250 words
145
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
Emil NASRITDINOV
SPIRITUAL NOMADISM
AND CENTRAL ASIAN TABLIGHI TRAVELERS*
Introduction
In the context of the general theme of the forum Unsettling Nomadism this article uses the concept of nomadism to describe the lifestyle of people who travel the world in its spiritual terrain. I would like to suggest that as with terms such as pastoral nomadism, which define the lifestyle of people moving with their herds of animals from pasture to pasture, we can employ the term spiritual nomadism to help us better understand the travel components of contemporary religious movements. The terms “nomadism” and “nomad” have expanded their meanings in the twentieth century to include concepts such as “virtual nomads” – to identify people who regularly travel in the online spaces, “academic nomads” – university professors and researchers, “global corporate business nomads” and “development nomads” – profes- sionals working for various corporate and nongovernmental organizations, “lifestyle nomads” – who travel with their guitars and backpacks, and “labor migration nomads” who regularly travel between countries of origin and destination. New modes of transportation and global interconnectedness have contributed to the creation and expansion of these new types of human mobility. What makes these various types of travel forms of nomadism is
* The author acknowledges the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and sug- gestions.
146
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
the regularity of travel, significant time spent on journeys, and the effect of the mobile lifestyle on many aspects of personal and communal life.
In a similar way, the number of people who travel around the world with some spiritual purposes has also significantly increased. The importance of travel is recognized in many world religions. Pilgrimages to holy places, to graveyards of saints, and to the location of various relics, travel for purposes of acquiring religious knowledge, for missionary purposes, and for escaping worldly matters are found in many examples of religious practices in history and in contemporary times. The history of monotheistic religions, such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity, is full of stories of travels and wanderings of many Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus; and the history of Buddhism is significantly based on the travels of Buddha and his followers. Today, we find hundreds of thousands of people of different religious affilia- tions traveling across the world for the purposes of their own spiritual growth.
The main ethnographic part of this article draws on the analysis of prac- tices, narratives, and discourses of Tablighi travelers – participants in the movement for the revival of Islam, which originated in India in the early twentieth century and by now, has reached many distant Muslim communi- ties around the world. One of the major components of Tablighi religious tradition is regular travel. The article describes how this kind of particular religious travel affects the lives of Tablighis individually and how it affects the larger communities of which they are a part.
Tablighi travel is organized in such a way that it has strong transformative effects on the traveler. Tablighi narrative describes personal transformation as the main purpose of travel. I have been joining Tablighi jamaats on their three-day journeys since 2002 and last year I joined them on a forty-day journey. The journey was even more valuable because it took me to India, where I had a chance to be in the Nizamuddin marqas (center) in Delhi and to attend an ijtema (gathering) in Bhopal. My experience was enriched by the chance to listen to the bayans (talks) of the veterans of the movement and converse with Tablighis from many parts of the world. The topic of travel was the one of most interest to me. Bayans, taalim circles, stories, and my own observations and contemplations serve as the main material for the sections below. I have united the main ethnographic materials into six themes, all helping to deconstruct the travel experience: personal transfor- mation, knowledge and experience, new perspectives on worldly matters, socialization, correction of belief, and travel metaphors. Using the concept of nomadism as a lifestyle and regular travel practice helps me to connect these themes together.
147
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
The source of all of the stories and quotations used here is this forty-day Tablighi trip to India, in which I met Tablighi participants from different parts of the world. Therefore, the quotes refer to where the particular in- formant is from.
The theoretical contribution and aim of this research is twofold: (1) to analyze and reformulate Tablighi practices in relation to the term “spiritual nomadism” used in this article; and (2) to describe the transformative effects of spiritual Tablighi travels. But first, we briefly discuss the importance of travel in Islam generally, look at the origins of Tablighi travel practice, and contextualize it on the territory of Central Asia.
Islamic perspective on travel
Although the idea of religious pilgrimage, including the Muslim pil- grimage to Mecca, has been discussed extensively,1 the more inclusive subject of travel in Islam as a unifying theoretical concept has not received sufficient systematic attention from scholars. One synthesizing attempt was made by Eickelman and Piscatori2 in their edited book titled Muslim Travelers: Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination. The authors defined several Islamic concepts describing the idea of travel in Islam. These include hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), hijra (migration), ziyara (travel to shrines), and rihla (travel for the purpose of acquiring religious knowledge). The authors propose that different types of spiritual travels were often combined not only with each other, but also with other types of travels, such as labor migration and trade and that these worldly travels, even without a spiritual component, often had a strong effect on the spiritual transformations of travelers.
Other relevant terms include: the concept of sirat-al-mustakim (straight path or straight way), which we encounter in the opening surah of the Quran, and fee-sabilillah (in the path of Allah), the meaning of which includes travel in jihad (holy war), travel for the purpose of dawah (invitation to Islam), and travel for various takazas (tasks) of din (religion).
Eickelman and Piscatori portray these various types of spiritual travel as specific forms of social action transforming the imagined communi- 1 Francis Edward Peters. The Hajj: the Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places. Princeton, 1994; Michae Wolfe (Ed.). One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing About the Pilgrimage to Mecca. New York, 1998; Ali Shariati. Hajj: Reflection on Its Rituals. Chicago, 1993. 2 Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori (Eds.). Muslim Travelers: Pilgrimage, Migration and the Religious Imagination. Berkeley, 1990.
