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

The Ethics of Listening: Cassette-Sermon Audition in Contemporary Egypt Author(s): Charles Hirschkind Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Aug., 2001), pp. 623-649 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3095066 . Accessed: 05/01/2011 10:05Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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the ethics of listening:cassette-sermon auditionin contemporary Egypt

CHARLES HIRSCHKIND University of Wisconsin, Madison In this article, I focus on the practice of listening to tape-recorded sermons among contemporaryMuslims in Egyptas an exercise of ethical self-discipline. I analyze this practice in its relation to the formation of a sensorium: the visceral 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 reconstruct their own knowledge, emotions, and sensibilities in accord with models of Islamic moral personhood. Normative models of moral personhood grounded in Islamic textual and practical traditions provide a point of reference for the task of ethical self-improvement. [embodiment, senses, disciplinary practice, reception, media, sermons, Islam] Among the many lines of inquiry given impetus by Walter Benjamin's rich oeuvre, one of the most fruitfulfor anthropologists has been an interrogationinto both the history of the senses and the structuresof sensory perception that underlie particular forms of historical experience. Benjamin's excavation of histories of sensory experience 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 particularmethodological sensibility-a 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 cinematic techniques on perception. Specifically, he argues that the particularexperienof tial quality that grounds the uniqueness and authenticity (what he calls "aura") historical 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 upheld the knowledge of such authentic objects can no longer maintain the practical and perceptual conditions that sustain them. Benjamin furtherexplores this process in "TheStoryteller"(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 interrogationof 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 ratherfrom the perspective of a cultural practice through? American Ethnologist28(3):623-649. Copyright 2001, American Anthropological Association.

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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 exploring such a practice, I show how traditions presuppose, and provide the means to produce, the particularsensory 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 importantand ongoing task of rethinkingthe decidedly stubbornopposition between traditionand modernity. My specific focus here is on the practice of listening to tape-recorded sermons among contemporary Muslims in Egyptas an exercise of ethical self-discipline. During a period of a year and a half, I worked with a group of young men in Cairo for whom sermon audition was a regularactivity. I also took lessons on the art of preaching 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 alIslamiyya). In what follows, I explore the fashion of cassette-sermon audition as a disciplinary 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 interdependency. 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 structurefundamental sensory experiences. Itshould be clear, therefore, that in referringto senses, I am not indicating the object studied within the discipline of human biology.' As I describe, proper sermon audition demands a particular affective-volitional responsiveness from the listener-what I will call an ethical performance-as a condition for "understanding"sermonic speech, while simultaneously deepening an individual'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 audito tion to be proportionate the depth of moralsensibilitythey were able to bringto the act. Insofaras my exploration of the disciplinary shaping of sensory experience overlaps 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 patternsof behavior consonant with, and sustaining of, the existing distributions of political and economic power in society-what 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 socioeconomic power, however, Bourdieu leaves unaddressed the extent to which habitus is

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also generatedand molded by otherhistories,those embodiedin a community's exmodes of practiceand association.A habitusmay outlive the materialcondiisting tions thatgave riseto it by renewing,reinforcing, adapting practicesof social and the and individual thatsustainand anchorit. Such continuitydoes not reflect discipline of the durability embodieddispositions,as Bourdieu suggests(1990:62),but the variof community-grounded resources a groupis able to bringto the taskof mainthat ety Thesetraditions continuallyrevisedas they adare tainingsociallyvaluedtraditions. to changingsets of material of is conditions,butthe direction the adjustments also just determinedfromwithinthe traditions amongotherthings,the disciplinary by, practices throughwhich culturally valued modes of perception,appraisal, action are and inculcatedand self-reflexively renewed.As Robert Cantwellnotes in his essay on ethnomimesis:"No humancommunity wholly controlthe circumstances which it can in has its existence, howevervigorouslyit may resistchange;but it can sustainits own and undernew, perhapsalien conditions" sociality,deliberately oftenrevivalistically, (1999:226). Practices such as the sermonauditionI describehere inculcatedispositionsand modes of sensoryexperiencethat, ratherthan being determinedby the "objective conditions" that Bourdieu privilegesas the site of historical agency, impactand alter those conditions.To explorehistoricalprocessesof this kind,it is necessaryto avoid the residualeconomismthat,as in Bourdieu's the work,restricts conditionsrelevant of to the formation habitusto those ultimately reducibleto distributions economic of and politicalpower.Inshort,the objectivist of thrust Bourdieu's needs to be argument counteredby Benjamin's reminder the objectsthatconstitutemodernity emthat also bed different histories-historiesthe objectiveforce of which will always be sensory mediatedby traditions social practice(Benjamin of 1968a). cassette discipline Since the 1970s, cassette-recorded sermonsof popularIslamicpreachers(khuhave become one of the most widely consumed media forms taba', sing. khatrb) (Hirschkind 1995). 2001; Starrett among lower-middleand middle-classEgyptians Tapesare sold outsideof mosques,on the sidewalksin frontof trainand bus stations, or in bookstores the throughout city. They may be listenedto practically anywhere: while operatinga cafe or barbershop, while drivinga bus or taxi, or at home with one's familyafterreturning fromwork. At the time of my fieldwork, Cairowas home to six licensedcompaniesthatproduced and distributed threehavingadditionaldistribution sermons,the largest taped centersoutsideCairo,primarily the cities of Alexandria, in and Mansura, Suez. Inaddition to sermontapes, manyof these companiessell otheritemsassociatedwith Islamistsocial trends,such as headscarves modestdressstylesforwomen, the long and white shirts(jalabiyya) worn by Egyptian and men, perfumes scentedoils, commonly fromIslamist Eachtape sold incense, in additionto booksand pamphlets publishers. commerciallyin this mannerhas been approvedby the Councilon IslamicResearch the al-Azhar (Majma'al-Buhuth al-lslamiyya), branchof the government-run mosque of chargedwith ensuringthe conformity all commerciallysold Islamictexts and restandards.The Council frecordings with a set of orthodoxand state-censorship quently requiresthat certain sections of a sermon or mosque lesson be removed, eitheron the grounds theydeviatefromacceptedstandards Islamic that of argumentation or thatthey addresspoliticalissuesdeemed too sensitiveby the current government. In additionto the commerciallyproducedand marketed tapes, there are an number arerecorded, that equalor greater copied,andsoldby small-scale entrepreneurs

