E-Paper
UP minister demands ban on Tablighi Jamaat
After the Enforcement Directorate registered a case against Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad and other members of the outfit, Uttar Pradesh minister Mohsin Raza
After the Enforcement Directorate registered a case against Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad and other members of the outfit, Uttar Pradesh minister Mohsin Raza urged the Centre to consider banning the Jamaat which was founded by Deobandi scholar and Saad’s great grandfather Mohammad Ilyas al-Kandhlawi in Mewat.
Raza, who is the minister of state for minority Welfare, Waqf and Haj, said he had demanded a probe into TJ’s activities and was happy that the central government had acted.
He said, “I had urged the Centre to probe their funding because it needs to be known from where the religious society gets financial support. I am happy that an investigation is underway now.”
The Jamaat has been in the news ever since several Jamaatis, including those from abroad who attended a congregation at Tablighi headquarters at Delhi’s Nizamuddin, had tested positive. Maulana Saad has already been booked by the Delhi police under the Epidemic Disease Act.
The Talblighi Jamaat members had spread out in different parts of the country, including Uttar Pradesh, after the Delhi congregation.
A senior cleric close to the Tablighi Jamaat said while the financial matters of the Jamaat were clean, their stress on religious preaching alone had led to divisions. He said the prominent Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband had banned activities of Tablighi Jamaat, its own ideological off-shoot, from the campus.
“It’s true that Darul Uloom had banned their activities after the Islamic seminary was split on ideological lines,” said an influential cleric from Deoband, adding that the ban was largely to prevent Deoband students from being trapped in ideological differences. The ban still stays.
The Deoband cleric said Tablighis erred by not following the Covid-19 prevention protocol of social distancing though he blamed the media more for what he called was the ‘systematic targeting’ of Muslims.
The cleric disagreed with the UP minister over his questioning the intentions of Jamaat and its leader Maulana Saad.
“Maulana Saad is a pious man. We may differ ideologically but I will have to admit that there isn’t anything wrong with his intention. It’s just that we prefer ‘ilm’ (knowledge) over purely religious matters,” the cleric said.
Raza said it needed to be known how the headquarters of the Tablighi Jamaat came up in Delhi’s Nizamuddin?
“They have a grand building there and it’s time all of it is probed,” he said.