148
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
ties of believers through shifting boundaries and creating new identities and new meanings. They emphasize the value of various terms defining Muslim travel as elements of a universal vocabulary that make possible comparison and analysis of various versions of Islam that have evolved in different parts of the world and in different periods. Travel, as one of these smaller concepts, constitutes both religious tradition and religious imagination and helps us to gain a richer understanding of Islam while avoiding an essentialist stand.
In Islam, the importance of travel is recognized and emphasized in the numerous ayahs of the Holly Quran and in the hadiths of the Prophet Mu- hammad (S.A.W.). For ex- ample, Abdullah bin Umar (R.A.A.) described how Prophet Muhammad took him by the shoulder and said: “Be in this world like a stranger or a wayfarer” (Buhari).
In the more interpretive version, this hadith might stress the temporal nature of the world for a Muslim whose final abode is in the akhirat (next world). However, a more literate understanding is perhaps an instruction to people to spend significant part of their lives as travelers. In a more straightforward way, one ayah of the Quran says: “Travel through the Earth and see what was Fig. 1. Two Kazakh Tablighi travelers with the Taj-ul
Masajid* in the background (photo by the author.)
* Taj-ul Masajid (The crown of Mosques) in Bhopal, India used to be the biggest mosque in Asia and now is considered the biggest mosque in India. It can accommodate 100,000 worshippers. Its construction was initiated by Shajehan Begum in 1868. Since 1949 it used to be a place of annual Tablighi Ijtimas – three-day gatherings. In the recent past, when the number of attendees became so large that they could no longer fit in the mosque and its surroundings, Ijtima was moved to a field outside the city.
149
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
the end of those who rejected the truth” (6:11). The Quran itself has many stories of how different communities rejected the message and how they were punished. In this sentence it instructs believers to travel in order to see for themselves.
Many hadiths describe the benefits of travel in relation to the rewards that travelers receive. The following extracts were taken from the chapter on the virtues of travel included in the book of “Selected Hadiths” compiled by Maulana Muhammad Yusuf:
Anas (R.A.A.) narrates that Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) said: “One morning or one day in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything that it contains” (Buhari).
Aisha (R.A.A.) described that she heard the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) say: “If dust touches the body of a person in the path of Allah, these parts of the body will be forbidden for the fire of Hell” (Musnad Ahmad, Tabrani, Majmauz-Zavaid).
Abu Huraira (R.A.A.) narrates how Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) once sent a group of sahabahs to carry out an assigned task. They asked: “Should we depart tonight or wait until morning?” Prophet Muhammad
Fig. 2. The main building of the Taj-ul Masajid (photo by the author).
150
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
(S.A.W.) said: “Don’t you want to spend a night in one of the gardens of Paradise?” (Sunan Kubra).
Protection from punishment and the promise of paradise embedded in the Islamic teaching and grounded in the amplitude of feelings ranging between fear and hope are all very powerful abstract motivators, while a comparison to worldly riches helps to understand the significance of the rewards of travel.
Movement was crucial for the success of the Islamic world. Islam spread so fast partly because of the nomadic lifestyle and mobility of Arabs who delivered the message of Islam to many distant corners of the old world. But movement was important not only in its initial stage. It played signifi- cant role throughout Islamic history. Gellens described Islamic civilization: “…a network of variegated societies, united by their commitment to the shar ’ia – was one which in the fullest sense owed its vibrancy to constant movement. Travel in all its myriad forms – pilgrimage, trade, scholarship, adventure – expanded the mental and physical limits of the Muslim world, and preserved and nourished the various contacts that Muslims perennially maintained with one another.”3
This network of Muslim societies connected through various channels was a crucial factor in preserving and strengthening the Muslim Ummah and its economic and intellectual growth. Travels were especially important in the lives of Sufis who understood travel as both a spiritual and physical journey. Pina Werbner describes this concept in the following way:
Sufism is conceived of essentially as a journey along a path (suluk) leading towards God. In Sufism the human being is a model for the universe, a microcosm of the macrocosm, and the journey towards God is a journey within the person… But Sufi Islam is not only a journey within the body and person… It is also a journey in space… Beyond the transformation of the person, Sufism is a movement in space which Islamicizes the universe and transforms it into the space of Allah. This journey, or hijra, which evokes the migration of the Prophet to Medina, empowers a saint as it empowers the space through which he travels and the place where he establishes his lodge.4
Sufis traveled in different places around the world not for the purposes of worldly gain, but mostly in their spiritual realms. Sufism took different forms in different places around the world. But almost universally pres- 3 Sam Gellens. The Search for Knowledge in Medieval Muslim Societies: a Comparative Approach // Eickelman, Piscatori (Eds.). Muslim Travelers. P. 51. 4 Pnina Werbner. Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. Bloomington, 2004. Pp. 41-43.
151
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
ent was the figure of a wandering dervish, who led a very ascetic life and continuously moved from place to place performing zikr (remembrance of Allah) and searching for purity of heart and a connection with God. Today, Sufi practices can be found on all continents of the world, including in Western countries, where they are called “neo-Sufi” movements. But the Sufi practices that are the main interest of this article are just as global and trace their origins to India. These are described in the next section.