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without commercial licenses, contracts with khutaba', 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 precise 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 selfregulated 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 practiced in the evenings, after they had returnedfrom work or school. As opposed to the communal sermon on Fridayat the mosque, cassette audition takes place without ablutions (wudc'), the act of cleansing the body that worshippers undertake before prayer at the mosque. Importantly, most tape users attend the Friday mosque ceremony and consider the tapes to be an extension of it, not an alternative.4 Sermon tapes affordthe listener a type of relaxation that also enriches knowledge and purifies the soul. As Ahmed, a recent university graduate now working in an aluminum plant, commented to me: once and we playeda tape of [the when we were sittingat Muhammed's Remember This Muhammed Hassan,you felt relaxed[istirkhs']? is whatcan happen,this khatTb] that the [itmi'nan], is the opening of the heart [sadr,literally,"chest"], tranquility makesyou wantto pray,readthe Quran,makesyou wantto get closerto God,to think moreaboutreligion[din].When you listento a sermon,it helps you put aside all of that aboutworkand moneyby reminding of God.Youremember you you yourworries and will be judgedandthatfillsyou withfearandmakesyou feel humility repentance. of whatit requires you, so you won'tmakeerrors. teachesyou aboutIslam, Theshaykh Husam, who worked in a small store that sold sermon tapes and religious literature, explained the utility of tape audition this way: Day, Tapes are alwaysof benefit,whetheron the tormentsof the grave,Judgment You learnthingsyou didn't death, on the most dangerousof sins, or the headscarf. health[biyashfona]. Listening know,andthisis useful.Andthey restore to [moral] you what you've to a tape of a sermon you've already heard is a way of reinforcing so the learned,strengthening fearof God's punishments, you won't commita moral Thereare some people who Thisleaves your heartcalm [mutma'in]. error[ma'asf]. do what they should.Manyothers,however,they realizethatthe devil has got just to intotheirheads [yuwaswasu, "whispers them"],and is makingthemthink literally, themis actuallygood [halal].By listening, thatwhat is evil [haram] they strengthen selves againstthis, as it getsthemto prayand readthe Quran.Thenthey beginto reThe gretwhatthey havedone andask God forforgiveness. tape, in otherwords,helps the themto fightagainst 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: heardthis tape by who is religiousbut [does not belongto the] Jama'a, My brother, mademe him.He immediately FawziSa'idand it reallystruck [thepopular preacher] he stoppedsmokingand usingfoul a copy. He decided he had to change his life, so language and startedto go to the mosque and pray. Now he is always talking about religion,alwaystryingto get his friendsto comportthemselvesmore piously.


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Manyof his old friendsdon'twantto be aroundhimany morebecausethey get tired of his talk. Every time I go to his house now, we listento a tape. I'mnot as into it as muchas he is, butIdo feel it makesme thinkaboutimportant thingsIwould forget.5 Forsermon 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 transformationof 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 Egyptrelated 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-improvement 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 corroded by sin. A person with a "rustedheart,"as one man put it, is precisely one whose ability to hear has been impaired. An author, writing in al-Tauhrd7a popular religious digest often read and cited by the sermon listeners of my study, likens this to a shortcircuit in the wiring that prevents an electrical current from reaching the lamp it is supposed to illuminate. Drawing out the metaphor, he suggests: TheQuranis effectivein itself,justas the electricalcurrent. the Quranis present[to If your ears],and you have lost its effect,then it is you yourselfthat you mustblame. Maybethe conductiveelementis defective: yourheartis damagedor flawed.Maybea mistcoversyourheart,preventing frombenefiting it [intif'] fromthe Quranand being affected it.Ormaybeyou arenotlistening well, oryourheartis occupiedwithprobby lemsof money,andthinking abouthowto acquireand increaseit. [Badawi 1996a:13] Forthe 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, exhortations, 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 particular set of ethical responses, foremost among them fear (khauf),humility (khusho'), regret (nadm), repentance (tauba),and tranquility (itmi' nan or sakfna). 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, however, it will be useful to draw on some of the contemporary writings that they themselves use and frequently mention. The following discussion comes from an article published in al-Tauhrd.This article focuses on the effect of particularQuranic verses, when used by a khatTb, the moral condition of a faithful Muslim listener. Drawing on from the exegetical works of classical scholars in regardto the interpretationof a verse from the Quranic chapter entitled al-Zumar(The Throngs),the author notes: Whatis meanthere is thatwhen the truepeople of faith,the people of the eternaland theirflesh tremblesin deeply rooteddoctrinehearthe versesof warning[al-wacrd] are a fear,theirhearts filledwithdespair[inqabadat qulabuhum], violentangstshakes

