Islam on the Move

Farish A. Noor is Professor of Political History at the Faculty of Social Science FOSS, Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia UIII. His work has focused on 19th century colonial Southeast Asia, looking at the modalities of racialised colonial-capitalism in the region. His recent works include Peta dan Kekuasaan (Mapping and Power, Lestari Hikmah, 2025), Data-Collecting in 19th Century Colonial Southeast Asia (Amsterdam University Press, 2020) and America's Encounters with Southeast Asia 1800-1900 (Amsterdam University Press, 2018).

"This is an excellent, original study of an important transnational Islamic movement, based on a long-term acquaintance with the movement and a considerable period of participating observation in Indonesia, Malaysia and South Thailand. The existing authoritative literature on the Tablighi Jama’at is rather limited: besides the standard work by M. Khalid Masud, the major contributions were made by Barbara Metcalf, Dietrich Reetz, and Yoginder Sikand, whose work focuses on the Tabligh in South Asia. There is now a rapidly growing literature on the Tabligh in other parts in the world, but this study by Farish Noor stands out as unique in its scope and depth. No one else has ever carried out extensive fieldwork and been able to study the movement from within as he does in this book. For this reason, this study represents a major step ahead in our understanding of the Tabligh." -- Martin van Bruinessen, Chair for the Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, Utrecht University"Farish Ahmad Noor is an extraordinary thinker: cosmopolitan, Asian, Muslim, humanist, truth-teller. Here we get him at his best, looking at the rise and spread of one of the most important missionary Muslim organizations, the Tablighis. Highly recommended!" -- Omid Safi, Professor of religious studies and Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"This is a truly impressive piece of work that will appeal to a wide audience and will be the definitive work on this complicated subject for a very long time." -- Abdullah Drury, University of Waikato, New Zealand

• Introduction: Brother Bismillah and My Introduction to the Tablighi Jama’at, I. At Home Across the Sea: The Arrival of the Tablighi Jama’at and Its Spread Across Southeast Asia, II. Learning to Be: The Foundational Literature of the Tablighi Jama’at and Its Role in Defining the Movement, III. Learning on the March: The Portable, Reader-friendly Literature of the Tablighi Jama’at and Its Role in the Self-identification and Reproduction of the Movement, IV. The Stories We Tell: The Conversion Narratives of the Tablighi Jama’at and the Internalisation of Tablighi Identity, V. Learning to Be Tablighi: The Rule-governed World of the Tablighi and the Disciplining of the Self, VI. How We Look and What We Are: The Tablighi Jama’at Framed in the Eyes of Others, VII. Finally, a Summing Up: The Tablighi Jama’at as the Complex Thing That It Is, Notes, Bibliography, Index