The Ethics of Listening.. Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary Egypt

the ethics of listening: cassette-sermon
audition in contemporary Egypt

CHARLES HIRSCHKIND
University of Wisconsin, Madison
In this article, I focus on the practice of listening to tape-recorded sermons
among contemporary Muslims in Egypt as an exercise of ethical self-discipline.
I analyze this practice in its relation to the formation of a sensorium: the vis-
ceral capacities enabling of the particular form of Muslim piety to which
those who undertake the practice aspired. In focusing on both the homiletic
techniques of preachers and the traditions of ethical audition that inform the
contemporary practice of sermon listening, I explore how sermon listeners re-
construct their own knowledge, emotions, and sensibilities in accord with
models of Islamic moral personhood. Normative models of moral person-
hood grounded in Islamic textual and practical traditions provide a point of
reference for the task of ethical self-improvement, [embodiment, senses, dis-
ciplinary practice, reception, media, sermons, Islam]
Among the many lines of inquiry given impetus by Walter Benjamin's rich oeu-
vre, one of the most fruitful for anthropologists has been an interrogation into both the
history of the senses and the structures of sensory perception that underlie particular
forms of historical experience. Benjamin's excavation of histories of sensory experi-
ence from within the outmoded objects of modernity and, in particular, his work on
the impact of modern media techniques on perception have provided scholars less a
set of theoretical formulations than a particular methodological sensibilitya feel for
the historically discordant within the contemporary. Most influential in this regard has
been his classic essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
(1968a), in which Benjamin explores the impact of modern photographic and cine-
matic techniques on perception. Specifically, he argues that the particular experien-
tial quality that grounds the uniqueness and authenticity (what he calls "aura") of his-
torical objects has been all but effaced under the perceptual regime of modern
technological culture. With the mechanical reproduction of works of art, the idea of
authentic originals loses all meaning; the traditions that were founded on and that up-
held the knowledge of such authentic objects can no longer maintain the practical
and perceptual conditions that sustain them. Benjamin further explores this process in
"The Storyteller" (1968b), in which he argues that the traditional modes of knowledge
and practice that grounded the art of storytelling have been rendered impracticable
with the rise of information as the dominant communicative form.
In this article, I take up Benjamin's interrogation of the relation between sensory
experience and traditional practices, but from a different standpoint than the one
privileged in Benjamin's own analyses. Specifically, I approach the question of the
sensorium not from the side of the (modern) object and its impact on the possibilities
of subjective experience, but rather from the perspective of a cultural practice through
American Ethnologist 28(3):623-649. Copyright 2001, American Anthropological Association.
624 american ethnologist
which the perceptual capacities of the subject are honed and, thus, through which the
world those capacities inhabit is brought into being, rendered perceptible. In explor-
ing such a practice, I show how traditions presuppose, and provide the means to pro-
duce, the particular sensory skills on which the actions, objects, and knowledges that
constitute these traditions depend. Such tradition-cultivated modes of perception and
appraisal coexist within the space of the modern and are enabled in some ways by the
very conditions that constitute modernity. Thus, through an analysis of a particular
cultural practice geared to this task, I hope to contribute to the important and ongoing
task of rethinking the decidedly stubborn opposition between tradition and modernity.
My specific focus here is on the practice of listening to tape-recorded sermons
among contemporary Muslims in Egypt as an exercise of ethical self-discipline. Dur-
ing a period of a year and a half, I worked with a group of young men in Cairo for
whom sermon audition was a regular activity. I also took lessons on the art of preach-
ing from an experienced preacher throughout my stay in Cairo. For all of these men,
the cassette sermon was a technology of self-improvement, one among a number of
such technologies that have been popularized in recent decades with the gradual
emergence of what is commonly referred to as the Islamic Revival (al-Sahwa al-
Islamiyya). In what follows, I explore the fashion of cassette-sermon audition as a dis-
ciplinary practice through which contemporary Egyptian Muslims hone an ethically
responsive sensorium: the requisite sensibilities that they see as enabling them to live
as devout Muslims in a world increasingly ordered by secular rationalities. Notably, I
use the terms senses and sensibilities in a way that suggests their fundamental interde-
pendency. Part of my argument is precisely to describe how emotions, capacities of
aesthetic appreciation, and states of moral attunement or being (i.e., sensibilities)
come to structure fundamental sensory experiences. It should be clear, therefore, that
in referring to senses, I am not indicating the object studied within the discipline of
human biology.
1
As I describe, proper sermon audition demands a particular affective-volitional
responsiveness from the listenerwhat I will call an ethical performanceas a con-
dition for "understanding" sermonic speech, while simultaneously deepening an indi-
vidual's capacity to hear in this manner. To "hear with the heart," as those I worked
with described this activity, is not strictly something cognitive but involves the body
in its entirety, as a complex synthesis of disciplined moral reflexes. Indeed, the men
with whom I worked understood the degree of benefit achieved through sermon audi-
tion to be proportionate to the depth of moral sensibility they were able to bring to the act.
Insofar as my exploration of the disciplinary shaping of sensory experience over-
laps at a number of points with Bourdieu's (1990) elaboration of the notion of habitus,
it is best to clarify at the outset how my work departs from Bourdieu's approach.
Bourdieu draws on the classical notion of habitus in order to describe how cultural
practice is accommodated to the objective conditions that form the basis of social
class. As a "system of durable, transposable dispositions" operating beneath the level
of consciousness, habitus disposes individuals and collectives toward historically and
culturally specific patterns of behavior consonant with, and sustaining of, the existing
distributions of political and economic power in societywhat Bourdieu generally
refers to as "Capital" (1990:53). In delimiting the field of possibility for social action,
such structures of power engender in social actors embodied dispositions compatible
with these structures. Habitus, in other words, mediates between objective structures
and subjective experience.
In exploring the formation of habitus solely in relation to histories of socioeco-
nomic power, however, Bourdieu leaves unaddressed the extent to which habitus is
the ethics of listening 625
also generated and molded by other histories, those embodied in a community's ex-
isting modes of practice and association. A habitus may outlive the material condi-
tions that gave rise to it by renewing, reinforcing, and adapting the practices of social
and individual discipline that sustain and anchor it. Such continuity does not reflect
the durability of embodied dispositions, as Bourdieu suggests (1990:62), but the vari-
ety of community-grounded resources that a group is able to bring to the task of main-
taining socially valued traditions. These traditions are continually revised as they ad-
just to changing sets of material conditions, but the direction of the adjustments is also
determined from within the traditions by, among other things, the disciplinary prac-
tices through which culturally valued modes of perception, appraisal, and action are
inculcated and self-reflexively renewed. As Robert Cantwell notes in his essay on eth-
nomimesis: "No human community can wholly control the circumstances in which it
has its existence, however vigorously it may resist change; but it can sustain its own
sociality, deliberately and often revivalistically, under new, perhaps alien conditions"
(1999:226).
Practices such as the sermon audition I describe here inculcate dispositions and
modes of sensory experience that, rather than being determined by the "objective
conditions" that Bourdieu privileges as the site of historical agency, impact and alter
those conditions. To explore historical processes of this kind, it is necessary to avoid
the residual economism that, as in Bourdieu's work, restricts the conditions relevant
to the formation of habitus to those ultimately reducible to distributions of economic
and political power. In short, the objectivist thrust of Bourdieu's argument needs to be
countered by Benjamin's reminder that the objects that constitute modernity also em-
bed different sensory historieshistories the objective force of which will always be
mediated by traditions of social practice (Benjamin 1968a).
cassette discipline
Since the 1970s, cassette-recorded sermons of popular Islamic preachers (khu-
tab, sing, khatrb) have become one of the most widely consumed media forms
among lower-middle and middle-class Egyptians (Hirschkind 2001; Starrett 1995).
Tapes are sold outside of mosques, on the sidewalks in front of train and bus stations,
or in bookstores throughout the city. They may be listened to practically anywhere:
while operating a cafe or barbershop, while driving a bus or taxi, or at home with
one's family after returning from work.
At the time of my fieldwork, Cairo was home to six licensed companies that pro-
duced and distributed taped sermons, the largest three having additional distribution
centers outside Cairo, primarily in the cities of Alexandria, Mansura, and Suez. In ad-
dition to sermon tapes, many of these companies sell other items associated with Is-
lamist social trends, such as headscarves and modest dress styles for women, the long
white shirts (jalabiyya) commonly worn by Egyptian men, perfumes and scented oils,
incense, in addition to books and pamphlets from Islamist publishers. Each tape sold
commercially in this manner has been approved by the Council on Islamic Research
(Majma* al-Buhuth al-lslamiyya), the branch of the government-run al-Azhar mosque
charged with ensuring the conformity of all commercially sold Islamic texts and re-
cordings with a set of orthodox and state-censorship standards. The Council fre-
quently requires that certain sections of a sermon or mosque lesson be removed,
either on the grounds that they deviate from accepted standards of Islamic argumenta-
tion or that they address political issues deemed too sensitive by the current govern-
ment. In addition to the commercially produced and marketed tapes, there are an
equal or greater number that are recorded, copied, and sold by small-scale entrepreneurs
without commercial licenses, contracts with khutaba
4
, or the required permits from
al-Azhar.