Spiritual nomadism in the practices of Tablighi jamaat
Early in the twentieth century a new movement emerged in the region of Mewat in India, where Maulyana Ilyas Zakariya, who was both a member of a Sufi order and a religious scholar, proposed that the state of affairs of Muslim communities around the world would not improve until Muslims improved their own religious practices and transformed themselves into better individuals. He also proposed that a person cannot correct himself if he is always in the environment of worldly matters. To transform, one needs to leave his comfort zone, his work, family, and daily trifles and spend more time in the environment of din (religion). Maulyana established the regular practice of travel performed in jamaats (groups) of eight to twelve people and involving a stay in a mosque for two to three days before moving on to another one in nearby. The main daily activities inside the mosque would include: taalim and muzakirah (study circles), daily prayers, zikr (remem- brance of God), bayan (talk), and gasht and ziyarah (visiting people in the locality to invite them to the mosque). This practice became very popular and soon spread across the Indian subcontinent.
Nearly eighty years have passed since then and the movement has become truly global, but very little has changed in the way that Tablighi is performed today compared to the times of Mawlyana Ilyas. Just as before – travel re- mains the most crucial element in the practices of Tablighi. It is believed that only in travel are people able to completely detach themselves from worldly matters and devote their time and energy to proper religious wor- ship and learning.
When combined with time and space, “travel” has a special mean- ing in the Tablighi discourse. It is a physical movement from one’s present space (house, city, or country) to another. It is comparable with the concept of Hijra, in the sense of both migration and withdrawal. In these senses, it is travel within one’s self. One temporarily migrates from duniya (worldly pursuits) to din (religious concerns), a favorite
152
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
dichotomy among the Tablighis. It is a migration from corruption to purity, withdrawal from worldly attachments to the Path of God.5
Why do I suggest that Tablighi practice is a kind of spiritual nomadism? First of all, it is the regularity of travel. Tablighis are encouraged to spend at least one three-day trip a month, one forty-day trip a year, and one four-month trip in a lifetime. Regularity is very important and always stressed. When the time for travel comes, one is encouraged to travel “no-matter what.” One reason for this is that travel thus becomes an important part of one’s life: there is a bit of travel every month and more significant travel every year. Many wonder about the economic aspects of Tablighi travel practices and funding sources for distant journeys and large gather- ings. The main principle of any travel is self-financing. There are simply no funds that would pay for anyone’s journey. Every participant is expected to completely finance his own trip. The individual show a sufficient amount of money before being allowed to join the group. That is why not all Tablighis can afford interna- tional travel, but many try to save for several years in or- der to make such trips. One thing that makes travel to the Indian subcontinent easy is the local hospitality. Particularly in India, local Tablighi participants in every mosque consider it a duty to arrange food for the visiting jamaat (group) during its entire stay in their mosque. On my forty-day journey, we hardly had a chance to cook for ourselves. Thus, the major cost was a
5 Muhammad Khalid Masud. Travelers in Faith. Studies of the Tablīghī Jamāʻat as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal. Leiden, 2000. P. xvi.
Fig. 3. The group of Kyrgyz and Kazakh Tablighi travelers in front of the main gates of the Taj-ul Masajid (photo by the author).
153
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
roundtrip airline ticket from Bishkek to Delhi (about US $600), on top of which I spent no more than $100 for various small purchases.
Second, the amount of time spent in travel is quite significant. Three days a month – makes 10 percent of one’s time and forty days a year add another 10 percent. So, a committed Tablighi spends at least one-fifth (20 percent) of his lifetime on a journey. Once in a lifetime people are encouraged to travel for four months. However, this is a minimum. Many veterans of the Tablighi movement at some point decide to spend four months traveling every year. In combination with the three-day trips this totals more than 40 percent of their lifetime. In more extreme cases, people travel for a year and in the most extreme cases, usually in old age, people decide to spend all of their time travelling. I spent two weeks with an elderly Indian Muslim from Mewat, who was a retired government official, had a retirement pension, and spent most of his life on a journey. He returned home between his four-month trips, to get some rest and deal with family matters, just to depart again in a couple of weeks. Obviously, when people spend between one-tenth and one-half of their lives on the road it cannot help but have some major effect on their own lifestyles and on the lives of their families.
Therefore, my third argument for calling Tablighi members “spiritual nomads” is that their travels have a strong influence on their lives when they return. One of the main things they bring from journeys is an attachment to mosques. During the short three-day trips they pray in the mosque with the local jamaat and participate in all mosque activities. When they return, they are encouraged to continue praying with the jamaat in their local mosques and to start participating in the local amals (activities), such as taalim (study circle), gasht (rounds in the neighborhoods), and mashvara (council).
During travel they also participate in activities such as cooking and clean- ing. When they return, they are instructed to change their attitudes toward their families and give more kyzmat (help) to their wives, to treat all their family members with love and respect, and to introduce a taalim-circle at home. They can also take their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters on what is called masturat (closed) jamaat. Masturat jamaats can involve travel for three days, fifteen days, and forty days. It is recommended for a woman to travel for three days once in three months. When only men travel, women stay at home, sometimes for very lengthy periods. This requires new arrangements in the organization of household activities, as in the case of many migrant families.
