat (partial ablution) and even gusl (complete ablution) with cold water, and walk long distances. Because of these difficulties, the human immune system becomes activated and people understand many abilities of a human body and through that they understand the kudrat (might) of the Creator.[11]

Therefore, when Tablighis return from their journeys, they come significantly transformed spiritually, emotionally and physically. They become more “nomadic” in their mindset and physical abilities. They develop worldviews and habits that make distant travels a regular part of their life. Travelers also obtain new knowledge that strongly affects their life after travel. This is described in the next section.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 818