2
Although the Egyptian police occasionally confiscate the merchandise of
these vendors, they are most often left alone to sell their wares on the streets outside of
mosques or bus stations.
Although the young men I worked with used cassette sermons as a disciplinary
technique to enhance their knowledge and ethical capacities, they seldom employed
them in an exact or rigorous manner.
3
Rarely, for example, would they listen at pre-
cise times of the day according to a fixed schedule. The one exception to this was in
the case of mosque study groups, which would sometimes assign members a certain
number of tapes each week. Usually, however, cassette-sermon audition was a self-
regulated activity, undertaken as a solitary exercise or in the company of a friend or
family member. Among the sermon listeners I came to know, it was most often prac-
ticed in the evenings, after they had returned from work or school. As opposed to the
communal sermon on Friday at the mosque, cassette audition takes place without ab-
lutions (wudu'), the act of cleansing the body that worshippers undertake before
prayer at the mosque. Importantly, most tape users attend the Friday mosque cere-
mony and consider the tapes to be an extension of it, not an alternative.
4
Sermon tapes afford the listener a type of relaxation that also enriches knowledge
and purifies the soul. As Ahmed, a recent university graduate now working in an alu-
minum plant, commented to me:
Remember when we were sitting at Muhammed's once and we played a tape of [the
khatTb) Muhammed Hassan, you felt relaxed [istirkha'ft This is what can happen, this
is the opening of the heart [sadr, literally, "chest"], the tranquility [itmi'nan], that
makes you want to pray, read the Quran, makes you want to get closer to God, to think
more about religion [dTnj. When you listen to a sermon, it helps you put aside all of
your worries about work and money by reminding you of God. You remember that you
will be judged and that fills you with fear and makes you feel humility and repentance.
The shaykh teaches you about Islam, what it requires of you, so you won't make errors.
Husam, who worked in a small store that sold sermon tapes and religious literature,
explained the utility of tape audition this way:
Tapes are always of benefit, whether on the torments of the grave, Judgment Day,
death, on the most dangerous of sins, or the headscarf. You learn things you didn't
know, and this is useful. And they restore you to [moral] health IbiyashfQna]. Listening
to a tape of a sermon you've already heard is a way of reinforcing what you've
learned, strengthening the fear of God's punishments, so you won't commit a moral
error [ma
f
asf]. This leaves your heart calm [mutma'in]. There are some people who
just do what they should. Many others, however, they realize that the devil has got
into their heads [yuwaswasu, literally, "whispers to them"], and is making them think
that what is evil [haram] is actually good [halal]. By listening, they strengthen them-
selves against this, as it gets them to pray and read the Quran. Then they begin to re-
gret what they have done and ask God for forgiveness. The tape, in other words, helps
them to fight against the devil.
Tapes thus enable a strengthening of the will and an ability to resist the devil's
whispers (waswas). With repeated and attentive listening, they can also lead listeners
to change their ways. Ahmed, describing the experience of his brother, put it this way:
My brother, who is religious but [does not belong to the] Jama
{
a, heard this tape by
[the popular preacher] Fawzi Sa'id and it really struck him. He immediately made me
a copy. He decided he had to change his life, so he stopped smoking and using foul
language and started to go to the mosque and pray. Now he is always talking
about religion, always trying to get his friends to comport themselves more piously.
Many of his old friends don't want to be around him any more because they get tired
of his talk. Every time I go to his house now, we listen to a tape. I'm not as into it as
much as he is, but I do feel it makes me think about important things I would forget.
5
For sermon listeners, the regular practice of sermon audition serves as a constant
reminder to monitor their behavior for vices and virtues. Even in the absence of a
complete transformation of the kind Ahmed's brother went through, young men like
Ahmed rely on the tapes to maintain a level of self-scrutiny (muraqaba) in regard to
their daily activities and, when possible, to change or modify their behavior. Many of
the young men I worked with in Egypt related their decision to become diligent in the
performance of their Islamic duties to having been moved by a particularly powerful
sermon, heard either on tape or live at the mosque. In all cases, the men understood
listening to sermon tapes as a means by which a range of Islamic virtues could be
sedimented in their characters, enabling them to live more piously and avoid moral
transgressions.
What renders tape audition a technique suitable for practices of ethical self-im-
provement lies in the capacity of speech to act on the heart and reform it.
6
For those
with whom I worked, this was not a mechanical process. Simply putting on a sermon
tape or listening to verses of the Quran does not cleanse a heart that has been cor-
roded by sin. A person with a "rusted heart/' as one man put it, is precisely one whose
ability to hear has been impaired. An author, writing in al-Tauhrd,
7
a popular religious
digest often read and cited by the sermon listeners of my study, likens this to a short-
circuit in the wiring that prevents an electrical current from reaching the lamp it is
supposed to illuminate. Drawing out the metaphor, he suggests:
The Quran is effective in itself, just as the electrical current. If the Quran is present [to
your ears), and you have lost its effect, then it is you yourself that you must blame.
Maybe the conductive element is defective: your heart is damaged or flawed. Maybe a
mist covers your heart, preventing it from benefiting [inti&j from the Quran and being
affected by it. Or maybe you are not listening well, or your heart is occupied with prob-
lems of money, and thinking about how to acquire and increase it. [Badawi 1996a:13]
For the possessor of such a defective heart, the only solution, according to the author,
lies in cleansing (tahara) the heart, both by giving up the sinful acts that led to such a
state and by repeatedly listening, with intention and concentration, to sermons, exhor-
tations, and Quranic verses. Such is the task that cassette sermons are put to.
The effect of sermon speech on the heart, however, is not just one of cleansing.
As the above comments make evident, sermons evoke in the sensitive listener a par-
ticular set of ethical responses, foremost among them fear (khauf), humility (khushu
1
),
regret (nadm), repentance (tauba), and tranquility (itmr nan or saklna). As elaborated
within classical Islamic moral doctrine, these are the affective dispositions that endow
a believer's heart with the capacities of moral discrimination necessary for proper
conduct.
8
In order to understand their usage by the men with whom I worked, how-
ever, it will be useful to draw on some of the contemporary writings that they them-
selves use and frequently mention. The following discussion comes from an article
published in al-Tauhrd. This article focuses on the effect of particular Quranic verses,
when used by a khatTb, on the moral condition of a faithful Muslim listener. Drawing
from the exegetical works of classical scholars in regard to the interpretation of a verse
from the Quranic chapter entitled al-Zumar (The Throngs), the author notes:
What is meant here is that when the true people of faith, the people of the eternal and
deeply rooted doctrine hear the verses of warning [al-wa'fdj their flesh trembles in
fear, their hearts are filled with despair [inqabadat qulobuhuml, a violent angst shakes
their backs lirta^adat far3
l
isuhum], and their hearts become intoxicated with fear and
dread. But if they then hear the verses of mercy and forgiveness, their flesh becomes
filled with delight [inbasatat juloduhuml, their chests are opened and relaxed [insha-
rahat sudQruhum], and their hearts are left tranquil [itma'nat qufubuhumj. [Badawi
1996b:11-12]
What is described here is a kind of moral physiology, the emotional-kinesthetic
experience of a body permeated by Islamic faith Oman) when listening to a khatTb's
discourse. The description is derived directly from numerous verses of the Quran de-
picting the impact of Godly speech on a rightly disposed listener, as in the following
verse from the chapter entitled al-Anfal (Spoils of War): "Believers are only they
whose hearts tremble whenever God is mentioned, and whose faith is strengthened
whenever his messages are conveyed unto them" (al-Antil:2).
9
This particular respon-
siveness constitutes what might be termed a Quranically tuned body and soul. This at-
tunement, according to the author, precisely defines the characteristic of a person
who is close to God (Badawi 1996b:11). For such a person, auditory reception in-
volves the flesh, back, chest, and heart; in short, the entire moral person as a unity of
body and soul. To listen properly, in other words, is to engage in a performance, the
articulated gestures of a dance.
The moral physiology acquired through the listening exercises I describe below
is grounded in Islamic textual traditions. Note, for example, the author's description
above of how one relaxes in the process of hearing the verses of mercy and thus
moves closer to God. The term used both here and by those I worked with in Cairo to
denote this state of calm and relaxation is inshirah al-sadr (literally, "opening of the
chest"). The experience of inshirah has its origins in an event mentioned both in the
Quran (the chapter entitled al-Sharh),
]0
as well as in many ahadfth (authoritative ac-
counts of the Prophet's words and acts; sing, hadrth). It is recounted that on the night
of Muhammed's ascension to heaven (al-lsra
L
), God opened his chest and took from
his heart all the resentment, rancor, and lust, and replaced them with virtues of faith
and knowledge. The account, in other words, connects the purity of the soul with the
visually striking image of God opening up the chestwhat the khatlb I studied with,
Muhammed Subhi, described to me as a "surgical operation." In so doing, it provides
the authoritative textual basis through which a particular bodily experience (inshirah)
is conceptually linked to a moral state.
11
As the analysis I present here seeks to dem-
onstrate, this linkage is not simply established metaphorically, but also through disci-
pline, the training and inculcation of sensory habits.
synaesthetic performance
The British philosopher R. G. Collingwood's description of the experience en-
tailed in the reception of works of art is instructive here.