Finally, regular monthly and yearly travels require Tablighis to make special arrangements at their workplaces or to choose a kind of work that
154
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
gives them flexibility in terms of time and commitments. Many Tablighis become engaged in trade or open their own businesses to be their own bosses. One Tablighi I knew used to work for ten to eleven months, then quit his job, travel for four months, and each time he returned, he would look for a new job. That continued for almost twenty years, until he found a job at an Islamic school with a Tablighi orientation, where he would not lose his job because of traveling.
But perhaps the major effect of spiritual journeys on Tablighis is less tangible – this involves their level of personal transformation and changes in their worldviews. During these trips they build new ethical, philosophical, and religious foundations, which then have more prominent effects on life in general. Because these new perspectives are obtained on journeys, they embrace many elements of the spiritual nomadic lifestyle.
Spiritual transformations
The main ethnographic part bringing together my observations, record- ings of talks, and interviews with Tablighi participants is structured around six major themes, the first of which is personal transformation.
Personal transformation Tablighis are often quite rightfully perceived and described as Muslim
missionaries. One of the major activities in which they engage on their travels is to invite people to the mosques and remind them of the importance of Islamic practices. This invitation – dawah – is in the core of Tablighi ideol- ogy. However, the Tablighi narrative sees this invitation not as a final goal, but more as means to a goal. The final goal, as the 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 have heard that the purpose of going on this path is not to change other people. Whoever thinks so, it is told, will waste his time. The purpose of going is for one to change his own qualities.
What makes this change possible? The first factor is distance. It is both physical distance from home and more abstract distance from everyday matters. One Tablighi with a 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
155
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
have to stand away from their drawings or paintings in order to check proportions, balance, and the overall impression.6
This distance also produces a more abstract vision of the world that is more detached from reality. Such abstractness of thinking is important for comprehending many abstract religious concepts, such as ghoib (unseen), jannat (paradise), and 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. The regular day of a con- temporary busy person involves lots of planning to maximize efficiency and reduce time wasted in 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 experience long pauses, during which they have to wait and do nothing, such as when sitting in a train or at the airport. In the interesting account of everyday life titled The Secret World of Doing Nothing, Orvar Löfgren and Billy Ehn describe how important and rich an experience seemingly useless times of waiting can be:
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 “sleepwalking” 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 a source of intense boredom but also of surprising insights.7
Similarly, Tablighis on their journeys spend significant time by them- selves “in the quiet.” That gives them the 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 do not have many chances to do this in their homes and workplaces.
One elderly Tablighi compared travel with an X-ray machine. He said it shows people’s soul sicknesses – just the way an X-ray shows their physi- cal 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 clinic. Many people need to leave their environments in order to see
6 Tablighi traveler from India. 7 Orvar Löfgren, Billy Ehn. The Secret World of Doing Nothing. Berkeley, 2010. P. 78.
156
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
their mistakes and improve themselves by looking at life from afar – 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 fam- ily members, friends, and colleagues, and commit to living a better life.”8
The fourth factor is time. I have been joining three-day travels for several years, but only when I went for forty days did I realize that three-day trips were not long enough for a person to break away from worldly matters. In a trip of forty days or longer, people really start to feel changes. During the first week, one keeps remembering various worldly matters. But because the inflow of old information is almost completely absent (on the trip it is recommended to turn off mobile phones and not to call home), the new in- formation 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 environ- ments. 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 comprehend the many abilities of the human body, and through that they understand the kudrat (might) of the Creator.9
Therefore, when Tablighis return from their journeys, they arrive signifi- cantly 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.
Knowledge and exPerience Although Tablighi practice does not require any prior training, the im-
portance of acquiring Islamic knowledge is always stressed as farz (obliga- tory) for both men and women from the time of birth to the last day. Travel provides people with numerous opportunities for obtaining new knowledge. At least two to four hours in the daily schedule of any jamaat are devoted to taalim (study circle) spent on learning Quran, ahadith, and basic principles of dawat (invitation). In the afternoon there is also a daily muzakira (repeti- tion) of various sunnahs (practices of the Prophet (S.A.W.)). Travelers are
8 Tablighi traveler from Kyrgyzstan. 9 Tablighi traveler from Russia.
157
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
destined to meet many new people and, being free from daily routines, they have ample time to exchange ideas and share experiences. Some of these new contacts are scholars and pious people, who teach them new ideas and share motivational stories.
Tablighi teaching claims to give travelers a chance to connect knowledge with practice. One Dungan Tablighi from Russia explained:
While at home, people might never come across situations in which they can use the knowledge they have obtained from books. In travel, such situations are plentiful. In many Muslim communities around the world, everyday life at home is far removed from the Islamic ideal as described in the sunnah. Because of the Soviet heritage and more recent Western influences, people eat at tables, use spoons and forks, sleep in beds and sofas, watch TV, and so on. In travel, people learn the sunnah ways of sleeping, eating, going to the toilet, all of which are based on simplicity and assumed to aid a person with the tools for bringing barakah (blessing) into their life, protecting themselves against all kinds of dangers, and earning numerous savabs (rewards).10
Gellens describes rihla or talab al-alim as travel with a purpose of acquiring knowledge, as a strong unifying theme in Islamic history. In his reference to Campbell he describes the myth of a hero traveler, who leaves the familiar, encounters travels and adventures, and then reintegrates into his society with his newly acquired knowledge. The important outcome of this historical process is new Muslim communities with blended traditions. Far from making Muslim communities around the world homogeneous, this blend diversifies them and enriches them with new concepts and ideas.11
In addition to the expansion of knowledge as a result of travel, we can also talk about the special kinds of nomadic knowledge necessary for suc- cessful travel that come only with experience. On these journeys, many people who lead fairly sedentary lifestyle learn how to be spiritual nomads.
