The ‘ante-chamber of terror’ as the French security service is said to have dubbed the Tablighi Jamaat, or an other-worldly group of Muslims dedicated to piety and preaching? A movement of separatist, supremacist misogynists bent on the Islamisation of Europe, or a misunderstood part of Britain’s multicultural mosaic?
This little-known Muslim association whose name means ‘the preaching group’ has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to secure planning permission for its new world centre or markaz in Newham – yet scholars are completely at odds over its purpose and ethos.
This event launches Tablighi Jamaat by Dr Zacharias Pieri – the first of an authoritative new series Handy Books for Journalists on Religion in World Affairs published by Lapido Media.
With:
Ziauddin Sardar, prolific writer, broadcaster and scholar of different Islams who wrote the three-part documentary Life of Mohammed broadcast in 2011 by BBC2. He is a former adviser to Anwar Ibrahim, leader of the Malaysian opposition; founding Commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and a regular contributor to the nation’s better newspapers, including the New Statesman. Author of Balti Britain and Desperately Seeking Paradise in which he describes his own encounter with the TJ, he is the founding editor of the ground-breaking quarterly Critical Muslim (Hurst) and Chair of the Muslim Institute.
Dan Damon, former war correspondent who covered the Middle East and Bosnia with his camerawoman wife, Sian, is founder of News Network International and Sony Gold Award-winning presenter of the BBC World Service’s daily news magazine, World Update.
Jeremy Hunter, renowned photojournalist who specialises in the religious festivals of remote societies and is the only photographer to get official permission to photograph the Tablighi Jamaat’s little-known ‘gathering’ in Bangladesh that attracts more Muslims than the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Hunter contributes to The Sunday Times, The Telegraph Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, The Guardian, Mail on Sunday, Conde Nast Traveller, /i>GEO, Stern, and many travel-related magazines. His reportages have been recognised with two UNESCO awards.
Dr Zacharias Pieri, is a political sociologist with extensive ethnographic research experience of British Muslim communities. Tablighi Jamaat in Britain is based on two years observation of the TJ in Newham. His current research is directed at identity politics and Islam in contemporary societies.
This event marks the fifth anniversary of the international religious literacy charity Lapido Media.
]]>Hunter described how he began travelling as part of his job as a foreign correspondent for NIR-TV in Tehran. Although not employed as a photographer he always carried his camera along.
Today his unique portfolio of photographs spans 35 years and 65 countries, and captures images of festivals and cultural ceremonies in some of the most remote regions of the planet.
As he introduced Hunter, moderator Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House warned:
“What he’s captured is dying… what we are going to see is endangered.”
Hunter added:
“I’ve now got an archive of material which I think is…historic because so many of the celebrations I’ve been to…will probably not continue in the near future.”
Hunter’s passion led him to North Korea, one of the world’s most inaccessible and secretive societies. He arrived just before the death of Kim Jong-il for the August Arirang festival.
The slide show unveiled the largest stadium in the world which, he says, has a seating capacity of 150,000. It also revealed “truly extraordinary mosaics” of flags, flowers and even the Pyongyang skyline – created by 50,000 teenagers holding up flipcharts.
The stark images that followed of Ethiopian tribal rituals, ceremonies and festivities – including those of women being whipped and mutilated – sparked a debate on the ethical considerations of paying natives to pose for these pictures.
Hunter admitted:
“The Mursi (tribe) are now become almost a sort of freak show… because people like me have been there, have photographed them and have their put their images on the website and as a result of that, tourism has absolutely grown to such a degree. When I first went there there were only about 2,000 tourists a year, there are now an estimated 30,000.”
Commenting on an image in Ethiopia showing the words “Jesus will never let you down” scrawled across a galvanised door, Hunter said:
“Jesus has definitely arrived…. The missionaries are there, baptisms are taking place… and I think that very soon they will no longer be animist and they will be brought into the church, and at that point I think that some of these practices -particularly the circumcision of the girls and indeed the scarification and the cutting of the lower lip – is all likely to change.”
This encouraged other questions about Hunter’s motives for documenting these remote practices.
O’Connell asked:
“Do you hate the fact that you spoil a culture by photographing it…?”
In Hunter’s conclusion he said:
]]>“The whole… archive of work is called ‘Let’s Celebrate: exploring the DNA of the world’s cultures through their festivals, rituals and celebrations’…. My role has been, in fact, to record these over a period of 35 years and I’m recording … what continues to happen. So actually it’s a…piece of historical and archival material that I think will have a place in the future.”