12
It has always been ob-
served, Collingwood notes, that in listening to music or poetry people enjoy imagi-
nary experiences completely outside the realm of sound, such as visual, tactile,
kinesthetic, and olfactory experiences (1966:146-151). Thus, skilled music critics
wi l l frequently include in their descriptions of symphonic performances the colors,
motions, images, and tactile impressions evoked by the work. Similarly,
the art of painting is intimately bound up with the expressiveness of the gestures made
by the hand in drawing, and of the imaginary gesture through which a spectator of a
painting appreciates its "tactile values." Instrumental music has a similar relation
to silent movements of the larynx, gestures of the player's hand, and real or imaginary
movements, as of dancing, in the audience. [Collingwood 1966:243]
The common understanding of the kinds of synaesthetic experience Collingwood is
describing here is that they are composed of two parts, an objective part, represented
by the sensuous, audible element, and a subjective part, belonging not to the actual
sounds but to something listeners create in their minds independent of what they
hear.
13
Collingwood argues that this distinction between a sensuous and an imaginary
part is misleading. To become an object that can be retained and referred to, he ar-
gues, a sensation must be attended to by consciousness, an act that transforms that
sensation into an idea, an object of the imagination. People come to attend con-
sciously to particular stimuli in the course of becoming experienced or trained, and
their reactions to those stimuli become patterned in accord with the particular form of
life that training upholds and subordinated to the practices and goals that define it. As
Collingwood says, sensations become "fitted into the fabric of our life instead of pro-
ceeding on their own way regardless of its structure" (1966:209). Thus, the synaes-
thetic experiences of movement, color, touch, and emotion that occur when a person
listens to music are not produced through the free creative activity of the mind but,
rather, are grounded in the actual sensual experience of the body as a complex of cul-
turally honed perceptual capacities.
14
People's sensory responses are similar and in
keeping with those that the author of the work intended to produce, to the extent that
their capacities of hearing or vision have been shaped within a shared disciplinary
context.
15
They possess a specific affective-volitional structure as a result of the prac-
tices by which one has been formed as a member of a specific community.
16
More-
over, while particular performances might recruit some parts of the sensorium more
than other partsas when one has been trained to attend to a very limited range of
sensory experience, such as in modern academic readingto some extent, the organ
of reception remains the body in its entirety.
17
Collingwood's discussion of perception in terms of the integrated totality of the
trained body has, despite obvious differences, certain parallels with recent anthropo-
logical work inspired by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1962). For thinkers in
this tradition (Csordas 1990, 1994, 1999; Jackson 1983a, 1983b, 1989), reasoning
has less to do with the activity of the ratiocinative mind, and more with the way peo-
ple's practical engagements embody a (primarily habitual and unconscious) under-
standing of the world with which they are a constitutive part. Thomas Csordas, in par-
ticular, provides a rich body of ethnographic work that explores how the socially
informed body, by placing people in a determinant and preobjective relation to the
world, structures the culturally specific objectifications produced through reflective
practice. Yet, despite this shared concern for the embodied character of action and
perception, the analysis I have presented here also departs sharply from the sort of
phenomenological approach Csordas elaborates. Specifically, while Csordas focuses
on identifying the preobjective foundations, or habitus, on which a religious dis-
course erects its particular discursive architecture, my own work has been concerned
with the practical techniques (such as sermon audition) by which the bodily disposi-
tions that underlie virtuous conduct are inculcated. That is, I give less attention to how
those dispositions have been objectified within the discourses of contemporary Islam
and more to the techniques though which they are inculcated both as sensory skills
and moral habits.
18
the task of the khatlb
In discussing the Islamic sermon and its role in the shaping of ethical disposi-
tions, it is important to distinguish between a rhetorical practice of evoking or modu-
lating the passions as a means to sway an audience toward a point of view and one
aimed at constructing the passions in accord with a certain model. In regard to the for-
mer, Aristotle (trans., 1991) dedicated considerable attention to the possibilities of
rhetorically manipulating the passions, examining the means by which anger, fear, or
pity might be intensified or attenuated by orators to their advantage. Similarly,
Augustine (O'Meara 1973) emphasizes the utility of arousing the emotions as a means
to move people to do what they know they should do but fail to do.
19
Such a tech-
nique is predicated on the instrumental use of emotions for purposes to which those
emotions have no necessary relation. By contrast, in the practice of Islamic sermons,
as I have noted, the objects of discourse and the emotions that are elicited in the con-
text of their discussion are interdependent such that emotions only achieve their
proper formation through that relationship.
20
The khatTb's task, in other words, in-
cludes not just the modulation of emotional intensities but also the orienting of those
emotions to their proper objects.
There is considerable debate among contemporary Egyptian khutaba' as well as
their listeners on this issue. One of the signs that many people take as evidence of a
khatTb's virtuosity is an ability to move an audience to tears. Weeping has an impor-
tant place within Islamic devotional practices, as a kind of emotional response appro-
priate for both men and women when, with humility, fear, and love, they turn to
God.
21
Many are concerned today, however, that people are crying during sermons
for the wrong reasons. Note, for example, the following remark by the khatTb Fawzi
Sa'id, in response to a question about why he did not do more to evoke the passions
of his listeners in his sermons:
Lots of people today just look forward to crying during sermons; they feel they are be-
ing cleansed, like Christians at baptism. But the sermon that just leads you to cry
doesn't imprint upon the heart. It doesn't get people to change their actions. It is only
through a careful engagement with the texts, reading the Quran and hadTth literature,
that knowledge gets rooted in the heart. Not that the sentiments are unimportant; but
many people no longer know why they are crying.
One of the major concerns of the khutaba
1
I spoke wi th was that many cassette-
sermon listeners today were engaging in the practice as a form of entertainment, for
the pleasure of the emotional experience produced through audition. My preaching
instructor, Muhammed Subhi, voiced this worry in a conversation about the problems
wi th contemporary preaching:
When people today listen, they hear about Judgment Day and the torment of hell and
they feel relieved and exalted [intisha']. Intisha' is what you experience when you
drink alcohol and feel that all of the pressures and difficulties of your life have been
lifted. Or when you hear a really beautiful song that touches all of your emotions and
sensibilities. You feel a kind of comfort and relief Itanfrs], a calm Iraha], a kind of ca-
tharsis [kathrasrsl: this is intisha'. If I am a Muslim, when I listen to the Quran I feel this
relief. But things must not stop at this feeling, as so often happens. It must be trans-
formed into part of one's practical reality.
Subhi is concerned that sermons are being listened to for a momentary experience of
catharsis, enthusiasm, and excitement that leaves no traces in the listener's behavior
once the experience is over. As with Fawzi Sa'id above, Subhi is not advocating a
rationalist, academic approach to preaching. In fact, he was quite critical of other
khutaba
4
whose intellectualist approaches succeeded in neither grabbing the atten-
tion of an audience nor stirring their pious passions. Rather, he, as well as most other
khutaba', saw the problem as that of rooting knowledge in the hearts of the listeners,
binding their emotions to the appropriate objects, so as to move them toward pious
comportment. Like many people I met, he worried that some contemporary preachers
were playing on the emotions of their audiences so as to bolster their own popularity
rather than sedimenting those emotions in their listeners in such a way as would in-
cline them toward moral action.
Muhammed Hassan, at the beginning of a mosque lesson on Judgment Day, one
that is widely circulated on tape, poses the problem this way:
Maybe you will go home today and tell your wife, husband, or children about the
good stories you heard. It will just become, "Once upon a time, when the Prophet
lived . . . /' as if it were no longer an issue of today. But this is not some escape from re-
ality, not entertainment, or cold culture which only addresses the intellect and the ra-
tional mind [al-'aql]. Belief in judgment Day is one of the foundations of Islam, along
with belief in God, His prophets, His books, and His angels. Unless you understand
Judgment Day and know of its circumstances, how can you believe in it? Thus, we
need to grasp this knowledge, and live by it.
Knowledge of the events of Judgment Day, in other words, must not be assimilated to
the categories of entertainment or information, the former linked to the wrong pas-
sions, the latter devoid of passions entirely. Belief in Judgment Day, a requirement of
Islam, must be passionately lived in one's daily actions.
As a well-trained khatTb, Subhi had memorized a veritable encyclopedia of sto-
ries, poetry, ahadTth, and phrases of the tarhrb or wa
l
fz genre,
22
geared to the task of
eliciting emotions of fear, sadness, or terror. He demonstrated this to me on a couple
of occasions when, in order to provide me an example of classical tarhTb techniques,
he would improvise a sermon, stringing one piece from this memorized stock of texts
after another with extreme rapidity and precise cadence. His point in making such a
display of virtuosity, however, was to highlight what he saw to be an improper prac-
tice on the part of many khutaba', those who, in his view, "mechanically produce
emotional responses by such means without grounding those emotions in a useful
and lasting knowledge rooted in the lived reality of the audience." The reality he was
referring to here is first and foremost the reality of death as elaborated within Islamic
eschatological thought and its implications for the conduct of Muslims in their daily
lives. His overall argument, however, reflects the notion that the passions are internal to
the processes of practical reasoning by which people make correct choices in their lives.
For the khatTb, the challenge of enabling the listener to attain the proper affective
dispositions must be addressed in terms of rhetorical technique. Subhi outlined for me
what he thought were the three elements of a sermon capable of overcoming this
problem. First, the khatTb must shake listeners from their state of lassitude (futur), still-
ness (sukun), and fatigue (humud).
2i
Death is the subject most capable of achieving
this. What is needed, according to Subhi, are images of death that are "full of fear and
terror, that startle and frighten people out of their slackness and immobility." For this
task, there is a rich eschatological phantasmagoria from which to draw.
Second, the sermon must edify the listeners in their knowledge of Islamic doc-
trine, teachings, and beliefs. This involves more than instructing an audience in the
doctrinal and devotional requirements of Islam. A knowledge of such things as the
plight of the soul at the moment of death, the succession of disasters at the end of the
world, or the trials to be faced when crossing the pathway over hell are equally
important. Each moral decision encountered in the course of daily life can only be
correctly assessed in light of this ultimate reality, as the khaUb Muhammed Hassan
suggested in the quote above.
Third, the khatTb must weave the Quranic narratives into the lived experience of
his listeners, highlighting the problems that they face and pointing them toward useful
solutions. There are two rhetorical methods that Subhi emphasized in this regard.
One involves depicting each type of corruption found in society today in terms of its
consequences at the moment of death, in the grave, and throughout the eschatologi-
cal drama. The other requires drawing analogies between the Quranic events and the
lives of contemporary Muslims in Cairo. The popular khatTb Omar Abd al-Kafi, for ex-
ample, likens the pathway one crosses in order to arrive at heaven (al-sir3t) to the cen-
tral street in Cairo, Tahrir Street, drawing an analogy between each disaster that
awaits the sinner along al-sirat and the various exits off of Tahrir. In this way, the
khatTb weaves the Quranic narratives into the fabric of contemporary experience.
musical emotions
The problem of attaining a correct affective attunement was further elucidated
for me through discussions I had about the difference between listening to cassette
sermons and listening to music. Many of the people with whom I spoke invoked the
example of music in order to explain to me the relaxation they felt when listening to a
sermon. One young man, Beha, described for me the workings of tarhTb in a good ser-
mon and then compared it to the experience of music:
When you hear about the tortures in the grave, you get scared. You fear God, then you
start to feel regret, between you and yourself, for what you've done wrong, so you ask
Cod for forgiveness. You repent, and then you remember his mercy and you feel calm
[raha]. Your chest opened [munsharih al-sadrj, open to Islam, the Quran, God, and
knowing that you will get close to him. When you listen to music, you also feel calm
and relaxed, but that doesn't mean you're really close to God. With a sermon or
Quran tape you can attain that closeness, so the feeling is better and more intense than
when you are just relaxed.
As noted above, many of the sermon listeners I spoke with in Egypt suggested that, al-
though they listened to taped sermons as a means to ethical improvement, there were
also times when, feeling tired or tense, they might choose a music tape over a sermon
or Quran recording. All three were understood to bring one to a state of relaxation.
Yet, as Beha's comment begins to suggest, there is a key distinction to be drawn be-
tween the three experiences. As opposed to music, the sermon or Quran sets in motion
a moral (and, as I have suggested above, a bodily) progression from fear, to regret, to
asking for forgiveness, to repentance. It leads eventually to a sense of closeness with
God, an experience that was described to me as inshirah al-sadr (opening of the heart
or chest), itmi'nan (tranquility), and sakfna (stillness). This progression was mentioned
frequently by the people I worked with in Cairo. Ahmed, for example, told me: "If a
Muslim sees hell close to him [through a good khatTb], he won't find peace until he
asks forgiveness for his errors, repents, and returns humbly and tearfully to God/'
Learned in the physiological dispositions I discuss above, this is the movement made
by a listener's body and soul under the guidance of a skillful khatTb. Importantly, this is
not the raha (calm) produced by soft music but, rather, a moral state conceptually ar-
ticulated within the traditions of Islamic self-discipline. One of my central arguments
in this paper is that anthropologists need to think of religious traditions as founded
upon such embodied capacities of gesture, feeling, and speech, rather than in terms of
an obedience to rules or belief in doctrine.
24
the dance of words
The kind of attention and general attitude with which people listen to taped sermons
is a frequent point of debate among many of those who listen to cassette sermons. Many
people in Egypt listen to sermon tapes while engaged in some other routine activity,
such as driving a taxi, working as a waiter at a neighborhood cafe, or cooking a meal
(as was common among the mothers and sisters of the men I knew). Such styles of us-
age have caused some people to argue that the degree of ethical benefit listeners
achieve through sermon audition depends on the level of concentration they apply to
the act.
25
As Ahmed told me: "When you listen with humility, correctly and truly, and
when you understand each word, then you truly benefit. You feel relieved, that your
sins will be forgiven. But if you listen as one would read a newspaper, distractedly or
indifferently, which many do, then the benefit is much less."
The fact that people listen with greater or lesser degrees of attentiveness, while an
important point empirically, tells little in itself about the kind of activity someone is
engaged in when listening to a sermon. For example, people who attend the mosque
on Friday also listen to sermons with differing degrees and modes of attention, some
daydreaming, some held by the murmuring sound of a khatTb's voice, some following
with critical scrutiny the arguments being made. The fact that some of these ways of
attending to a sermon would be recognized as wrong by many contemporary Mus-
lims points to the existence of a set of normative standards that define what a correct
performance by a listener entails and against which incorrect performances may be
identified and measuredwhat J. L. Austin, referring to speech acts, describes as the
act's "felicity conditions": the variable circumstances that secure the success of an ut-
terance (1975:12-24). An act, in other words, is not determined by what happens to
be in someone's consciousness at the moment of its execution, though this may bear
on the degree to which the act is successful. Rather, an act (such as listening to a ser-
mon) must be described in terms of the conventions that make it meaningful as a par-
ticular kind of activity, one enacted for certain reasons and in accord with certain
standards of excellence and understood as such by those who perform and respond to
it. This point was repeatedly stressed by the people I worked with: one may listen to a
taped sermon as one would read a newspaper, watch television, or hear popular mu-
sic, but the ethical benefit of such listening will be correspondingly lower.
The men I worked with often made a distinction between the verb commonly
used for "hearing," sam\ and two other terms that suggest a more deliberate act: an-
sat, meaning to incline one's ear toward or pay close attention, and asgha, to be silent
in order to listen. As was often the case, Quranic recitation provided the point of refer-
ence for explaining the meaning of these terms. This is not surprising given both the
pervasive use of Quranic verses in sermons, and the sermons' emphasis on acts of re-
membrance (dhikr), supplication (du
l
a")
f
giving thanks (shukr), and expressing fearful
and loving respect for God (al-taqwa).
Contemporary religious scholars are frequently called on to give fatawa (non-
binding legal opinions, sing, fatwa) stipulating the proper attitude and state of mind to
be assumed when listening to recitations of the Quran. The following, taken from an
official publication of al-Azhar fatawa, is characteristic:
One need listen intently [yunsitj rather than just hear lyasma'], so it is done with inten-
tion [qasd wa niyya] and directing the senses [hissl lo the words in order to understand
them, to comprehend their intentions and their meanings. As far as hearing [al-sama'l,
it is what occurs without intention. Close attention [al-insdt] entails a stillness [sukon]
in order to listen so as not to be distracted by surrounding words. . . . God ordered
man to listen to the Quran with attention . . . [and] listening intently is the means to
ponder over [tadabburj the meanings of the Quran. . . . It is the duty of all Muslims to
educate themselves and be guided by the etiquette [adabjoi al-Quran. [Makhluf 1950)
"Listening with attention/' al-insat, is figured here as a complex sensory skill, one
opposed to mere hearing (sama*), understood as a passive and spontaneous receptiv-
ity. Al-insat is the kind of attentiveness appropriate to those moments when one's
heart is inclined toward God. Muhammed Subhi echoed this view from his perspec-
tive as a khatTb concerned about the attention of his audience: "I may get you to focus
on what I'm saying and comprehend it, but without getting you to feel emotionally
disposed toward it. A khutba [sermon] must lead an audience beyond mere hearing to
where they pay close attention, such that the words actually turn over [tanqalab]their
behavior."
This skill of careful listening has been most fully elaborated in works on the art of
Quranic recitation. All of the young men I worked with had memorized portions of
the Quran and learned at least the rudimentary skills of recitation by the time of ado-
lescence, either through lessons at Quran schools for children (katatTb, sing, kuttab),
26
in classes within the secular public schools system, or under direct tutelage from fa-
thers and mothers. A few had only begun to learn it as young adults when, as with
many Egyptians of their generation, they had come to see Islamic practices as increas-
ingly important to their lives. The recitational techniques taught today are founded on
long-standing Islamic traditions, and even the most popularized literature on the prac-
tice relies heavily on classical models found in medieval sources.
27
Although such
works provide instruction in a particular tradition of vocal performance, the perform-
ance itself is understood to involve a kind of audition, insomuch as a skilled reciter
should attempt to "hear the speech of God from God and not from [the voice of the re-
citer] himself (al-Ghazali 1984:80).