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american ethnologist theirbacks [irta'adat withfearand and fara'isuhuml, theirheartsbecome intoxicated dread.Butif they then hearthe versesof mercyand forgiveness, theirflesh becomes filledwith delight[inbasatat julduhum], theirchests are opened and relaxed[inshaand their heartsare left tranquil[itma'natqulobuhum]. rahatsucbruhum], [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 (iman) when listening to a khatTb's discourse. The description is derived directly from numerous verses of the Quran depicting 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 This particularresponwhenever his messages are conveyed unto them" (al-Anfal:2).9 siveness constitutes what might be termed a Quranically tuned body and soul. This attunement, 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 involves 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 inshirahal-sadr (literally, "opening of the chest"). The experience of inshirahhas its origins in an event mentioned both in the Quran (the chapter entitled al-Sharh),'0as well as in many ahadfth (authoritativeaccounts of the Prophet's words and acts; sing. hadrth). It is recounted that on the night of Muhammed's ascension to heaven (al-lsra'),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 I visually striking image of God opening up the chest-what the khatTb studied with, Muhammed Subhi, described to me as a "surgicaloperation." In so doing, it provides the authoritative textual basis through which a particularbodily experience (inshirah) is conceptually linked to a moral state.1 As the analysis I present here seeks to demonstrate, this linkage is not simply established metaphorically, but also through discipline, the training and inculcation of sensory habits. synasthetic performance

The British philosopher R. G. Collingwood's description of the experience entailed in the reception of works of art is instructive here.'2 It has always been observed, Collingwood notes, that in listening to music or poetry people enjoy imaginary experiences completely outside the realm of sound, such as visual, tactile, kinesthetic, and olfactory experiences (1966:146-151). Thus, skilled music critics will frequently include in their descriptions of symphonic performances the colors, motions, images, and tactile impressions evoked by the work. Similarly, made of boundup withthe expressiveness the gestures the artof paintingis intimately of gesturethroughwhich a spectator a by the hand in drawing,and of the imaginary music has a similarrelation paintingappreciatesits "tactilevalues."Instrumental of of to silentmovements the larynx, gestures the player'shand,and realor imaginary 1966:243] movements,as of dancing,in the audience.[Collingwood


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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.'3 Collingwood argues that this distinction between a sensuous and an imaginary part is misleading. To become an object that can be retained and referredto, he argues, 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 consciously to particular stimuli in the course of becoming experienced or trained, and their reactions to those stimuli become patterned in accord with the particularform 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 proceeding on their own way regardless of its structure"(1966:209). Thus, the synaesthetic 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 culturally 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.15They possess a specific affective-volitional structureas a result of the practices by which one has been formed as a member of a specific community.16Moreover, while particular performances might recruit some parts of the sensorium more than other parts-as when one has been trained to attend to a very limited range of sensory experience, such as in modern academic reading-to some extent, the organ of reception remains the body in its entirety.'7 Collingwood's discussion of perception in terms of the integrated totality of the trained body has, despite obvious differences, certain parallels with recent anthropological work inspired by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1962). Forthinkers 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 people's practical engagements embody a (primarily habitual and unconscious) understanding of the world with which they are a constitutive part. Thomas Csordas, in particular, 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 discourse erects its particulardiscursive architecture, my own work has been concerned with the practical techniques (such as sermon audition) by which the bodily dispositions 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 khatib In discussing the Islamic sermon and its role in the shaping of ethical dispositions, it is importantto distinguish between a rhetorical practice of evoking or modulating the passions as a means to sway an audience toward a point of view and one

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aimed at constructing the passions in accord with a certain model. In regardto the former, 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 technique 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 context of their discussion are interdependent such that emotions only achieve their task, in other words, inproper formation through that relationship.20The khatTb's 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 Egyptiankhutaba' 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 important place within Islamic devotional practices, as a kind of emotional response appropriate 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 khatTbFawzi Sa'id, in response to a question about why he did not do more to evoke the passions of his listeners in his sermons: to Lotsof people todayjustlookforward cryingduringsermons; they feel they are beat ing cleansed, like Christians baptism.Butthe sermonthat just leads you to cry doesn'timprint uponthe heart.Itdoesn'tget people to changetheiractions.Itis only the a carefulengagement withthe texts, reading Quranand hadTth literature, through are but thatknowledgegets rootedin the heart.Notthatthe sentiments unimportant; manypeople no longerknowwhy they arecrying. One of the major concerns of the khutaba' I spoke with was that many cassettesermon 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 with contemporary preaching: of When people todaylisten,they hearaboutJudgment andthe torment hell and Day Intisha'is what you experiencewhen you they feel relievedand exalted [intisha']. of drinkalcohol and feel thatall of the pressures difficulties your life have been and lifted.Or when you heara reallybeautiful songthattouchesall of youremotionsand a Youfeel a kindof comfortand relief[tanffs], calm [rsha], kindof caa sensibilities. when I listento the QuranIfeel this tharsis[kathrasrs]: is intisha'.IfIam a Muslim, this relief.Butthingsmust not stop at this feeling,as so often happens.It mustbe transformedintopartof 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' whose intellectualist approaches succeeded in neither grabbing the attention of an audience nor stirringtheir 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


