Assad Sarwar, one of the three men convicted of conspiracy to murder on Monday September 8th was involved in Tablighi Jamaat. Waheed Zaman frequently attended Tablighi Jamaat meetings near his home in Walthamstow. 21/7 leader Muktar Ibrahim, who was in direct phone contact with plot director Abdulla Ahmed Ali, also attended a Tablighi mosque in east London. The fifth member of the 21/7 cell, Manfo Asiedu, also had involvement with Tablighi.

In Newham in London, Tablighi Jamaat has been attempting to build a "mega-mosque" near the site of the 2012 Olympics. In France, Tablighi Jamaat has been responsible for radicalizing Muslim prisoners. Michael Heimbach of the FBI has said: "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States and we have found that al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past."

Those calling for Tablighi Jamaat to be banned fail to recognise that this sect is no fringe cult like Hizb ut Tahrir al Islami or Al Muhajiroun. It has more followers than the population of the United Kingdom. Its structure is amorphous and - as a dogged, successful proselytising organisation playing the numbers game - expansionist.

There is no doubt that Tablighi Jamaat has association with Islamist terror. The aforementioned members of the 2006 airline plot, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, Muktar Ibrahim, Mohammed Siddique Khan, Shahzad Tanweer, the Lackawanna Six, the Portland Seven and the (2008) Barcelona Fourteen are often quoted as being/having been Tablighis or at least having attended Tablighi mosques. In Britain this is perhaps not surprising as the Tablighi are persistent (often equated with Jehovah's Witnesses for their door-knocking perseverance) and numerous. As Ziauddin Sarwar wrote in an article in the New Statesman in September 2006, "most young Muslims in Britain have spent some time "going out on Tabligh". It is difficult not to. The Tablighi are ubiquitous, do not give up easily and their simple message resonates with nascent minds. The secret of their success lies in direct, personal appeals and the emphasis on rituals."

Much has been made of Tablighi Jamaat's hegemonistic goals. Often quoted in the UK are leading Tablighi advocate Ebrahim Rangooni's words, who has said that "the movement seeks to rescue the ummah [the global Muslim community] from the culture and civilisation of the Jews, the Christians and [other] enemies of Islam". Its aim, he wrote, is to "create such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta". Mr Rangooni has also given warning to parents that non-Muslim schools "turn humans into animals" and that sending a Muslim child to a British college "is as dangerous as throwing them into hell with your own hands". In spite of bigot Rangooni's erroneous views others equate Tablighi desire for global hegemony with the hegemony aims of Christians, Muslims and other proselytising religious groups who have always "aimed high to convert high" - in other words, the group's global domination ambitions are all talk.

Yet Tablighi Jamaat, with its European Headquarters in Dewsbury, never answers criticisms directly - its policy is to remain apart from the outside world and conduct its business in secret. The sect is a loosely controlled mass movement rather than a centralised group, as some would maintain. Although TJ operates mosques, it has no fixed membership and Tablighis are free to leave the movement. One source claims that the plans for the London Mega Mosque are not actually desired by the Tablighi Jamaat leadership, just as they are embarrassed by links to terrorism, but the leadership refuses to halt egotistical projects of members or to address accusations of terror with public statements. The leadership does not want to get involved in politics and remains steadfastly apolitical - never being drawn on its global ambitions.

If Tablighi Jamaat were to answer critics publicly, it would do well to mention that the 7/7 link to Tablighi Jamaat is erroneous. Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer had left the Tablighi mosque in Beeston by 2001 because they found it to be too apolitical. They apparently were frustrated by the mosque's elders, who forbid the discussion of politics in the mosque.  After Khan and Tanweer left the Tablighi mosque, they began attending the smaller Iqra Learning Center bookstore in Beeston, where they reportedly were exposed to frequent political discussions about places such as Iraq, Kashmir and Chechnya. The store's proprietors reportedly even produced jihadi videos depicting crimes by the West against the Muslim world. Exposed to this environment, the two men eventually became radicalised to the point of travelling to Pakistan to attend a terrorist training camp and then returning to the United Kingdom to plan and execute a suicide attack that resulted in their suicides and the deaths of many innocents on 7/7.