new PersPectives on worldly matters One of the main dichotomies present in the Tablighi discourse is between
akhirat (next world) and duniya (this world). The concept of travel reinforces this dichotomy with new ideas and experiences. Sufi ideology has always propagated the ascetic life. Tablighi journeys can be quite ascetic too. Long travel limits the amount of things people can take with them, and the living
10 Ibid. 11 Gellens. The Search for Knowledge. P. 56.
158
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
conditions in many mosques can be very difficult. It is mostly through these experiences that Tablighis obtain a new understanding of worldly life. For example, one Kyrgyz Tablighi explained:
When people travel, they understand that they are able to live without all the conveniences they ordinarily enjoy, like soft beds, TV sets, daily showers, and mobile phones. Travel shows that life without these con- veniences is not only possible but can in fact be even more fulfilling.12
During the journeys references are often made to the examples of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.) and many sahabahs (R.A.A.), who led mate- rial lives of utmost simplicity. I often heard in Tablighi talks that when the Prophet (S.A.W.) passed away, he was the ruler of a great territory, yet all he had in his possession was a reed mat and a bowl and when Umar (R.A.A.) was the Khalif (leader) of the Muslim Khalifat, he used to wear clothing that had a great number of stitches and patches.
Tablighi travels are very egalitarian spaces. They reconstruct social hier- archies. An interesting comparison was given by a Tablighi from Kazakhstan who said that travel is a likeness of death:
Just as at the time of death people cannot take any of their posses- sions to the grave with them, when people travel, they also leave behind all of their material wealth, their families, and their socioeconomic status. All they can take with them is their personality and their beliefs. A doctor and a taxi driver in the jamaat are in the same position, they go through the same difficulties, and in critical situations, what mat- ters is not one’s degree or profession, but one’s personal qualities and relationship with the Creator.13
However, there is a difference between Tablighi teachings and traditional Sufi asceticism and other monastic forms in other religions, which renounce the world completely. In fact, this is a very important matter stressed in many Tablighi discussions. It is suggested that going on religious travel does not mean rejecting worldly matters completely. The purpose of travel- ing is to acquire the internal power of iman (belief) and bring it back into one’s worldly life, so that every day a person lives according to religion. Some Tablighis have abandoned worldly matters altogether, leaving jobs and even families. This has been a point of concern for many experienced Tablighis, who recognize that such practices, on the contrary, can have a negative effect on the reputation of the movement and effectiveness of its
12 Tablighi traveler from Kyrgyzstan. 13 Tablighi traveler from Kazakhstan.
159
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
work. In the Tablighi perspective, participants are always encouraged to be active members of the community and good providers for their families. The pointer and middle fingers are often joined together to show how the middle finger representing religion is slightly longer than the pointer finger representing worldly matters, yet they are together.
The worldview of a twentieth-century spiritual nomad is the one from the “saddle.” He is not a passive observer of world events passing by his house or workplace. He becomes an active observer, who moves through the space and worldly events taking place in different localities. This fun- damental difference embedded in two positions has a strong effect on the change in the world perspective of Tablighi travelers.
socialization While on the journey, Tablighis continuously move from one mosque to
another. The average length of stay in one place is two to three days. The stay in each location is full of interactions with local residents who come to the mosque and whom Tablighis visit in their houses. This is why when traveling on a spiritual path one meets many new people. Some of these encounters are very brief; others become real opportunities for becoming acquainted, especially when members of one jamaat spend several months together.
One Pakistani Tablighi from London pointed out that in travel people become united and their cultural and social barriers are destroyed; travel thus eradicates racism. International travels unite people of different nationalities. For example, people from all over the world come to India, where one can see Indians, Arabs, Malaysians, Africans, Americans, Australians, Europeans, Russians, and Central Asians sharing a meal in Nizamudin marqas (center) or during the ijtemas (large gatherings). In such meetings believers from all over the world see the global nature of religion and start to feel like real members of the Ummah (global community of Muslims).
In travel, people also meet many representatives of other religious affilia- tions and become familiar with the visual manifestations of their beliefs and religious practices. These encounters strengthen their identity as Muslims.
My own observations show that jamaat brings together people of different personalities. Some get along very well, others not as much, but circum- stances force all people in jamaat to be together most of the time and this teaches the travelers to be patient and to ignore the mistakes of others, in order to protect the unity. Maulana Saad from India, the leader of the move- ment today, frequently emphasizes the importance of unity and the danger
160
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
of individualism. On the subject of learning from each other, one elderly Kyrgyz Tablighi explained:
When we see the mistakes of others, we try to see our own reflec- tion in them, to correct them in ourselves, and make dua (prayers) for our brothers. When we see some good qualities, we try to adopt them. For a few days I have been observing how the elderly Indian person from our jamaat wakes up every night at 2 o’clock, offers his tahajud namaz (night prayer) and sits until morning in zikr (remem- brance of Allah), and how he fasts every Monday and Thursday and on several other days according to the sunnah. I want to learn these qualities from him.14
Another experienced Tablighi from India said: “On this path we learn how to get into the shoes of another person and put our needs behind the needs of our brothers.”