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comportment. Likemany people I met, he worried that some contemporary preachers were playing on the emotions of their audiences so as to bolster their own popularity ratherthan sedimenting those emotions in their listeners in such a way as would incline 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: Maybeyou will go home today and tell your wife, husband,or childrenabout the good storiesyou heard.Itwill just become, "Once upon a time, when the Prophet lived ... ,"as if itwere no longeran issueof today.Butthisis notsome escape fromreor the ality,notentertainment, cold culturewhich only addresses intellectand the rationalmind [al-'aql].Beliefin Judgment is one of the foundations Islam,along of Day with belief in God, His prophets,His books,and His angels. Unless you understand how can you believe in it?Thus,we Judgment Day and know of its circumstances, needto graspthisknowledge,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 passions, the latterdevoid 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 stoand phrases of the tarhfbor wal'z genre,22geared to the task of ries, poetry, ahadTth, 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 practice 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 referringto 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, reflectsthe notion that the passions are internalto the processes of practicalreasoningby which people make correctchoices in their lives. Forthe khatTb, challenge of enabling the listener to attain the proper affective the must be addressed in terms of rhetoricaltechnique. Subhi outlined for me dispositions what he thought were the three elements of a sermon capable of overcoming this must shake listeners from their state of lassitude (futor),stillproblem. First,the khatTb ness (sukln), and fatigue (humnid).23 Death is the subject most capable of achieving this. What is needed, according to Subhi, are images of death that are "fullof fear and terror,that startle and frighten people out of their slackness and immobility." Forthis task, there is a rich eschatological phantasmagoriafrom which to draw. Second, the sermon must edify the listeners in their knowledge of Islamic doctrine, 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 khatTbMuhammed Hassan suggested in the quote above. Third, the khatib must weave the Quranic narrativesinto the lived experience of his listeners, highlighting the problems that they face and pointing them toward useful

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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 eschatological drama. The other requires drawing analogies between the Quranic events and the Omar Abd al-Kafi,for exlives of contemporary Muslims in Cairo. The popular khatTb to ample, likens the pathway one crosses in order to arrive at heaven (al-sirat) the central 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 narrativesinto 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 in sermon. One young man, Beha, described for me the workings of tarhTb a good sermon and then compared it to the experience of music: in Whenyou hearaboutthe tortures the grave,you get scared.YoufearGod,thenyou for betweenyou and yourself, whatyou'vedone wrong,so you ask start feel regret, to his You God forforgiveness. repent,andthenyou remember mercyand you feel calm Yourchest opened [munsharih al-sadr], [raha]. open to Islam,the Quran,God, and knowingthatyou will get close to him.Whenyou listento music,you also feel calm and relaxed,but that doesn't mean you're reallyclose to God. With a sermonor and that Qurantapeyou can attain closeness,so the feelingis better moreintensethan when you arejustrelaxed. As noted above, many of the sermon listeners I spoke with in Egyptsuggested that, although 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 between 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 inshirahal-sadr (opening of the heart or chest), itmi'nan(tranquility),and sakina (stillness). This progression was mentioned frequently by the people I worked with in Cairo. Ahmed, for example, told me: "Ifa he Muslim sees hell close to him [through a good khatTb], 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 Importantly,this is by a listener's body and soul under the guidance of a skillful khatTb. not the raha (calm) produced by soft music but, rather,a moral state conceptually articulated 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, ratherthan in terms of an obedience to rules or belief in doctrine.24 the dance of words The kind of attentionand general attitudewith which people listento taped sermons is a frequent point of debate among many of those who listen to cassette sermons. Many


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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 caf6, or cooking a meal (as was common among the mothers and sisters of the men I knew). Such styles of usage 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.25As 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 greateror 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. Forexample, people who attend the mosque on Fridayalso listen to sermons with differing degrees and modes of attention, some voice, some following daydreaming, some held by the murmuringsound of a khatTb's 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 Muslims 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 measured-what J. L. Austin, referringto speech acts, describes as the act's "felicity conditions": the variable circumstances that secure the success of an utterance (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 sermon) must be described in terms of the conventions that make it meaningful as a particular kind of activity, one enacted for certain reasons and in accord with certain standardsof 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 music, 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: ansat, meaning to incline one's ear toward or pay close attention, and asghs, to be silent in order to listen. As was often the case, Quranic recitation provided the point of reference for explaining the meaning of these terms. This is not surprisinggiven both the pervasive use of Quranic verses in sermons, and the sermons' emphasis on acts of remembrance (dhikr),supplication (dua'), giving thanks (shukr),and expressing fearful and loving respect for God (al-taqwa). Contemporary religious scholars are frequently called on to give fatawa (nonbinding legal opinions, sing. fatwa)stipulatingthe 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 listenintently rather justhear[yasmai], it is done with intenthan so [yunsit] tion [qasdwa niyya]anddirecting senses [hiss] the wordsin orderto understand the to theirintentions theirmeanings. faras hearing[al-sama'], and As them,to comprehend it is whatoccurswithoutintention. Closeattention[al-insSt] entailsa stillness[sukon] in orderto listen so as not to be distracted surrounding words.... God ordered by manto listento the Quranwith attention... [and]listeningintentlyis the meansto the to of ponderover [tadabbur] meanings the Quran.... Itis the dutyof all Muslims and educatethemselves be guidedbytheetiquette of [adab] al-Quran. [Makhluf 1950]