Tablighi Jamaat's policy of silence and its all-round secrecy inevitably make people suspicious. The fact that the sect has produced a handful of terrorists over time is no coincidence - they practise a Deobandi form of Islam. Combine huge numbers with a Deobandi belief structure prohibited from mixing politics with Tablighi Islamic teachings - some are going to feel the temptation to speak out or act whatever the leadership is saying privately within the sect. No wonder politicians are questioning whether the group needs banning. If only the Tablighi leadership were to make some public statements and explain itself, surely all would be understood?

It has been argued that there are now two Tablighi Jamaats. The original, apolitical sect headquartered in Nizamuddin. The other - a militant offshoot, Jihad bi al-Saif (Jihad through the Sword) - which was established in Taxila, Pakistan. Members of this latter group simply couldn't keep politics out of their Tablighi affiliation. They were accused of plotting a coup against the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1995. They use Tablighi missions to Pakistan as feeding grounds to radicalize members. Tablighi travellers come across representatives of various radical Islamist groups, such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Taliban and al Qaeda, who are said to woo them actively. Of course the Tablighi Jamaat leadership remains silent - are they thus offering consent to Taxila or are they privately dismayed by the schism that has occurred in their sect? Because the leadership is so private, dynastic and so secretive we simply cannot know. 

So where does that leave a call for a ban? Let's look at the facts:

• For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Take the example of France where perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in the country come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the "antechamber of fundamentalism".
• Unintentionally (let's presume) the sect has put some very dangerous Islamist terrorists onto the world stage. Unintentionally, thus, Tablighi Jamaat has innocent blood on its hands. The sect has a great deal to answer for and owes the West openess.
• The group is massive. 80 million people - free to leave the sect whenever they wish - are an enormous amount of Muslims to tar with the same brush as Osama Bin Laden.
• Tablighi Jamaat members denounce other Muslim sects - including the Taliban (in spite of their Deobandi similarities), Shiites and Kasmiri militant groups. Tablighi are likewise denounced by others - surprisingly severely criticized by orthodox religious authorities (ulema), such as Sunni Wahhabi ulema in Saudi Arabia, who have issued fatwa prohibiting the Tablighis from preaching in the country and banning Tablighi literature from being imported into the country.
• Tablighi teachings are not compatible with Western liberal democracy. They teach adherents to take large amounts of time off work to practice Tablighi rituals (often sleeping in Tablighi mosques), proselytize and travel (the sect's teachings on relying on state benefits are outrageous).
• Tablighi adherents are not integrationist. They demarcate themselves from others in Western Societies by wearing long beards and foreign dress, whilst women are seen in the traditional Islamic way - as lesser beings. Their schools are more often than not dismissive of sports, music and free mixing of the sexes.

Banning Tablighi Jamaat would be pointless. Like killing a dog for having fleas.

Far better to work with the Tablighi Emir and his shura  (council) - with Tablighi Jamaat of Nizamuddin - and force the Taxila cancer into submission. By working with the emir the word will soon spread - shape up (make a positive stand against extremism and terrorism) or ship out.

Work with the Tablighi leadership in Britain so that they show their faces at the forefront of preventing extremism and terror, whilst maintaining widespread infiltration of the sect. Force them to close down radical schools and radical mosques and rebuild anew in the spirit of integrationist, Western, liberal democracy. Just as the trustees of the sect's charities are named in Charity Commission records, so a membership list should be handed over to British authorities so that their women can be put in contact with social services and they can be monitored more closely as a group - this way building up trust and making them recognize openly their awful track record as a group that produces Islamist terrorists.

Give this process of co-operation five years - if it hasn't worked, then take away their charity status, freeze their accounts and close down their schools, mosques and proselytizing establishments (community centres, colleges and other convert honey traps). Jail all terrorist facilitators who currently call themselves Tablighis but are merely Taxila converts - working in the spirit of Islamist extremism, probably associated with certain radical elements of the Pakistani military - who cannot live without the politics of jihad and are too hotheaded to merit the freedoms afforded to them by the West.

As for the Mega Mosque plans in London - until Tablighi Jamaat is given a clean bill of health in 2013 and has begun to outwardly show appreciation for what integration into Britain means, the sect should not be granted planning permission for any major construction projects, let alone any mega ones. The Abbey Mills Mega Mosque site in East London will make for an excellent car park for those visiting that great celebration of Britishness and likely British achievement - the 2012 Olympics - happening just down the road.

Dominic Whiteman is the Editor of the Westminster Journal and runs the investigative team V7

---

Bookmark with: