Why Are Our Morals Falling Despite Tablighi Efforts ?

Question:
In recent years, one can feel Masha'Allah that some part of our younger generation/celebrities are getting inclined towards Islam. I see great duty being performed by "Tablighi Groups" who bring 180 degree shift in the lifestyles of many individuals. One should admire and encourage them for their positive contribution. However, we can also see that despite concentrated and geographically spread efforts of preaching Islamic fundamentals, our society as a whole has seen sharp decline in Islamic and ethical values. Masses are least bothered about "Akhlaqiat and Haqooq ul Ibad". Even with five-times-a-day prayers, worshippers are careless in matters relating to family and human obligations, which to me is extremely alarming because sincerity in prayers seems missing and such things lead to non-worshippers remarking about the ineffectiveness of prayers?

What are the factors contributing to such a downfall in the morals of our society and why is the majority of our people lacking in following the basic message of Islam despite the efforts of Tablighi Jama'at?

Response:
There are many reasons that have contributed to the state of affairs you have described. I am briefly mentioning only a few of them.

Despite the tremendous sacrifices our Tablighi brothers make to disseminate the message of Islam, their over-emphasis on the weak ahadith that highlight exaggerated spiritual value (fazail) for acts of worship imprints an imbalanced religious understanding in their minds. When they preach, for example, that one formal prayer while one is travelling in the way of Allah would earn a reward for them which is the equivalent of hundreds and thousands of ordinary formal prayers, the mental balance of the individual influenced by this line of argument gets heavily tilted in favour of going on Tablighi missions at the expense of many more significant obligations towards fellow humans.

Another problem associated with the members of Tablighi Jama'at and similar other religious groups is absence in them of willingness to properly use their intellect while approaching religious matters. They are so obsessed with the idea of going out on religious expeditions and convincing others to do likewise that they don't normally listen with an open mind to the people criticising them on the errors of their strategy. They are normally thinking of how to convince the other person to accompany them in their religious expeditions when he is criticising them. Thus their disinclination to use their intellect normally deprives them of the opportunity of correcting their wrong attitudes.

Perhaps the biggest problem in them is their attitude of not even attempting to understand the Qur'an while reading it. They are convinced that when they read the Qur'an even without making any attempts to understand its meanings, they get abundantly rewarded for doing so. As a consequence, the best opportunity one has as a religious Muslim to lead a balanced religious life is lost to many of them.

Having said that, let me clarify that the above criticism has been made in the spirit of correcting some of the errors in our Tablighi brothers. I am neither claiming that there is nothing good in what they are doing nor that there is nothing wrong in our religious attitude. We must keep correcting each other in the spirit of helping out each other religiously. That is how we can hope to improve our religious performance.

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