Among the demands of this audition cited by the 11th-century theologian A. H.
al-Ghazali are both practices of mental concentration and a variety of affective, gestu-
ral, and verbal responses whereby the reader or listener assumes the ethical disposi-
tions corresponding to the recited or audited verses: humility, awe, regret, fear, and so
on. In his manual on recitational technique, al-Ghazali writes:
During the Quran reading, when the Quran reader reads a verse on glorification of
God, he will glorify Him and magnify Him. When he reads a verse on supplication [to
God] and forgiveness [of Him], he will supplicate and seek forgiveness. If he reads a
verse telling of any hopeful matter he will pray to God [for it]. But if he reads a verse on
a frightening matter, he will seek the protection [of God]. [1984:48]
In another section, al-Ghazali further elaborates this in terms of "fulfilling the right"
(al-haqq) of the verses:
Thus when the Quran reader reads a verse necessitating prostration before God, he
will prostrate himself. Likewise, if he hears [the recitation of] a verse of prostration by
another person he will prostrate himself when the reciter prostrates. He will prostrate
only when he is physically and ritually clean. . . . Its perfect form is for him to utter Al-
lahu akbar [God is Great!] and then prostrate himself and, while prostrate, supplicate
with that supplication which is appropriate to the verse of prostration recited. . . . On
reading the words of God, "They weep while they prostrate themselves, and this adds
to their humility," the Quran reader will supplicate: "God made me one of those who
weep for fear of You, and who are humble toward You." In this way the Quran-reader
will supplicate while making every prostration [due to his reading or hearing a verse of
supplication]. [1984:44-45]
28
As is clear from the instructions al-Ghazali provides, the word of God demands a
kind of dialogue from the receiver. The receiver must seek to understand God's mes-
sage, in the cognitive sense, and must assume the attitudes and perform the acts that
correspond to that understanding. As scholars of the contemporary practice of Qura-
nic recitation have described, these principles still provide the basis for training in the
art as it is taught today (Denny 1980; Nelson 1985). A recent rector of al-Azhar Uni-
versity, Abd al-Halim Mahmud, echoes this principle in a fatwa advising people that
while reading the Quran, "they pause and respond to words by enacting what is
called for, asking forgiveness, regretting their misdeeds, imploring salvation when
reading verses of warning or retribution, and so on" (al-Azhar 1988). It is this quite com-
plex form of sensory engagement that also informs the practice of listening to sermons.
Importantly, the forms of comportment and concentration associated with Qura-
nic audition and recitation are not simply transferred to the sermon context as a set of
guidelines or rules. More fundamentally, the cultivation of these skills stands as a nec-
essary prerequisite for the sermon listener to be able to follow, be moved by, and de-
rive benefit from the sermon. Training in such skills begins in earliest infancy, inso-
much as the interwoven practices of audition, memorization, and recitation are
central to the ethical upbringing of many children in Egypt. As Eickelman has suc-
cinctly put it: "The discipline of Quranic memorization is an integral part of learning
to be human and Muslim" (1978:63). It was common that parents, upon introducing
me to their children, would proudly ask them to recite part of a sura (a chapter of the
Quran) they had mastered. Beyond such instruction, however, the Quranas well as
other traditional Islamic genres, such as ahadTth, qasas (Islamic stories), and sJyar (bi-
ographies of Muhammed and other early Muslim figures)are woven into much of
daily life, with verses often punctuating the succession of devotional, ritual, public,
and family activities occurring in the course of a day (Graham 1987; Schimmel 1994).
Moreover, just as individual Quranic verses invoke ethical responses, so also do ethi-
cal situations often give rise to the citation of verses, whether in acts of giving advice,
instructing children, making decisions, or arguing a point, particularly among those
Muslims more observant of the demands of piety.
listening as performance
The proper audition of a sermon on tape entails a complex variety of activities.
First, the sermon necessitates a voiced or subvocal accompaniment, as listeners are
repeatedly required to enact a range of illocutionary acts. The preamble is a collective
utterance composed of acts of remembrance (dhikr), praise (thana') and supplication
(du'a').
29
Although it is the khatTb who provides the guiding vocalization for these
acts, it is incumbent on the audience to accompany him with their hearts, an act that
often involves the mumbled or whispered utterance of the appropriate devotional for-
mulas. Shaykh Kishk (d. 1996)a widely popular Egyptian preacher during the 1970s
and 1980son occasions called on his audience to repeat word for word the invoca-
tions he recited or, more frequently, had them repeat one phrase over and over (such
as "I seek forgiveness from God"), exploiting the pathetic momentum such rhythmic
repetitions evoke in an audience.
Listeners also must be ready to pronounce the basmala"In the name of God,
the compassionate, the merciful"each time the khatTb begins to recite a verse from
the Quran. Similarly, they must call for prayers upon the Prophet"God bless him
and grant him salvation"each time his name is mentioned. Throughout a sermon,
listeners are frequently enjoined to vocalize a wide variety of supplicatory locutions
(du'a') that relate to the argument the khatTb is making or the situation he is describ-
ing. For example, in warning his audience about the dangers of gossip (ghrba) or
backbiting (namJma), a khatTb will call on them to implore God for forgiveness from
moral error. When lecturing them on a topic such as proper burial technique, he will
have them ask Cod to increase their knowledge, to lessen the agonies of dying, or to
illuminate the darkness of their graves. While discussing the plight of Muslims in Bos-
nia, he will pause to have the audience ask protection for Muslims who face affliction
elsewhere in the world, for the defeat of their enemies, or for the strength to persevere
the hardships they suffer. The popular khatTb Omar Abd al-Kafi punctuates his ser-
mons at rapid-fire intervals with such enjoinders, continuously recruiting his listeners
to participate vocally and morally in the oratory he performs. In the context of cassette
audition, listeners may respond with clearly audible utterances, with whispers, or
simply with a silent movement of the lips.
The final section of a sermon is composed solely of such acts of supplication,
strung one after another by the khatTb in a rhythmic crescendo that gathers emotional
momentum as it proceeds. During the live performance at the mosque, this is when
the pathos of the audience reaches its peak, and it is not uncommon at this point for
the entire assembly to weep without restraint. Although a particularly moving du
c
a'
(supplicatory prayer) will also lead to tears among cassette listeners, without the emo-
tional dynamics put in play by a large crowd the intensity of the experience is rela-
tively less. Nonetheless, many of the men I worked with appreciated this section of
the sermon for the ethical-emotional progression it could initiate, leaving them with a
sense of closeness to God and the accompanying experience of relief and tranquility
(itmi'naYi and sakTna).
As I have argued, these affects and sensations should not be thought of through a
generic, psychophysiological model of catharsis, but as an experience of moral relief
the specific contours of which have been honed through practices of ethical disci-
pline, such as sermon audition. The listener, for example, must have cultivated the ca-
pacity for humility and regret: these are both felicity conditions (in Austin's sense) for
the act of supplication as well as conditions for the body's experience of itmi'nan,
30
the relief and kinesthetic relaxation that followsvia repentancefrom such an act.
If these conditions are not met, then the listener will not be able to adopt the attitudes
and modes of concentration on which successful and beneficial acts of audition re-
volve. Listening, in short, will be impaired.
Much of the substance of sermons is drawn from those pieces of text that form the
common stock of cultural wisdom: Quranic verses, ahadTth, biographies of the
Prophet, accounts of the lives of early Muslims, and various traditional story genres
that elaborate on these primary sources. Sermon listeners come to the sermon already
familiar with many of these narratives, though sermons are also one of the contexts
where new ones are learned. As with storytelling in other cultural contexts, the listen-
ing-pleasure of such narratives does not reside in the presentation of something en-
tirely new, but in the effective and stirring performance of a known account, one rein-
terpreted and revised through its retelling in a new narrative context.
31
Often while we
were listening to a tape, say on the signs that precede and indicate the arrival of the
Day of Judgment, one of the young men would note with interest and satisfaction that
he had never before heard a particular detail mentioned by the khatTb, such as the
blue eye of the Antichrist or the sun turning red. One man I worked with, Sayf, would
on occasion tell me with surprise and skepticism about a particular rendition of the
eschaton recounted by the khatTb at his mosque during the Friday sermon. A few
times, when the issue had really piqued his curiosity, he checked a book on the sub-
ject or asked the shaykh in his mosque if what he heard were true.
As the sermon listeners of my study visibly demonstrated in explaining the ser-
mons to me, knowledge of these Islamic narrative forms consists not simply in the
ability to recite a given text, but also in performing its emotional, gestural, and kinesthetic
contours, the bodily conditions of the text as memory. While listening to taped ser-
mons with me, they would often interrupt with comments and gestures intended to
help me understand the particular hadTth or story being recounted by the khatTb,
sometimes stopping the tape to elaborate in more detail or introduce relevant pas-
sages from the Quran or other traditional textual sources. They all brought a common
expressive-gestural repertoire to their explanations. Thus, in the context of recounting
a hadTth, the narrowness of the grave (a common sermon topic) was expressed by a
drawing up of the shoulders; the exit of the soul from the neck of a good man was dis-
tinguished from that of an infidel by the smoothness of the hand movement tracing the
passage and the relaxed muscles of the face and hand, tightened and contorted in the
case of the infidel; encounters with respected Muslim figures in heaven were accom-
panied by the joyful relaxation of the chest and the upward glance of delight. The
events surrounding Judgment Day, a very common sermon topic for which many khu-
taba' have produced extensive cassette series (drawn either from sermons or mosque
lessons),
32
have a strong gestural component: grasping of the book of one's deeds
from above the right or left shoulder, the testifying of the individual parts of one's
body as to the deeds they have committed, the binding of the hands by the guards of
hell. Although these stories have a striking visual intensity, insomuch as they are
rarely given representation within visual media (e.g., painting, sculpture, television),
their most visible aspect lies in the gestures and emotional expressions that accom-
pany their verbal performance.
