Activities and traditions

The activism of Tabligh Jamaat can be characterized by the last of the Six Principles. This principle, Tafrigh-i-Waqt (English: sparing of time) justifies the withdrawal from world, though temporarily, for travelling. Travel has been adopted as the most effective method of personal reform and has become an emblematic feature of organization. They describe the purpose of this retreat as to patch the damages caused by the worldly indulgence and occasionally use the dry-dock parable to explain this.[39]

These individual jamaats, each led by an ameer, are sent from each markaz across the city or country to remind people to persist on the path of God. The duration of the work depends on the discretion of each jamaat. A trip can take an evening, a couple of days or a prolonged duration.[4][31]

Khurūj - proselytizing tour

Tabligh Jamaat encourages its followers to follow the pattern of spending "one night a week, one weekend a month, 40 continuous days a year, and ultimately 120 days at least once in their lives engaged in tabligh missions". During the course of these tours, members are generally seen dressed in simple, white, loose-clothing, carrying sleeping bags on their backs.[31] These members use mosques as their base during this travel but particular mosques, due to more frequent tablighi activities, have come to be specifically associated with this organization. These mosques generally hold the periodic, smaller scale convocations for neighborhood members.
During their stay in mosques, these jamaats conduct a daily gasht, which involves visiting local neighborhoods, preferably with the help of a guide.[25] They invite people to attend the Maghrib prayer at their mosque and those who attend are delivered a sermon after the prayers, which essentially outlines the Six Principles. They urge the attendees to spend time in tabligh for self reformation and the propagation of Islam.[40][41] Also the regular activities like eating, sleeping etc are also carried out in the mosques.

Generally, the assumed role of these jamaat members cycle in a way that they may be engaged as a preacher, a cook or as a cleaner at other times. Among Tabligh Jamaat members, this is generally referred to as khidmat which essentially connotes to serving their companions and freeing them for tablighi engagements.[31] The members of the Jamaat are assigned these roles based on the day's mashwara. The markaz keeps records of each jamaat and its members, the identity of whom is verified from their respective mosques. Mosques are used to assist the tablighi activities of individual jamaats that voluntarily undertake preaching missions.[4][26] Members of a jamaat, ideally, pay expenses themselves so as to avoid financial dependence on anyone.[31]

Ijtema - annual gathering

An annual gathering of followers, called ijtema, is summoned at headquarters of the respective countries. A typical ijtema continues for three days and ends with an exceptionally long prayer.[1] These gatherings are considered moments of intense blessings by Tabligh Jamaat members and are known to attract members in excess of 2 million in some countries.[7] The oldest ijtema of the World started in Bhopal, capital city of Madhya Pradesh, India.[citation needed] It attract people from all over World. Almost 2 Million people gather the this annual Gathering. The largest of such annual gatherings are held in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Bengali gathering, called Bishwa Ijtema (World Gathering), converges followers from around the world in Tongi near Dhaka, Bangladesh and with an attendance exceeding 3 million people.[42][43] The second largest Tabligh Jamaat gathering takes place in Raiwind, Pakistan which was attended by approximately 1.5 million people in 2004.[44] In 2011 Pakistan divided the Ijtema into two parts and total 1 million People attend the Ijtema