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"Listeningwith attention," al-insat, is figured here as a complex sensory skill, one opposed to mere hearing (sama'), understood as a passive and spontaneous receptivity. 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 perspecconcerned about the attention of his audience: "Imay get you to focus tive as a khatTb 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 rudimentaryskills of recitation by the time of adolescence, either through lessons at Quran schools for children (katatib,sing. kuttab),26 in classes within the secular public schools system, or under direct tutelage from fathers and mothers. A few had only begun to learn it as young adults when, as with many Egyptiansof their generation, they had come to see Islamic practices as increasingly importantto their lives. The recitational techniques taught today are founded on long-standing Islamic traditions, and even the most popularized literatureon the practice relies heavily on classical models found in medieval sources.27 Although such works provide instruction in a particulartradition of vocal performance, the performance itself is understood to involve a kind of audition, insomuch as a skilled reciter should attempt to "hearthe speech of God from God and not from [the voice of the reciter] 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, gestural, and verbal responses whereby the reader or listener assumes the ethical dispositions corresponding to the recited or audited verses: humility, awe, regret,fear, and so on. In his manual on recitational technique, al-Ghazali writes: of Duringthe Quranreading,when the Quranreaderreadsa verse on glorification Him.When he readsa verseon supplication [to God, he will glorifyHimand magnify If God] and forgiveness[of Him],he will supplicateand seek forgiveness. he readsa he versetellingof any hopefulmatter will prayto God [forit]. Butif he readsa verseon he a frightening [of matter, will seekthe protection God]. [1984:48] In another section, al-Ghazali furtherelaborates this in terms of "fulfillingthe right" (al-haqq)of the verses: beforeGod, he Thuswhen the Quranreaderreadsa verse necessitating prostration if himself.Likewise, he hears[therecitation a verseof prostration will prostrate of] by He himselfwhen the reciterprostrates. will prostrate anotherpersonhe will prostrate Alclean.... Itsperfectformis forhimto utter only when he is physicallyand ritually himselfand, while prostrate, and lahuakbar[God is Great!] then prostrate supplicate recited.... On to which is appropriate the verseof prostration with thatsupplication while they prostrate themselves,andthisadds the wordsof God, "They weep reading "Godmademe one of those who will the to theirhumility," Quranreader supplicate: weep forfearof You,andwho are humbletowardYou."Inthisway the Quran-reader a or while making will supplicate [due everyprostration to his reading hearing verseofsupplication]. [1984:44-45]28

As is clear from the instructionsal-Ghazali provides, the word of God demands a kind of dialogue from the receiver. The receiver must seek to understand God's message, in the cognitive sense, and must assume the attitudes and performthe acts that


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correspond to that understanding. As scholars of the contemporary practice of Quranic 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 University, 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 and so on" (al-Azhar1988). It is this quite comreading verses of warning or retribution, form of sensory engagement that also informsthe practice of listening to sermons. plex Importantly,the forms of comportment and concentration associated with Quranic audition and recitation are not simply transferredto the sermon context as a set of guidelines or rules. More fundamentally, the cultivation of these skills stands as a necessary prerequisite for the sermon listener to be able to follow, be moved by, and derive benefit from the sermon. Training in such skills begins in earliest infancy, insomuch as the interwoven practices of audition, memorization, and recitation are central to the ethical upbringing of many children in Egypt. As Eickelman has succinctly put it: "Thediscipline 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 -sra (a chapter of the Quran) they had mastered. Beyond such instruction, however, the Quran-as well as other traditional Islamic genres, such as ahadTth, qasas (Islamic stories), and sTyar(biographies 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 ethical situations often give rise to the citation of verses, whether in acts of giving advice, instructing children, making decisions, or arguing a point, particularlyamong 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 who provides the guiding vocalization for these (du'a').29Although it is the khatTb 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 appropriatedevotional formulas. Shaykh Kishk(d. 1996)-a widely popular Egyptianpreacher during the 1970s and 1980s-on occasions called on his audience to repeat word for word the invocations 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-"ln 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 is (du'a') that relate to the argument the khatTb making or the situation he is describFor example, in warning his audience about the dangers of gossip (ghtba) or ing. will call on them to implore God for forgiveness from backbiting (namfma), a khatTb moral error. When lecturing them on a topic such as proper burial technique, he will

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have them ask God 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 Bosnia, 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 sermons at rapid-fireintervals with such enjoinders, continuously recruiting his listeners to participate vocally and morally in the oratory he performs. Inthe 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, in strung one after another by the khatTb 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'a' (supplicatory prayer)will also lead to tears among cassette listeners, without the emotional dynamics put in play by a large crowd the intensity of the experience is relatively 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'nan 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 discipline, such as sermon audition. The listener, for example, must have cultivated the capacity 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 follows-via repentance-from such an act. Ifthese 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 revolve. 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 primarysources. 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 listening-pleasure of such narratives does not reside in the presentation of something entirely new, but in the effective and stirringperformance of a known account, one reinterpreted and revised through its retelling in a new narrativecontext.31Often 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 Antichristor 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 khatTbat his mosque during the Friday sermon. A few times, when the issue had really piqued his curiosity, he checked a book on the subject 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 sermons to me, knowledge of these Islamic narrative forms consists not simply in the abilityto recite a given text, but also in performingits emotional, gestural,and kinesthetic


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contours, the bodily conditions of the text as memory. While listening to taped sermons with me, they would often interruptwith comments and gestures intended to help me understand the particular hadTthor story being recounted by the khatTb, sometimes stopping the tape to elaborate in more detail or introduce relevant passages from the Quran or other traditional textual sources. They all brought a common expressive-gestural repertoireto their explanations. Thus, in the context of recounting a hadTth, narrowness of the grave (a common sermon topic) was expressed by a the drawing up of the shoulders; the exit of the soul from the neck of a good man was distinguished 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 accompanied by the joyful relaxation of the chest and the upward glance of delight. The events surroundingJudgment Day, a very common sermon topic for which many khutaba' 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 accompany their verbal performance. The stock of Islamic narrativeforms that provide the raw material for many sermons 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 Islamic traditions. Thus, the angel that counts one's good deeds sits on the right shoulder, 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 ablutions 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 ablutions. All sorts of mundane daily actions also show right and left organization: entering the house with the rightfoot 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 coding are furtherconditions shaping the sensibilities required for ethical sermon listening inasmuch as the oral texts presuppose such knowledge. sermon reception and ethical sedimentation As should now be clear, sermon oratory recruitsthe body of the listener in multiple ways. Beyond its referentialcontent, the sermon can be seen as a technique for the trainingof the body's gestures and affects, its physiological textures and colorations, its rhythms and styles of expression. In addition to moral lessons, the stories impartethical habits and the organization of sensory and motor skills necessary for inhabiting the world in a manner considered to be appropriatefor 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 possible-in the view

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of the sermon listeners I knew-the 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 attributionof meaning to its surfaces, movements, 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 regardto the truth status of some of the accounts commonly found in sermons. Itwas common, for example, that one person would referto a narrativeelement (such as the throne of God) as a symbol (ramzor kinaya),while another would claim it as "literally real" (haqfqf, mish majazT) though unknowably so (bila kaif). Sayf, whom I mentioned would often describe those parts of a sermon he understood to be somewhat above, far-fetched as "metaphors":for example, the writing of the word infidel on the forehead 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 narrativesfrom which these elements were drawn in more or less the same way, including the corresponding facial and postural expressions of fear, delight, or tranquility. Not to say that these differences of interpretationare insignificant. Indeed, arguments 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 substrateof embodied dispositions of the sort I have described as instrumentalto the task of sermon audition. It is these ethical dispositions, 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 meaningful 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 nor the khatTb, vocalize each and every response solicited. Rather,and this is an important 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 demands. Collingwood makes this point in regardto aesthetic appreciation: people hear the sounds, colors, movements, and emotions that composers have written into their music only insofar as they have an ear-and a body-trained 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 imaginaryexperience 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 entirety, as a complex of culturally and historically honed sensory modalities.34 The cassette-sermon listeners I knew would frequently distinguish between a kind of hearing that engages only the mind (al-'aql) and one that stems from the heart


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(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. Inthis sense, the tendency 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 Illich 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 applied 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, performancesthat 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, of which renderssuch artsespeciallydangerous.As a moderninterpreter Platonotes: of with uncontrolled Theproblem mimesis,as Platosees it, is notjustthe character the insinuate likenessesit bringsinto our presence.It is how these likenessesgradually the themselvesintothe soulthrough eyes andears,withoutourbeingawareof it.... It and is as if eyes and earsofferpainter poet entryto a relatively cognitive independent which mimeticimagescan bypassour associatedwiththe senses,through apparatus, 1998:8] the knowledgeand infiltrate soul. [Burnyeat 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. LaterChristianthinkers, in contrast, emphasized the positive contribution of such embodied forms of knowledge. Arguing along lines much closer to those suggested by the men with whom I worked, Christian theologians from Aquinas to Lutherto John Henry Newman have asserted that a certain disposition of the passions is necessary in order to assess the validity 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 Christianorigin. Christian thinkers like Kierkegardand 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 belief 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 khusho' (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 performanceof these ethical modes of being and perceiving. This process involves more than the cultivation of sensibilities: these concepts are linked to actions