The stock of Islamic narrative forms that provide the raw material for many ser-
mons also has a strong bilateralism, each gestural text having its right and left side
variants, the former always associated with moral probity in accord with classical Is-
lamic traditions. Thus, the angel that counts one's good deeds sits on the right shoul-
der, the one counting evil deeds on the left; virtuous people will take the book of
deeds from their right on Judgment Day as they stand before God, sinners from the
left. The positive valence given to the right side within Islamic societies extends to a
vast range of activities, a pattern scholars have frequently noted of other societies as
well (see Hertz 1909; Needham 1973). This includes devotional acts such as ablu-
tions and prayer, where each movement is specified in terms of the bilateral axis: the
Quran is held only with the right hand; one looks first to the right after completing
prayer; each body part is washed first with the right hand then with the left for ablu-
tions. All sorts of mundane daily actions also show right and left organization: enter-
ing the house with the right foot but the bathroom with the left, washing the teeth of a
corpse only with your right hand, and so forth. This bilateral training of the body and
the repertoires of gesture, movement, and speech learned in accord with such a cod-
ing are further conditions shaping the sensibilities required for ethical sermon listen-
ing inasmuch as the oral texts presuppose such knowledge.
sermon reception and ethical sedimentation
As should now be clear, sermon oratory recruits the body of the listener in multi-
ple ways. Beyond its referential content, the sermon can be seen as a technique for the
training of the body's gestures and affects, its physiological textures and colorations, its
rhythms and styles of expression. In addition to moral lessons, the stories impart ethi-
cal habits and the organization of sensory and motor skills necessary for inhabiting
the world in a manner considered to be appropriate for Muslims by those with whom I
worked. In learning the many performances involved in a sermon, such as extracting
the soul of a sinner with a labored and trembling gesture of the hand rising above the
neck, one acquires the affective-gestural experiences that make possiblein the view
of the sermon listeners I knewthe practices, modes of sociability, and attitudinal
repertoires underlying a devout Islamic community. The task may be compared to
that of an actor who, when playing the part of King Lear, must hone the strained gait,
the movement of the hands, the manner of labored breathing, and the contortions of
the face that express the tortured soul of one so betrayed. Note that I am not referring
to the symbolic coding of the body, the attribution of meaning to its surfaces, move-
ments, and speech. Rather, it is more like what rhetoricians call "attitude," a kind of
"nonself-referential mode of awareness" not reducible to mental states or symbolic
processes.
33
Notably, the young men I knew in Cairo did not always agree with each other in
regard to the truth status of some of the accounts commonly found in sermons. It was
common, for example, that one person would refer to a narrative element (such as the
throne of God) as a symbol (ramz or kinSya), while another would claim it as "literally
real" (haqJqT, mish maja~zf) though unknowably so (bila kaif). Sayf, whom I mentioned
above, would often describe those parts of a sermon he understood to be somewhat
far-fetched as "metaphors": for example, the writing of the word infidel on the fore-
head of the Antichrist, or the blackening of the heart that follows from sin. Other men,
on the other hand, as well as most of the khutaba' themselves, insisted that these were
statements of literal truth. In some instances, a person would not know the meaning of
some of the key terms used by the khatTb. Yet, despite these differences of opinion and
comprehension, all of the young men I worked with would mimetically represent the
narratives from which these elements were drawn in more or less the same way, in-
cluding the corresponding facial and postural expressions of fear, delight, or tranquil-
ity. Not to say that these differences of interpretation are insignificant. Indeed, argu-
ments about the ontological status of Quranic references have been extremely
consequential throughout Islamic history. What I am pointing to here is that, beneath
the level of expressed belief and opinion, those I knew who participated in the fashion
of sermon listening shared a common substrate of embodied dispositions of the sort I
have described as instrumental to the task of sermon audition. It is these ethical dispo-
sitions, I argue, more than a commitment to a normative rationality, that constitute the
common ground on which the discourses of tradition come to be articulated, the
moral "reflexes" that make arguments about the status of Quranic references mean-
ingful and worthy of engagement.
Of course, in the moment of listening to a sermon, one does not act out all of the
gestures and movements corresponding to the particular account being narrated by
the khatTb, nor vocalize each and every response solicited. Rather, and this is an im-
portant part of my argument, an experiential knowledge of the gestural and emotive
elements of the story constitutes a condition for its ethical reception. That is to say,
one is capable of hearing the sermon in its full ethical sense only to the extent one has
cultivated the particular modes of sensory responsiveness that that discourse de-
mands. Collingwood makes this point in regard to aesthetic appreciation: people hear
the sounds, colors, movements, and emotions that composers have written into their
music only insofar as they have an earand a bodytrained in the sensibilities the
composers bring to bear on their work (1966:146-151). One does not hear "the raw
sound" and then elaborate upon it an imaginary experience of motion and color. One
simply "hears" the emotion and color. The sensibilities that allow one to do so are not
something purely cognitive, but are rooted in the experience of the body in its en-
tirety, as a complex of culturally and historically honed sensory modalities.^
4
The cassette-sermon listeners I knew would frequently distinguish between a
kind of hearing that engages only the mind (al-
l
aql) and one that stems from the heart
(al-qalb). This distinction is no simple metaphorical conceit. Instead, listeners are
pointing to two contrasting modes of sensory organization, one purely intellectual,
the other ethical and grounded in Islamic disciplinary practices. In this sense, the ten-
dency to speak of hearing as something achieved with the ears does not simply reflect
a physiological datum, but a variety of historically grounded assumptions embedded
in a particular concept of hearing, assumptions embodied in the cultural practices
that organize and give form to a specific type of sensory experience (see I Mich
1993:39). To listen to an Islamic cassette-sermon with the heart means to bring to
bear on it those sensory capacities honed within disciplinary contexts that allow one
to "hear" (soulfully, emotionally, physically) what would escape listeners who ap-
plied only their "ears" or al-
(
aql (minds). At the same time, sermon audition is one of
the means by which these capacities are developed and deepened.
The kind of ethical skills learned and strengthened by the men I knew through
taped-sermon audition (among other practices) are precisely of the kind that worried
Plato in The Republic (1990, trans.). In his view, performances that engage an audience
in ways that bypass a reflective, philosophical understanding such as poetry, theater,
or song (or, in this instance, sermons)have a power to impact and mold individuals,
which renders such arts especially dangerous. As a modern interpreter of Plato notes:
The problem with uncontrolled mimesis, as Plato sees it, is not just the character of the
likenesses it brings into our presence. It is how these likenesses gradually insinuate
themselves into the soul through the eyes and ears, without our being aware of it. . . . It
is as if eyes and ears offer painter and poet entry to a relatively independent cognitive
apparatus, associated with the senses, through which mimetic images can bypass our
knowledge and infiltrate the soul. [Burnyeat 1998:8)
Recognizing the power of such arts to shape moral character, Plato advocated
the prohibition of performances that depicted human qualities not corresponding to
the Athenian virtues he saw as foundational to the ideal city. Later Christian thinkers,
in contrast, emphasized the positive contribution of such embodied forms of knowl-
edge. Arguing along lines much closer to those suggested by the men with whom I
worked, Christian theologians from Aquinas to Luther to John Henry Newman have
asserted that a certain disposition of the passions is necessary in order to assess the va-
lidity of claims for the truth of scripture; that virtues such as gratitude, humility, and
love of God have an epistemic value, allowing one to evaluate evidence for the
authority of the Bible in the proper light (Wainwright 1995:50-52). This point should
not be confused with a more common argument of modern Christian origin. Christian
thinkers like Kierkegard and William James claim that reason alone is not enough to
compel someone to believe in scripture and that it thus falls to the passions to bridge
this gap (Wainwright 1995:51-52). Today, when Christians speak about religious be-
lief as a practice of the heart more than the rational mind, it is usually this modern
view they are expressing.
conclusion
The set of ethical concepts most central to contemporary sermon practice in
Egypt, such as itmi'nan (tranquillity), khauf (fear), inshirah (opening of the heart), and
khushG* (humility) convey strong physiological and kinesthetic shades of meaning.
My analysis of these terms has not emphasized their semantic dimensions but, rather,
their disciplinary conditions, the techniques of audition whereby listeners train their
bodies in the performance of these ethical modes of being and perceiving. This process
involves more than the cultivation of sensibilities: these concepts are linked to actions
such that a condition of their full embodiment is the performance of certain pious
acts. Fear and humility do not simply incline one to pray, read the Quran, and obey
one's parents; they, in a certain sense, entail it.
This can be clarified with an example: the shahada, or testimony of faith. Accord-
ing to doctrinal sources, the uttering of the shahada"There is no God but the One
Cod, and Muhammed is His apostle"is the minimal sufficient condition for becom-
ing a Muslim. There is considerable argument, however, over what precisely is en-
tailed in making the utterance. Ibn Taymiyya, a 14th-century theologian whose doc-
trinal writings have had considerable influence on contemporary Islamic thought
(especially among those currents represented by the khutaba' in my study), argued
that to utter the shahada without fulfilling the prescribed duties of Islam, such as
prayer, is not to have truly uttered the shahada (Ibn Taymiyya 1976). Prayer, in other
words, was understood by Ibn Taymiyya as a felicity condition for the illocutionary
act of the testimony of faith.
