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

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 countless 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 foregrounding 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 balancing act between the ideal and the contingent. it also allows us, as this paper demonstrates, to tease out the role of intention (niyat) in the fashioning of the pious female self.