(This post reads as an address to the author of Mourning Junaid Jamshed after years of estrangement: An open letter to the fans of the star preacher, which was posted on this blog a few days ago following Junaid Jamshed's death in an airplane crash. NB: Faisal has since modified the original post.)
I must say that compared to some of your earlier posts, this one comes across as a little less thoughtful and a little more adversarial. While you bring up valid concerns relating to privilege and its associated blind-spots, you also engage in considerable projection and ascription.
Your mukhatab in this post is a straw-man of your own construction – to whom you ascribe an assortment of undesirable attitudes and beliefs. You proceed to carry out a purely speculative psychoanalysis of this person:
“You view his Tablighi career as virtuous, but you loved him for his past that you deemed sinful: his career in music. You loved him not because he was a good preacher. There are lots of them that you do not care about. You loved Junaid because he was a pop star in the first place, and you love stars, especially after they convert to your religious sensibility, and bring you lots of validation. Just as you have loved Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens), and Muhammad Ali for their iconic status. Because these celebrities bring you validation, they make you feel good about your religion and ultimately yourself. You loved Junaid Jamshed because he embodied the tension that you experience yourself. He embodied your love for music, which you think is sinful, and your desire to be devoted to God, at once. His conversion to Tablighi religion was a story of spiritual success that you wish you would achieve in your own life. Renounce ‘sin’ and devote yourself to God.”
While some of this psychoanalysis may hold a kernel of truth, it is important to recognise that it is an exercise in speculation – doubling the zann factor of your analysis.
You state that you find the shift in his religiosity alienating. His renunciation of music and the espousal of “a religious sensibility that denies human nature” makes you uneasy. You are unable to celebrate him or to see him as your role model. Your religious sensibilities are more expansive, more complex, more nuanced. Fair enough.
I do not see Junaid Jamshed’s evangelism as a call for/towards radicalisation in itself – even though elements of radicalisation and sexism come with the package of the Islam he preached. He was primarily a caller to God – as is the tendency of the Tablighi movement in general. Sexism and the renunciation of music was not his central message; it wasn’t something he specifically preached. He may have experienced a radical shift in his personal life, but he did not call on his followers to do the same. He sang nasheeds instead of Gorey rang ka zamana. He grew a hideous beard and decided to look unsexy. On the spectrum of radicalisation, the nature and scale of JJ’s message is pretty innocuous.
Relatedly, I would argue that in a class analysis, Junaid Jamshed’s later life was a continuation of his earlier avatar as a pop star. He started out in the Pakistan Air Force, shot to popularity with a career in music, established an upmarket designer label, and died a huge celebrity in a plane crash. I mean these are not exactly experiences everyone can relate to. These are not the standard landmarks of an average Pakistani’s life. He was born an upper-middle or upper-class urban elite; he lived as one his whole life; and he died as one.
The upheavals of his inner life were magnified because of his public stature. While extreme shifts of lifestyle may not inspire you personally, I do not see what is wrong with taking inspiration from such individuals in general. Most of the early converts to Muhammad’s religion were people who experienced extreme reversals of faith, extreme about-turns in their entire worldview. In the matter of a few moments, Umar al-Khattab was transformed from being a staunch enemy of the movement to probably its strongest champion. There is something to be said for people who are open-minded enough to renounce a cherished lifestyle after coming across something that makes better sense to them. It indicates a certain innate humility, an acknowledgement of the fallibility of belief, a spiritual maturity that risks being mistaken as fickleness.
However, it is also unacceptable that Junaid Jamshed’s fans – mostly mainstream Sunni men from the Indian subcontinent – institute a discursive tyranny of their own by appealing to etiquette (or “sunni adab”, as you call it). Etiquette often becomes an instrument to wield privilege, to venerate existing structures of power, and to silence valid criticism. The excuse of etiquette is used by men to silence women in a patriarchy. Tone-policing is the standard tactic of continuing to oppress a minority population – such as Black people in the US. Likewise, suppressing criticism of someone out of “respect” becomes a means of maintaining discursive hegemony. I have personally never understood the logic of putting a moratorium on criticising a dead person. How does someone’s death suddenly make it unacceptable to criticise them (as long as it isn’t done disrespectfully)? If you disagreed with and criticised someone while they were alive, why can you not continue that after they’re dead? By that measure, does it ever become okay to criticise a dead person? If not, how do we study history – which deals with talking about dead people – without violating the expectations of adab? Additionally, this adab tends to be selectively extended only to people we personally respect – we pick and choose who gets to be respected in death and who doesn’t.
On this point, I thank you for putting this in terms of class, gender and cultural privilege and the maintenance and reproduction of their respective hegemonies.
In short, Junaid Jamshed was your average garden-variety sexist maulvi whose real-world influence doesn’t extend beyond a certain space-time capsule. Let us respectfully disagree with some of the things that come with the package of his Islam. Above all, let these disagreements be part of an ongoing exchange of ideas within the cultural universe of Islam, instead of ill-timed ad hominem attacks during moments of loss and grieving. In subverting systems of oppression, let us not institute a tyranny of our own, an ugly obstinacy that goes against wisdom and compassion. We need to develop an etiquette of beautiful resistance.