Compare this argument with one frequently made by the contemporary khatTb
Muhammed Hassan, an orator who often draws from Ibn Taymiyya's work in his sermons
and writings. In an interview with the newspaper al-Liwa' al-lslamT, Hassan advises:
Every Muslim must enact a practical shahada [shah3da 'amaliyya] on the ground of
our lived reality after they have pronounced a verbal shahada [shahada qauliyya] with
their tongues. The smallest libraries today are full of books and [sermon and mosque
lesson] cassettes, but this theoretical project does not equal the value of the ink which
it was written with until we transform it into a practical reality and a way of life. [al-LiwS*
al-lsl3mri 996:3]
Hassan's use of the terms theory and practice would seem to invoke a sort of Pla-
tonic division between a world of ideas and a world of action, and thus diverge
sharply from Ibn Taymiyya's manner of joining the two. Such an interpretation of his
remark would be in keeping with theories of modernization that envision the privati-
zation of religion in the form of individual belief, a state of inner, personal commit-
ment without any necessary implications for the organization of social life. Although
Hassan's comments need to be understood in relation to the impact of secularism on
Islam in Egypt, this should not exhaust our framing of it. For one, the distinction be-
tween theory and practice employed here has more to do with the status accorded to
scientific language today, than with a necessary conceptual shift in sermon practice.
Both Muslim khutaba' and Christian preachers throughout history have dressed their
sermons in the latest scientific finery in order to win recognition and assent from their
audiences. Also, note that while Hassan distinguishes between words (al-qaul) and
practices (al-
l
amal), he locates the shahadafundamentally, a speech acton both
sides of the divide, thereby complicating any notion of a clear division. That is to say,
the shahada continues to connote for Hassan, as it did for Ibn Taymiyya, a total way of
being and acting. As a khatTb, his task is to forge a discourse that roots this unity of
speech, emotion, and action in the hearts of his listeners. As I have argued here, the
disciplinary exercises within which cassette sermons are employed presuppose pre-
cisely this understanding of moral action.
In undertaking the practices of cassette discipline I have described here, the ser-
mon listeners I know sought to reconstruct their own knowledge, emotions, and sensi-
bilities in accord with their models of Islamic moral personhood. I have chosen to
analyze this practice, less in terms of its role in the dissemination of rules of conduct
or the indoctrination of politico-religious subjects than in its relation to the formation
of a sensorium: the visceral orientations enabling of the particular form of life to
which those who undertake the practice aspire. Practices of this kind do not impart
mastery of a specific cultural activity, but perceptual habits that incline one toward
certain acts, discourses, and gestures. As opposed to the sort of technical skills ac-
quired in the course of learning, say, the game of chessskills that inhabit a highly
circumscribed arena of practicethe ethical capacities cultivated by the men with
whom I worked were applicable across many contexts and social domains. They
opened up what Merleau-Ponty refers to as the "antepredicative unity of the world
and of our life" (1962:xviii), rendering this world as a space of moral action and the
actor as a moral being.
In light of the analysis presented here, I suggest a reconsideration of traditions,
not simply in terms of doctrines or discourses, but as grounded on perceptual
skillsprediscursive modes of appraisalshaped within practices for which lan-
guage and discourse are essential, but not reducible to these. I do not refer here to a
general model of enculturationthe idea that in inhabiting a culture or class position
one acquires (as it were, unconsciously) the sensibilities that characterize that culture
or socioeconomic locationbut to self-reflexive practices specifically geared to the
inculcation of perceptual habits. In speaking of such embodied capacities as
grounded in and sustaining of the traditions of Islam, however, I am not suggesting
that they constitute a universal and unchanging fundament beneath the actual histori-
cal and contemporary heterogeneity of Islamic societies. Clearly, the styles of narra-
tion and argument employed by contemporary khutaba', as well as the spaces and
times within which the practice of audition occurs, have been shaped by social and
political modernityby the institutional structures and practices of national citizen-
ship and global market capitalism. The perceptual capacities listeners seek to culti-
vate are mediated, on the one hand, by functional possibilities of cassette technology,
such as mobility, replay, and discontinuous listening; and on the other, by the discur-
sive conventions of the modern print and televisual-based public sphere. In this sense,
the sensibilities honed through this practice do not inhabit and reproduce a static his-
torical edifice, ever identical with itself. As Talal Asad has argued, to conceive of tra-
dition in this way is inadequate in the case of Islam: "An Islamic discursive tradition is
simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Is-
lamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present. . . .
It will be the practitioners' conceptions of what is apt performance, and of how the
past is related to present practices, that will be crucial for tradition, not the apparent
repetition of an old form" (1986:14-15). What makes the practice of cassette-sermon
audition part of an Islamic tradition is not its exact conformity to a fixed model, but
the fact that, in its contemporary organization, assessment, and performance, the
practice relies on authoritative discourses and historical exemplars embedded in that
tradition (Asad 1993:210-211,1999:189-190).
My argument here is that, beyond the discursive practices of historical articula-
tion emphasized in Asad's remark, anthropologists should interrogate traditions in
terms of continuities of disciplined sensibility and the practices by which these are
created and revised across changing historical contexts. My suggestion, in other
words, is that Benjamin's analysis of how the perceptual regime ushered in by moder-
nity renders traditional worlds silent and invisiblein short, imperceptible (Benjamin
1968b)and needs be complimented by a recognition of the way in which practi-
tioners of a tradition, through innovation and adaptation, attempt to cultivate and sus-
tain the sensory conditions (the modes of attention and inattention) that make that tra-
dition viable within modern contexts (cf. Seremetakis 1994:1-22). In "The Storyteller/'
Benjamin (1968b) argues that the particular coordination of "the soul, eye, and hand"
that underlies the craft of storytelling has been lost with the disappearance of artisanal
modes of production and their replacement by forms of labor that do not entail or en-
gender such affective-gestural skills (1968b:108). Although Benjamin is clearly cor-
rect to point to such processes of sensory erosion, I would caution against the ten-
dencyencouraged by the concept of modernityto interpret these as instances
within a totalizing historical process, as disparate manifestations of a singular tele-
ological development. As scholars have increasingly recognized, an account of mod-
ernity can no longer be told simply in terms of the destruction of the old and its re-
placement by the new; modern lives have been shaped by the maintenance of
continuities with past practice, as well as by revivals, reworkings, and rediscoveries,
including rediscoveries of buried sensory experiences (Asad 1993; Chakrabarty 2000;
Seremetakis 1994). One might note, in this regard, the decision by an increasing
number of Catholic churches in the United States to return to a mass in Latin, a lan-
guage that most parishioners clearly cannot "understand," or, for that matter, the re-
embracing of the "phonics method" for teaching children to read and the negative re-
assessment of the "whole-language method/' which emphasizes "the meaning of
words over their sounds" and had been heralded earlier as a more progressive re-
placement for the phonics approach (New York Times 1998:1). These resuscitated
practices shape the perceptual skills by which people live and act.
As in the practice described here, the possibilities for such revival are often
rooted in modernity itself, in the social, political, economic, and technological ele-
ments that define the modern. Thus, to cite a rather obvious instance, cassette tech-
nology makes the acquisition of a kind of traditional knowledge possible within the
times and spaces of modern urban existence, one where the sort of long-term study,
immersion, and apprenticeship characteristic of Islamic pedagogical practices has be-
come inaccessible and impractical to most people. To speak of "the modern" as an
enabling condition for "traditional practices" may seem to rub against the grain of
(still) normative understandings of these concepts.
35
The idea of a distinct temporal
structure that binds together the constellation of modern elements gives way to a frac-
tured historical space composed of heterogeneous practices, objects, and structures
of varying temporal determinations. As the example presented here suggests, this plu-
rality can be productively explored not simply in terms of languages, discourses, or
practices but also through the disciplined sensibilities against which these become ar-
ticulable.
notes
Acknowledgments. This article is based on fieldwork carried out in Egypt between 1994
and 1996 with the support of dissertation grants from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthro-
pological Research and the Social Science Research Council. Additional funding was provided
by a Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Write-up Fellowship and a Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fel-
lowship at the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto. An earlier version of this
article was presented at the "Uncommon Senses" conference in Montreal, Canada, April 2000.
I would like to thank Talal Asad, Janice Boddy, Michael Lambek, Saba Mahmood, and Anne
Meneley, as well as four anonymous AE reviewers, for their comments on an earlier draft.
1. Admittedly, biological studies of sensory perception may be germane to a discussion of
some of the issues I address in this article; however, inasmuch as my concern here is with the
senses as historical (and not biological) objects, models from that discipline will be of limited
use to my analysis.
2. Statistics on the actual number of tapes sold in Egypt are generally unavailable, and the
figures sometimes suggested by journalists are extremely unreliable. My own rough estimate
based on data collected in interviews with company owners would be around one million
commercially produced tapes per year and another one to two million produced and sold
illegally. That being said, the fact that most of the tapes in circulation are fourth generation cop-
ies reproduced noncommercially makes any real approximation nearly impossible.
