Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia

7. THE AHMADIYYA PRINT JIHAD IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

134 7 THE AHMADIYYA PRINT JIHAD IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Iqbal Singh Sevea On 13 July 1925, over two thousand people gathered at the Victoria Memorial Hall in Singapore to protest against the influx of Ahmadiyya influences into Malaya. The protestors asserted that under no circumstances should Muslims possess any books published by the Ahmadiyya, and called on the government to enforce a ban on the admission of Ahmadiyya literature into Malaya. The Ahmadiyya responded to this call for the curtailment of their publications by arguing that the protestors had failed to realize the important role played by their publications in propagating the message of “true” Islam to the far corners of the world.1 Indeed, the Ahmadiyya were among the earliest Muslim groups to realize the utility of print media both to respond to criticisms levelled against Islam, and to transmit Islam globally. It was in the light of this that H.A.R. Gibb in his 1932 survey of modern Muslim movements credited the development of the modern Muslim apologetic to this group.2 Apart from winning adherents to their association (jama‘at), their effective use of the print media enabled the Ahmadiyya to play an important role in shaping modern Muslim thought in early twentieth-century Southeast Asia. Their tracts, journals, and books proved to be important models for a host of modern publications by Islamic organizations such as the Muhamadiyyah and Sarekat Islam. This chapter examines the centrality of publishing to the emergence of the Ahmadiyya movement and its expansion beyond South Asia, particularly to Southeast Asia. More broadly, it seeks to provide insights into the impact The Ahmadiyya Print Jihad in South and Southeast Asia 135 of print technology on religious life, as well as to the transmission of Islamic concepts and the development of new Muslim organizations. In contrast to Benedict Anderson’s assertion that the rise of print ushered in a shift in literary and mass consciousness from a religiously based culture to secularized discourses,3 the proliferation of religious journals and tracts during the period studied in this chapter clearly demonstrates the ability of religious communities to adopt modern communications technologies. These technological changes, however, did usher in wide-ranging changes in religious discourse and conceptions of authority.4 The Ahmadiyya provides an interesting case study into the impact of print on religion because from its very inception, it set out to transmit its message globally and strove to develop physical as well as textual links with places as far removed as America, China, Ghana, and Indonesia. Print was clearly the medium of choice for the transmission of what they perceived to be the true message of Islam. In stark contrast to the Tablighi Jama‘at, a near contemporaneous South Asian Islamic revivalist movement that prizes the oral tradition over the written and looks to personal communication as the medium for religious revival,5 the Ahmadiyya seem almost to have negated the need for personal individual contact through the use of modern means of communication. The Ahmadiyya have established printing presses at all of their major centres, be they in Qadian, Rabwah, Woking, or Southfields. It has been said that the corpus of literature produced by the movement makes the Ahmadiyya the best documented religious movement in modern Islam.6 I would further argue that the very emergence and development of the movement has also been inextricably linked with processes which are characteristic of print revolutions, including the fragmentation of religious authority and the development of transnational linkages. In fact, the movement was so thoroughly influenced by the transforming effects of print that it self consciously re-interpreted the Islamic idea of jihad in terms of a “textual struggle”. The expansion in print technology facilitated the emergence of what has been described by Armando Salvatore as a “public Islam” and a concomitant fragmentation of religious authority. Public Islam essentially describes an Islam contested in the public arena through the mass media.7 The emergence of this public Islam was inherently linked to the rise of new interpreters of Islam who were not necessarily trained in the traditional Islamic sciences, but were able to use the print media to challenge the monopoly of the traditional religious authorities, namely the ulama and Sufis, to interpret the sources of Islam.8 Understanding the impact of print on Islam then must take into account the contestations over religious authority that occurred in the public arena. [3.142.171.180] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 16...