correction of belief Tablighi change in many ways when they travel. However, one transfor-
mation is given special status and importance: it relates to the correction of a traveler’s yakyn (belief or conviction). “The main purpose of traveling is to correct our yakyn, which is to develop full conviction in our heart that everything that happens, happens by the will of Allah.”15
Tablighi travels are very far from luxurious or safe. A great unknown awaits in every city, village, or neighborhood to which they travel. I heard stories describing extreme situations, such as sleeping in the open on the snow with a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, crossing a large mountain on foot to reach herders in their pastureland and having to crawl in mud on the way back, or having no food for several days, to the extent of having to eat grass to survive. Such stories describe conditions in which supposedly nobody but God can help, and as the story goes, when such help comes, people’s beliefs change. As has been explained by one Indian sheikh in his bayan (talk):
This world is the world of azbabs (means), while in the next world people will be free from them. They won’t need a cow to produce milk, the wish will be sufficient. In their daily life, people often develop wrong beliefs: they think it is pill that kills the pain and a car that delivers them to work; and they do not see the main power behind
14 Tablighi traveler from Kyrgyzstan. 15 Formula frequently repeated in many Tablighi talks.
161
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
the means. But in numerous extreme situations during journeys, God shows that when there are no means, only He can help. Sometimes, God can push the situation to the utmost limits to test people’s patience and only then show His help. After people witness who is in control of all things, their beliefs are corrected and they return home with proper yakyn and a new understanding of the world.16
Regular travel, which becomes a part of one’s spiritual nomadic lifestyle, helps one to maintain and strengthen this conviction. If travel is not regular, singular experiences quickly give way to more prominent sedentary perspec- tives. That is why maintaining spiritual nomadic practices is so crucial for the long-term effect of travel.
travel metaPhors The five themes considered in this section and the extent to which they
are discussed could not possibly cover all dimensions of spiritual travel and its importance for spiritual growth. Rather, they can be taken as cases for understanding the link between travel and spirituality – a link that in this research is blended into a specific worldview or narrative – that of a traveling Tablighi. Just as a medieval Sufi, the twenty-first-century Tablighi travels without a library in his bag. He is fairly unlikely to have proper religious education and he is almost certain to share his vision of the world with people who also have very little religious knowledge. To deliver and to be understood, this Tablighi is quite likely to use various allegories in his stories. I personally find such allegories extremely beautiful and deserving the space of at least a separate article. The range of allegories by topics is very broad and the idea of travel is one of them.
One allegory very frequently used by dawatchis compares traveling with water: Dawah (invitation) is like running water. If water stays in one place it starts stinking and all kinds of bacteria grow there; it becomes useless and unhealthy. Similarly, when people stop traveling, their iman weakens. In the path of Allah we renew and refresh our iman.
Another allegory compares traveling to swimming: Imagine a swimming person. He is in the middle of the lake in his journey and suddenly he stops swimming. What will happen? He will drown.
The third allegory emphasizes movement as the main principle of ex- istence: When the blood stops circulating – the person dies. When the sun and earth stop rotating – the Day of Judgment will begin.
16 From a talk given by an Indian Tablighi veteran.
162
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
Finally, an interesting allegory, which also makes a connection between travel and the relation to duniya, compares one’s life to traveling on a ship: Imagine a ship that stands in the harbor. If the captain is afraid of traveling, it will never leave the harbor and it will never reach its destination. So, we should not be attached to our possessions. If we travel, but the ship is overloaded with merchandise, it could easily drown on the journey. That is why we should not be afraid of traveling and engaging with worldly life, however, we need to travel light. In this way our journey will be easy and fast and we will reach our destination successfully.
And so, the dawatchi’s story goes, this life is a journey, which, if a person is successful, will bring him home – to Paradise. A few of the metaphors introduced portray some of the main elements of the spiritual nomadic narrative in all of its seeming simplicity, yet deep meanings and multiple possibilities also exist for the interpretation and play of nomadic imagina- tion. We can draw parallels here with the role of metaphors in the folklore of many traditionally nomadic people and their cultures.
Pastoral nomads of Central Asia and spiritual nomadism
In the last section of this article, I would like to make one more argument for the link between nomadism and Tablighi practice by contextualizing the Tablighi movement in the region of Central Asia. During Soviet times, Islamic practices were equally restricted for all ethnic groups of Muslims in Central Asia. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, many new religious influences emerged in the region, one of which was the Tablighi practice that came from the Indian subcontinent. By the second half of the 1990s it found fruitful ground in Kyrgyzstan and in the past fifteen years it has become the dominant Islamic teaching there. Today, Kyrgyzstan is the only country in Central Asia where Tablighi practice is legal and has a very large number of active followers. In the yearly 2000s, the number of three-day jamaats traveling only in the northern regions on weekends was nearing a thousand. This was the period of highest popularity reaching levels of fashion. Since then the numbers have dropped significantly, but there is more regularity, experience, and formalization/legalization of the practice.
On the contrary, Tablighi practice in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan is strictly prohibited and persecuted. A logical explanation for this situation is in the nature of the political system. Kyrgyzstan, generally considered as an “island of democracy’ in the “sea of authoritarian states,” has much more religious freedom and that is supposedly why it has accepted Tablighi ideology.