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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. Accordto doctrinal sources, the uttering of the shahada-"There is no God but the One ing God, and Muhammed is His apostle"-is the minimal sufficient condition for becoming a Muslim. There is considerable argument, however, over what precisely is entailed in making the utterance. Ibn Taymiyya, a 14th-century theologian whose doctrinal 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 oratorwho often drawsfrom IbnTaymiyya'swork in his sermons Hassanadvises: and writings.Inan interviewwith the newspaper al-Liwa'al-lslamT, on 'amaliyya] the groundof EveryMuslimmustenact a practicalshahada[shahada with a havepronounced verbalshahada[shahada after our lived reality qauliyya] they and are fullof booksand [sermon mosque theirtongues.The smallestlibraries today lesson]cassettes,butthistheoretical projectdoes notequalthe valueof the inkwhich and it withuntilwe transform intoa practical it was written reality a wayof life.[al-Liwa' al-lslamT 1996:3] Hassan's use of the terms theory and practice would seem to invoke a sort of Platonic 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 interpretationof his remarkwould be in keeping with theories of modernization that envision the privatization of religion in the form of individual belief, a state of inner, personal commitment 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 between 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 Christianpreachers 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-'amal), he locates the shahada-fundamentally, a speech act-on 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 IbnTaymiyya, 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 precisely this understanding of moral action. In undertaking the practices of cassette discipline I have described here, the sermon listeners I know sought to reconstructtheir own knowledge, emotions, and sensibilities 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


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masteryof a specific culturalactivity,but perceptualhabitsthat incline one toward certainacts, discourses,and gestures.As opposed to the sort of technical skills acquiredin the course of learning,say, the game of chess-skills that inhabita highly circumscribed arenaof practice-the ethical capacitiescultivatedby the men with whom I worked were applicable across many contexts and social domains. They refersto as the "antepredicative opened up what Merleau-Ponty unity of the world and of our life"(1962:xviii),rendering world as a space of moralaction and the this actoras a moralbeing. In lightof the analysispresentedhere, I suggesta reconsideration traditions, of not simply in terms of doctrines or discourses, but as grounded on perceptual skills-prediscursive modes of appraisal-shaped within practicesfor which language and discourseare essential,but not reducibleto these. I do not referhere to a a generalmodel of enculturation-the idea thatin inhabiting cultureor class position one acquires(as it were, unconsciously) sensibilities characterize culture the that that or socioeconomic location-but to self-reflexive practicesspecificallygearedto the inculcation of perceptual habits. In speaking of such embodied capacities as of groundedin and sustainingof the traditions Islam,however, I am not suggesting thatthey constitute universal unchanging a and fundament beneaththe actualhistorical and contemporary of heterogeneity Islamicsocieties. Clearly,the styles of narration and argument khutaba',as well as the spaces and employed by contemporary times withinwhich the practiceof auditionoccurs, have been shapedby social and structures practicesof nationalcitizenand political modernity-by the institutional ship and global marketcapitalism.The perceptualcapacitieslistenersseek to cultivate aremediated,on the one hand,by functionalpossibilities cassettetechnology, of such as mobility,replay,and discontinuous andon the other,by the discurlistening; sive conventionsof the modernprintandtelevisual-based publicsphere.Inthis sense, the sensibilitieshonedthrough practicedo not inhabitand reproduce statichisthis a toricaledifice, ever identicalwith itself.As TalalAsadhas argued,to conceive of traditionin thisway is inadequate the case of Islam: Islamic in "An discursive tradition is a tradition Muslimdiscoursethat addressesitselfto conceptionsof the Isof simply lamicpastandfuture, with reference a particular to Islamic practicein the present.... It will be the practitioners' of what is apt performance, of how the and conceptions is relatedto presentpractices,thatwill be crucialfor tradition, the apparent not past of repetition an old form"(1986:14-15). Whatmakesthe practiceof cassette-sermon auditionpartof an Islamictraditionis not its exact conformity a fixed model, but to the fact that, in its contemporary organization,assessment,and performance,the discoursesand historical practicerelieson authoritative exemplarsembeddedin that tradition (Asad1993:210-211, 1999:189-190). here is that, beyondthe discursivepracticesof historicalarticulaMy argument tion emphasized in Asad's remark,anthropologists should interrogate traditionsin termsof continuitiesof disciplinedsensibilityand the practicesby which these are created and revised across changing historicalcontexts. My suggestion, in other words,is thatBenjamin's analysisof how the perceptual regimeusheredin by modertraditional worldssilentand invisible-in short,imperceptible nityrenders (Benjamin 1968b)-and needs be complimentedby a recognitionof the way in which practitionersof a tradition, and to throughinnovation adaptation, attempt cultivateand sustainthe sensoryconditions(themodesof attention inattention) makethattraand that ditionviablewithinmoderncontexts(cf. Seremetakis 1994:1-22). In "TheStoryteller," coordination "thesoul, eye, and hand" of (1968b)arguesthatthe particular Benjamin thatunderlies craftof storytelling been lostwiththe disappearance artisanal the has of

