Given that the recent terrorist attack/massacre in San Bernardino by Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik has Tablighi Jama'at linkages, I'm posting my Tablighi Jama'at article (published in 2012) to warn others on the danger this highly secretive movement poses to us here in the United States after it has already suborned Pakistan and is working on Bangladesh and, to a lesser degree, India (which is overwhelmingly Hindu)
Syed Farook, like John Walker Lindh (captured in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban), attended a Deobandi mosque (the Deobandi movement is the South Asia equivalent of the Wahhabi movement and has Saudi ties). Some reports are claiming Syed Farook belonged to the Tablighi Jama'at and his wife, Tashfeen, belonged to the Jama'at-i-Islami. For someone raised in Pakistan, these two facts alone would raise some alarm bells.
Here is the article.
Journal of Applied Security Research, 8:98–117,
(online December 19th, 2012
The Tablighi Jama’at: Proselytizing
Missionaries or Trojan Horse?
SHIREEN KHAN BURKI
Independent Scholar
Tablighi Jama’at, a transnational Deobandi (Sunni) Muslim proselytizing group with branches in over 150 countries today, has
garnered attention in the West since 2001. With increasing frequency, terrorist plots in the West reveal Jama’at linkages. Although its leadership enunciates a peaceful, apolitical stance; the organization does share the same core ideology and ultimate objectives (the expansion of Dar al Islam and the establishment of a global Caliphate) as the Salafis, Wahhabis and other “revivalist” Islamist movements such as the Ikhwan al Muslimin (Muslim Brotherhood).
The only difference between the Jama’at and the Ikhwan, for example, is their respective modus operandi. Although the Tablighi
Jama’at stress proselytism as their sole objective, they have also provided cover, a conduit and a fertile recruiting ground for jihadi
organizations such as Al Qaeda and Lashkar-i-Taiba.
KEYWORDS Tablighi Jama’at, Islamic activism, Al Qaeda, Deobandi, Taliban, terrorism, Lashkar-i-Taiba, Lashkar-i-Jhangvi,Jihad bil Saif, Muslim Brotherhood, Jaish-i-Muhammad, Jihad
Tablighi Jama’at (“Proselytizing Group”)—hereafter “TJ” or Tablighi—is the largest Islamic (Sunni) Deobandi missionary and revivalist movement in the world today (Zaman, 2007). However, many non-Muslims have never heard of them notwithstanding their presence in the West, beginning in the 1960s. The TJ have attracted controversy due to exposed linkages of some of its members with terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-i-Taiba,
Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Jaish-i-Muhammad, and Sipah-i-Sahaba. Given the secret nature and amorphous structure of this group, it has been hard to gauge the actual intent of these proselytizing missionaries. The growing linkages between exposed terrorists and the TJ, however, does raise questions which require a careful scrutiny of this organization, rather than a tendency (in certain academic circles) to take them at face value, and to accept their pro forma statements which condemn violence in the name of Islam. This
article will scrutinize the TJ and its modus operandi to glean whether or not it is an incubator for “jihadis” in the West and/or has the potential for metamorphosis into a more lethal and violent organization.