163
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
However, if we look at the case of Kazakhstan, we will see that in spite of its authoritarianism, censorship, and the illegal status of Tablighi practice, it is still very popular among the ethnic Kazakhs. In the ijtema gathering in Bhopal, India, Kazakh Tablighis consitutted the biggest group (by my estimates, nearly 70 percent) from the territory of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Additional evidence against the political regime thesis is the unpopularity of Tablighi practices among Uzbek Muslims in southern Kyrgyzstan. Tab- lighi practice has a very large number of followers in northern Kyrgyzstan. However, it is much less popular in the south, where a large share of the population is ethnic Uzbeks. It is easily noticeable that in the south, Tablighi practice has a strong ethnic character – mostly Kyrgyz Muslims engage in it, while many Uzbek scholars and congregation in the mosques reject it. Obviously, in the case of southern Kyrgyzstan, this has nothing to do with the political regime, since this differentiation takes place in the same country.
What can explain this difference? One seemingly logical explanation can be drawn from a historical perspective: Uzbeks and Tajiks had a stronger religious tradition before the Soviet period and after its breakup they simply returned to it having little space for new influences. Kyrgyz and Kazakh Muslims, on the contrary, are generally perceived to have had much weaker Islamic practices in the past and therefore they were much more open to new influences,17 including all kinds of Evangelical Christian missionary organizations,18 Wahabi teachings,19 Fetullah Gullen schools,20 and very ac- tive Tablighi jamaat.21 This argument is quite strong. However, it reproduces the stereotypical view of Central Asian nomads as “bad Muslims” and fails to acknowledge the main historical difference between two major Islamic
17 Chris Hann, Mathijs Pelkmans. Realigning Religion and Power in Central Asia: Islam, Nation-state and (post)Socialism // Europe-Asia Studies. 2009. Vol. 61. P. 9. 18 Mathijs Pelkmans. Asymmetries on the “Religious Market” in Kyrgyzstan // Chris Hann (Ed). The Postsocialist Religious Question: Faith and Power in Central Asia and East-Central Europe. Berlin, 2006. Pp. 29-46. 19 Bayram Balcı. Uzbek and Uyghur Communities in Saudi Arabia and Their Role in the Development of Wahhabism in Present Day Central Asia // Birgit N. Schlyter (Ed.). Prospects for Democracy in Central Asia. Istanbul, Turkey, 2005. Pp. 239-253. 20 Bayram Balcı. Fethullah Güllen’s Missionary Schools in Central Asia and Their Role in the Spreading of Turkism and Islam // In Religion, State and Society. 2003. Vol. 31. Pp. 151-177. 21 Bayram Balcı. The Rise of the Jama’at al Tabligh in Kyrgyzstan: the Revival of Islamic Ties Between the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia? // Central Asian Survey. 2012. Vol. 31. No. 1. Pp. 61-76.
164
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
influences in the region: first of the traditional conservative ulama scholar- ship and second of the Central Asian Sufi brotherhoods.
Traditional Islamic teaching in the region was spread through the official institutions, such as mosques and madrasas. These were based primarily in the larger cities of Central Asia, such as Bukhara, Khiva, and Samarqand, but also in smaller towns and villages. As such it had more influence on the urban and agricultural populations of Uzbeks and Tajiks who lived in all these settlements. On the contrary, nomadic groups of Central Asia did not have access to these traditional Islamic institutions. Their conversion to Islam and further Islamic practices were shaped by the traveling Sufi dervishes of Central Asian Sufi orders, which were quite influential. As discussed previ- ously, Sufi practice placed much less emphasis on proper Islamic knowledge, but more on zikr, meditation, and journey both physical and spiritual. Sufis who traveled in Central Asia as traders, beggars, or dervishes had a nomadic component strongly present in their lives and philosophy. That is why their teachings were much closer to those of the Central Asian nomads than to the teachings of urban scholars. Sufi practice was also more flexible in regard to the main tenants of Islam, such as five-time prayer, study of the Quran, and the attainment of proper religious knowledge. This was another reason why it was more welcomed by the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs of Central Asia.
Therefore, we can see that from the very beginning, the nomadic and settled cultures of Central Asia practiced different kinds of Islam and this differentiation continued for centuries to become a tradition embedded in lifestyle, philosophy, and social relations. When the Soviet Union broke up, the Tablighi practice, which had many elements of Sufi practice, was found to be much closer to the religious views and practices of Kyrgyz and Kazakh Muslims and more alien to those of Uzbeks and Tajiks.
This perspective allows us to establish some further links between nomad- ism as a lifestyle and cultural practice and new religious traveling practices in Post-Soviet Central Asia. From the cultural perspective, Kyrgyz people, who for centuries lived as pastoral nomads and retained many nomadic practices through the Soviet period up to the present, have a lifestyle that is much more mobile than that of the settled cultures of Uzbeks and Tajiks. Their worldviews, family and gender roles, and even occupations are much more accommodating of the need for frequent travel. It is partly for these reasons, I claim, that the Kyrgyz engage much more actively than Uzbeks in the travel practices of Tablighi jamaat. A very similar argument can be proposed for the formerly nomadic cultures of Kazakhs. Seventy years of Soviet rule were long enough to influence the lifestyle of Central Asian
165
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
nomads in making them much more settled, but obviously were not long enough to change their culture. Therefore, instead of correlating the popu- larity of Tablighi with the nature of the political system, I would suggest a direct correlation with the nomadic lifestyle.
