The greatest crisis to engulf the Tablighi movement in its nearly 100-year history stems right from the very top, the position of Ameer. For its first seven decades, till 1995, the movement was served by three Ameers, each revered in his own right. All three came from the Nizamuddin markaz (headquarters), and as such, belonged to the same family, either by blood or through marriage.

Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi, the founder of the movement, was also its first Ameer. Himself a product of the Deobandi movement, he attended the Darul Uloom Deoband, the acclaimed institute of Islamic scholarship in India’s Uttar Pradesh, and taught at its closely associated madrasah, the Mazahir Uloom in Saharanpur, before quitting his post and relocating to Nizamuddin near Delhi. There, in 1926/27, the Tablighi Jamaat was formally launched.

Ilyas Kandhlawi remained the Ameer of the movement till his death in 1944. Thereupon, the mantle passed to his son, but hardly as a matter of inheritance. Before passing away, Md Ilyas prepared a shortlist of six of his ‘preferred persons’, which a shura formed for the purpose consulted and from it, chose his son Muhammad Yusuf Kandhlawi as the new Ameer.

Yusuf Kandhlawi had been brought up in an environment imbued with his father’s teachings, and worked tirelessly to grow the movement as its designated Ameer for the next 21 years, till his death in 1965, at the relatively young age of 48.

One of the names on the six-person shortlist Maulana Ilyas had left behind, from which his son Maulana Yusuf was chosen by shura, was Maulana Inamul Hasan. A close contemporary of Yusuf Kandhlawi, he shared a lifelong relationship, more a partnership, in the cause of faith with the Tabligh’s 2nd Ameer. Through all the years that Maulana Yusuf discharged his duties as Ameer, Inamul Hasan served closely by his side. He even married into the family, with one of Maulana Yusuf’s cousins. Throughout the movement, he was widely admired for his intellect, character, wisdom and judgement.

So it came as no surprise when he was chosen as the third Ameer of Jamaat, after the death of Yusuf Kandhlawi. He would go on to become the movement’s longest-serving leader, remaining Ameer for over 30 years, till his death in 1995, aged 77.

This was the start of a complicated period in the Tablighi movement, that has persisted in spite of outside appearances, and would now seem to have boiled over. The principal sticking point was the one over succession. On two previous occasions, 1944 and 1965, the choice had almost presented itself, clear and uncontroversial. As a process, it was straightforward.

In 1995 though, there was no clear successor at the top of the tree, in Nizamuddin. Without filling the role of leader, a shura(council) formed during his lifetime by Inamul Hasan to oversee and promote the movement through all the chapters that had sprung up worldwide, took on the responsibilities previously borne by the Ameer. We can think of it as a global steering committee, that also acted as the highest decisionmaking body.

Over time though, members of the 10-member council kept dying out,without being replaced. Two of the most senior and influential members of the shura were Maulana Saad Kandhlawi, grandson of Maulana Yusuf and great-grandson of Maulana Ilyas, and Maulana Zubairul Hasan, the son of Maulana Inamul Hasan. By the start of 2014, they were the only surviving members of the shura, and cracks had started to appear in their relationship, as it all played out in the warrens and beneath the minarets of Nizamuddin.

In March of that year, Maulana Zubairul Hasan passed away, aged 63. He was never designated Ameer (for all intents and purposes, the post had been done away with) but had served in his father’s footsteps as the de facto leader of the movement since 1995. That honour would now pass to Maulana Saad, but it soon became clear he wanted something more. Specifically, he wanted to be Ameer.

This was a particularly unpalatable idea to the tabligh’s adherents worldwide. Besides regarding the Shura as a forum for governance that worked, the overwhelming majority of TJ had not seen an Ameer in the mould of the first 3 in Maulana Saad. A common refrain was that he lacked the requisite ‘tarbiyyah’ - growth, development, loftiness. An audioclip of a mashwara (consultative meeting) at Nizamuddin started doing the rounds where Maulana Saad is heard saying (to protestations) “I am the Ameer….the Ameer of all….if you do not agree, go to hell.”

In November 2015, at the Raiwind Ijtema in Pakistan, senior members of the movement from around the world, decided to reconstitute the world Shura, and named 13 members to the council. Most importantly, the meeting in Raiwind “emphatically resolved to continue its business on the Shura (consultative) system only and negated a particular Ameer or leader for future.” Maulana Saad rejected these resolutions, and refused to sign the document.

Ever since, Saad Kandhlawi’s leadership of the movement has grown more and more contentious. In December 2016, the Darul Uloom Deoband had issued a fatwa that probably stands as the strongest indictment of Maulana Saad’s leadership, painting it as both deviant and divisive: “Due to a lack of knowledge, (Maulana Saad) has strayed from the path of the majority of the Ulema... in his ideologies and his explanation of Qur’aan and Hadeeth, which is undoubtedly the path of deviation.”

The Bangladeshi authorities have faced calls since 2017 to ban him from attending the Ijtema in Tongi. This has meant since 2018, the Ijtema here has had to be held in two different phases - one for followers of Saad, the other for followers of the Shura, where the final prayer (akheri munazat) has often been led by Maulana Zubair Ahmed, a senior Banghladeshi cleric, a former imam of the Kakrail Mosque, not to be confused with the deceased Zubairul Hasan.

When the media refers to followers of Maulana Saad clashing with followers of Maulana Zubair, the latter refers to followers of the worldwide Shura. Maulana Saad is no longer part of the Shura, while Maulana Zubair is one of two representatives from Bangladesh on the 11-member council.

The TJ movement in Bangladesh, headquartered at the Kakrail Mosque, has grown in influence. It is known for hosting the largest annual ijtema (gathering in Arabic, all the Tabligh chapters worldwide host an ijtema every year). Under the leadership of the late Ahmed Shafi, it threw its weight behind the idea of the global shura. After the death of Shafi, who was also the leader of Hefazat e Islam, the movement in Bangladesh has continued in this vein. Although Saad too has his followers, as Wednesday’s deadly clashes showed.