3. For an interesting discussion of women's participation in the Islamic Revival in Egypt,
see Mahmood 2001.
4. The most interesting and comprehensive anthropological works on mosque sermons in
the Middle East are those of Antoun 1989 and Gaffney 1994.
5. The reference here is to the Islamic Group, al-Jama'a al-lslamiyya, a militant Islamist or-
ganization in Egypt.
6. Padwick (1996) provides a useful discussion of this point in relation to Muslim devo-
tional practice. My analysis of the role of disciplinary practice in the formation of religious vir-
tues is greatly indebted to Asad's treatment of this topic (1993:55-124).
7. Al-TauhTd is put out by Jama'a Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya, a nongovernmental
preaching and welfare organization that administers a vast network of mosques in Egypt.
8. On Islamic moral philosophy, see Fakhry 1983; Izutsu 1966,1985; Sherif 1975.
9. All translations of the Quran are from Asad 1980. Numbers refer to sura verses.
10. Thus, the first verse of the chapter al-Sharh"The Opening-Up of the Heart"begins:
"Have we not opened up thy heart, and lifted from thee the burden that had weighed so heavily
on thy back?"
11. My argument here bears a certain similarity to that put forward by a number of cogni-
tive linguists. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) suggest that metaphor, as a process by which people
characterize one domain of meaning in terms of another, is fundamental to everyday discourse,
and not simply a creative literary device. In later writings, these authors argue that such cross-
domain mapping involves what they refer to as "image schemata," cognitive constructs
grounded in repeated patterns of bodily experience that are then applied to other regions of dis-
course and experience (Johnson 1987; Lakoff and Turner 1989). The sense of verticality, for ex-
ample, rooted in myriad activities and perceptions such as the feeling of standing upright, the
activity of climbing stairs, viewing tall objects such as trees, and so forth provides a conceptual
metaphor for other domains, such as emotions (as when we say we are feeling "up" or "down"),
or health (e.g., "top shape"), or music (e.g., a "high note" or an "ascending scale"). A useful
summary of this work is found in Zbikowski 1998. I depart from these authors in my focus on
specific methods of inculcation through which such perceptual patterning is learned.
12. Collingwood (1966) came to the question of reception in the course of his study on art.
Indeed, he sought in this work to ground a universal definition of art precisely on the basis of an
artwork's ability to produce what he called "an imagined experience of total activity"
(1966:151). Although I have found this part of his argument rather unconvincing, his work
nonetheless opens a set of useful questions that are rarely raised within most discussions of re-
ception.
13. The phenomenon of synaesthesia has been addressed from a number of disciplinary
perspectives, including medical, psychological, aesthetic, and linguistic. For introductions to
this field that are particularly relevant to anthropological inquiry, see Classen 1993 and Marks
1978.
14. Collingwood makes a distinction between "imaginary motor sensations" and "actual
motor sensations," whi ch I do not think is useful for the context of sermon audition (1966:147).
As I describe below, the responses of the people I worked with to sermon speech fell along a
continuum from those without any perceivable component to those easily noted by an observer.
At one time, fear woul d be visible in an informant's posture and expression, and at other times
not, despite his claim to be feeling fear. This may be usefully understood, I would argue, not via
a distinction between actual and imaginary experiences, but between different kinds of intensi-
ties or degrees of experiential involvement.
15. See Baxandall 1988 for an excellent discussion of this point in regard to the reception
of works of art during the Renaissance.
16. Such intentional content is not something mental, located in the consciousness of the
actor, as Husserl (1931) erroneously asserted. Rather, it is internal to the habitual activities (in-
cluding perception) that, with repeated practice, people come to perform "naturally" or "un-
thinkingly." As Dreyfus and Dreyfus note, in commenting on the work of Merleau-Ponty:
In general, if the expert responds to each situation as it comes along in a way that has proven
appropriate in the past, his behavior wi l l achieve the past objectives without his having to
have these objectives as goals in his conscious or unconscious mind. Thus, although com-
portments must have logical conditions of satisfaction, i.e., they can succeed or fail, there
need be no mentalistic intentional content, i.e., no representations of the goal. [1999:113]
1 7. Collingwood makes this point in regard to habits of speech: "If there were people who
never talked unless they were standing stiffly at attention, it woul d be because that gesture was
expressive of a permanent emotional habit which they felt obliged to express concurrently with
any other emotion they might happen to be expressing" (1966:246-247).
18. There is now a substantial body of work within anthropology that explores the cultural
patterning of emotion. Useful works in this regard include Feld 1982; Irving 1990; Kleinman et
al. 1997; Lutz and Abu-Lughod 1990.
19. As Augustine argues:
If, however, the hearers require to be roused rather than instructed, in order that they may
be diligent to do what they already know, and to bring their feelings into harmony with the
truths they admit, greater vigor of speech is needed. Here entreaties and reproaches, ex-
hortations and upbraidings, and all other means of rousing the emotions, are necessary.
[1973:496]
20. Thus, early modern Christian preachers, informed by a moral psychology that saw rea-
son alone as incapable of producing action without the assistance of the passions, geared much
of their preaching to the governance of the passions, a task that included not just the modulation
of emotional intensities but also the linking of those emotions to their proper objects. See Brin-
ton 1992 for a discussion of this issue in relation to 18th-century British sermons.
21. For discussion of emotion in relation to poetic practice in Arabic contexts, see Abu-
Lughod 1986 and Caton 1990.
22. The rhetorical techniques of tarhTb (from the verb rahhab, to terrify, frighten) and wa'z
(from wa'az, to warn or admonish) are employed in order to instill fear in the heart of listens so
as to steer them toward correct practice. They are the subject of an extensive literature, both
classical and contemporary, a body of work of key importance to the art of preaching.
23. These three terms, futOr, sukOn, and humod have strong postural and kinesthetic em-
bodiments. FutOr in particular expresses the sense of a slack, listless body. (My informants
woul d slouch in their chairs to depict this state.) It is also a word commonly used to designate
what my informants saw as the contemporary state of powerlessness among Muslim societies.
24. Of course, both an obedience to rules and a measure of belief in doctrine may be in-
strumental in the cultivation of these capacities.
25. When listening together with others in a group, it was not uncommon that one person
woul d criticize another for being insufficiently attentive to a sermon, slumping too far back in a
chair, smoking during the audition, or failing to respond properly when the Prophet's name was
pronounced. This, of course, does not imply that all who participate in cassette-sermon listen-
ing bring to it these ethical motivations or apply themselves with seriousness and concentration
on every occasion a tape is used.
26. Although these schools had declined in number and attendance with the rise of obligatory
secular education for children in Egypt, they have witnessed something of a comeback, especially
in poorer neighborhoods, in the context of the Islamic Revival of recent decades. For an excel-
lent analysis of contemporary education in Egypt, see Starrett 1998.
27. The most interesting works in English on this topic are Denny 1980; Gade 1999; Gra-
ham 1985, 1987; and Nelson 1985. One of the most influential classical Muslim treatments of
this topic is that of A. H. al-Ghazali (1984).
28. The verse cited is from the chapter al-lsrd' (The Night Journey), pp. 109. The brack-
eted sections are in the original translation.
29. This is frequently marked grammatically through use of the collective plural, as in "We
praise Hi m, and we rely on Hi m, we ask His forgiveness," one of the more common sermon
openings.
30. In her study of Islamic devotional practices, Padwick describes itmi'nan (or tumanJna)
as the state of physical and spiritual stillness that is achieved by way of repentance. As she notes:
"TumanJna, then, for all its stillness, tranquillus tranquillans, is no drowsy peace, but a gift of
grace that can only come to hearts ready to make the response of faith and costly discipline"
(1996:123).
31. Modern theater audiences who go to Shakespearean plays, or concert audiences al-
ready thoroughly familiar with the compositions they choose to hear performed, participate in a
not dissimilar manner: despite a foreknowledge of the story or musical score, the audience
evaluates the quality of the performance in terms of its ability to evoke in them a range of emo-
tional and intellectual experiences. On the subject of storytelling, see Tedlock 1983 and
Zumthor1990.
32. One of the most popular is a series of mosque lessons by Omar Abd al-Kafi entitled D3r
al-Akhira (The Hereafter), consisting of 33 tapes.
33. I borrow the expression from Dreyfus who, commenting on Heidegger, notes:
"Heidegger wants to show that we are not normally thematically conscious of our ongoing eve-
ryday activity, and that where thematic self-referential consciousness does arise, it presupposes
a non-thematic, non-self-referential mode of awareness" (1994:58).
34. The French anthropologist Marcel Mauss made a rather similar observation in his
work on body techniques:
I believe precisely that at the bottom of all our mystical states there are body techniques
which we have not studied, but which were studied fully in China and India, even in very
remote periods. This socio-psycho-biological study should be made. I think that there are
necessary biological means for entering into "communion with God." [1979:22)
This aspect of Mauss's work has been most usefully elaborated by Asad 1993:75-77.
35. As should be clear, I do not refer here to the sort of historical sleight-of-hand by which
ancient roots are claimed for a practice that is actually of recent origin, what Hobsbawm and
Ranger (1988) refer to as an "invented tradition."
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Charles Hirschkind
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chirschk@hotma il. com

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