In addition, a connection can be made with the strong oral tradition of Central Asian nomads. Kyrgyz people did not have a widespread written language until the Soviet period, but they have the largest oral epic in the world – Manas – and they always valued good stories and persuasive sto- rytellers. Tablighi practice is also significantly based on the oral narrative rather on extensive written sources. Only three or four main books are used by Tablighis on their journeys. The main mode of delivering and sharing the message is oral. This can be stated as another reason for the popularity of Tablighi among the Kyrgyz.
One can argue against this view using examples of other sedentary cultures around the world that embraced Tablighi practice very well. In fact, the people of Mewat, where the practice originated, were a very settled population. To answer this critique, I propose that Tablighi as a grassroots ideology and practice has some basic unchangeable principles, but it is also quite flexible and when it was spreading around the world in the past century, it built on the specific cultural features of every region and the peoples it encountered. In some places it was traditional hospitality, in others communal lifestyle, and so on. I would not argue that nomadism was the only factor that contributed to the popularity of Tablighi, but one cannot deny its significance.
This regional comparison gives us another interesting perspective on the use of the term “spiritual nomadism” for understanding the Tablighi movement. On the example of the popularity of Tablighi practices among the Central Asian nomads, we can propose that spiritual travels are not just about frequent trips for spiritual purposes. Spiritual travels are, more than anything, the reflection of an explicit lifestyle that accommodates a higher degree of mobility embedded in the culture, livelihood, and social relations of specific ethnic groups.
Conclusion
In this article, we employed the term “spiritual nomadism” to give a bet- ter understanding of Tablighi travel practice and its effects on the personal transformations of its participant-travelers. We described the lifestyle and philosophy of people who long ago traveled the world for various spiritual purposes and who travel it extensively today as well. In their journeys, Tablighi travel along paths that connect spiritual places, as they go from
166
Emil Nasritdinov, Spiritual Nomadism and Central Asian Tablighi Travelers
one mosque to another. These physical nodes in different places around the world overlap with their own spiritual inner terrains – imaginary spaces of searching for truth, for the meaning of life, and for brotherhood. In the Tablighi perspective the two types of journeys are inseparable. As we have witnessed in the accounts of Tablighi, physical and spiritual travels strongly reinforce each other. The combination of these lengthy inner and outer jour- neys, form the lifestyle and worldview of Tablighi travelers.
The perspective of nomadism explains why Tablighi journeys cannot be limited to only a few experiences and why they need elements of a nomadic lifestyle to have these experiences repeated again and again on a regular basis in order to envision life as a constant transformation, to continue expanding one’s spiritual nomadic knowledge and one’s social networks, to reinforce more dynamic worldviews and to maintain and strengthen one’s belief system. In turn, this article has shown how these traveling practices of the Tablighi then transform people from traditionally settled cultures into spiritual nomads of the twenty-first century and how in certain regions of the world, such as Central Asia, it builds on an already existing nomadic tradition.
SUMMARY
This article employs the concept of spiritual nomadism as a lifestyle and a regular traveling practice to portray and understand the contemporary religious practices of participants in the Tablighi Jamaat movement, which originated in India and today has become truly global. In the late 1990s the movement reached Central Asia and Russia and found fruitful ground in Kyr- gyzstan and Kazakhstan. The article builds on an analysis of the traditional role of travel in Islam and on a more contemporary interpretation of spiritual travel in Tablighi ideology and practice. Its main ethnographic elements are drawn from the author’s forty-day Tablighi travel from Kyrgyzstan to India as part of a group of Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Russian Tablighi and it is structured around six main themes discussed from the viewpoint of spiritual nomadism: personal transformation, knowledge and experience, new per- spectives on worldly matters, socialization, correction of belief, and travel metaphors. It argues that active and regular participants in the movement acquire elements of a nomadic lifestyle and can be called spiritual nomads of the twenty-first century and that in some places in the world, such as Central Asia, Tablighi practice effectively uses the already existing nomadic practices of historically nomadic peoples such as the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs.
167
Ab Imperio, 2/2012
Резюме
В статье концепция духовного номадизма используется для опи- сания стиля жизни и регулярных путешествий участников движения джамаата Таблиги. Зародившееся в Индии, сегодня это движение до- стигло глобальных масштабов, распространившись в конце 1990-х гг. в том числе в России и в Средней Азии и завоевав особенно прочные позиции в Киргизстане и Казахстане. Автор начинает с рассмотрения традиционной роли путешествий в исламе и интерпретаций духовных путешествий в идеологии и практиках Таблиги. Этнографическая часть исследования представляет собой материалы, собранные Эмилем На- сритдиновым в ходе его 40-дневного путешествия из Киргизстана в Индию совместно с другими таблиги из Киргизии, Казахстана и Рос- сии. В статье рассматриваются такие аспекты номадических практик Таблиги, как личное преображение, новый взгляд на мир, знание и опыт, социальные сети, укрепление веры и роль метафор как важного компо- нента нарратива Таблиги. Как показывает автор, активные участники движения практикуют элементы кочевого образа жизни, а в некоторых регионах, таких как Средняя Азия, они опираются на исторические практики номадизма, характерные для этого региона.