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modes of production and their replacement by forms of labor that do not entail or engender such affective-gestural skills (1968b:108). Although Benjamin is clearly correct to point to such processes of sensory erosion, I would caution against the tendency-encouraged by the concept of modernity-to interpret these as instances within a totalizing historical process, as disparate manifestations of a singular teleological development. As scholars have increasingly recognized, an account of modernity can no longer be told simply in terms of the destruction of the old and its replacement 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; Chakrabarty2000; Seremetakis 1994). One might note, in this regard, the decision by an increasing number of Catholic churches in the United States to returnto a mass in Latin,a language that most parishioners clearly cannot "understand,"or, for that matter, the reembracing of the "phonics method" for teaching children to read and the negative reassessment of the "whole-language method," which emphasizes "the meaning of words over their sounds" and had been heralded earlier as a more progressive replacement 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 elements that define the modern. Thus, to cite a ratherobvious instance, cassette technology 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 become 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 structurethat binds together the constellation of modern elements gives way to a fractured historical space composed of heterogeneous practices, objects, and structures of varying temporal determinations. As the example presented here suggests, this plurality can be productively explored not simply in terms of languages, discourses, or practices but also through the disciplined sensibilities against which these become articulable. notes between 1994 out carried in Egypt Acknowledgments.Thisarticleis basedon fieldwork for fromthe WennerGrenFoundation Anthroof and 1996 withthe support dissertation grants was provided Council.Additional and Research the SocialScience Research funding pological FelPostdoctoral and NewcombeDissertation Fellowship a Rockefeller Write-up by a Charlotte An of lowshipat the Centreforthe Studyof Religion,University Toronto. earlierversionof this conferencein Montreal, Senses" at Canada, articlewas presented the "Uncommon April2000. SabaMahmood,and Anne I would like to thankTalalAsad,JaniceBoddy,MichaelLambek, draft. for AE Meneley,as well as fouranonymous reviewers, theircommentson an earlier to be germane a discussionof studiesof sensoryperception 1. Admittedly, may biological some of the issues I addressin this article;however,inasmuchas my concern here is with the (andnot biological)objects,modelsfromthatdisciplinewill be of limited senses as historical use to my analysis. and are of on 2. Statistics the actualnumber tapessold in Egypt generallyunavailable, the are sometimessuggestedby journalists extremelyunreliable.My own roughestimate figures based on data collected in interviewswith companyowners would be aroundone million commercially producedtapes per year and anotherone to two million producedand sold


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are illegally.Thatbeingsaid,the factthatmostof the tapesin circulation fourth generation copies reproduced makesany realapproximation noncommercially nearlyimpossible. 3. Foran interesting discussionof women's participation the IslamicRevivalin Egypt, in see Mahmood 2001. and 4. Themostinteresting comprehensive workson mosquesermonsin anthropological the MiddleEast those of Antoun1989 and Gaffney1994. are 5. Thereference hereis to the Islamic a Islamist orGroup,al-Jama'a al-lslamiyya, militant in ganization Egypt. 6. Padwick(1996) providesa usefuldiscussionof this point in relationto Muslimdevotionalpractice.My analysisof the roleof disciplinary of virpracticein the formation religious tues is greatlyindebtedto Asad'streatment thistopic (1993:55-124). of 7. Al-TauhTdputout by Jama'a is Ansaral-Sunna a al-Muhammadiyya, nongovernmental and that a of preaching welfareorganization administers vastnetwork mosquesin Egypt. 8. On Islamicmoralphilosophy, Fakhry see 1975. 1983; Izutsu1966, 1985; Sherif 9. Alltranslations the QuranarefromAsad1980. Numbers of refer suraverses. to 10. Thus,the first verseof the chapteral-Shar-"The Opening-Up the Heart"-begins: of we "Have notopened upthy heart,and liftedfromthee the burden hadweighedso heavily that on thy back?" 11. Myargument herebearsa certainsimilarity thatputforward a number cognito of by tive linguists.Lakoff Johnson(1980) suggestthat metaphor, a processby which people and as characterize domainof meaningintermsof another,is fundamental everyday one to discourse, and not simplya creativeliterary device. Inlaterwritings, these authors arguethatsuch crossdomain mapping involves what they referto as "image schemata,"cognitive constructs of of groundedin repeated patterns bodilyexperiencethatarethen appliedto otherregions discourseand experience(Johnson and for 1989). Thesense of verticality, ex1987; Lakoff Turner such as the feelingof standingupright, the ample, rootedin myriadactivitiesand perceptions activityof climbingstairs, viewingtall objectssuch as trees,and so forthprovidesa conceptual for or metaphor otherdomains,such as emotions(aswhen we saywe arefeeling"up" "down"), or health(e.g., "topshape"),or music (e.g., a "highnote"or an "ascending scale").A useful of 1998. Idepartfromthese authorsin my focus on summary this work is found in Zbikowski which such perceptual is specificmethodsof inculcation through patterning learned. 12. Collingwood (1966)came to the questionof receptionin the courseof hisstudyon art. definition artprecisely the basisof an of on Indeed,he soughtin thisworkto grounda universal artwork'sability to produce what he called "an imagined experience of total activity" (1966:151).AlthoughI have found this partof his argumentratherunconvincing,his work nonethelessopens a set of usefulquestionsthatare rarelyraisedwithinmostdiscussionsof reception. 13. The phenomenonof synaesthesia been addressedfroma numberof disciplinary has to perspectives,includingmedical, psychological,aesthetic,and linguistic.Forintroductions thisfieldthatare particularly relevant anthropological to see inquiry, Classen1993 and Marks 1978. 14. Collingwoodmakesa distinction between "imaginary motorsensations" "actual and motorsensations," which Ido notthinkis usefulforthe contextof sermonaudition(1966:147). As I describebelow, the responsesof the people I workedwith to sermonspeech fell along a continuum fromthosewithoutany perceivable to component thoseeasilynotedby an observer. Atone time, fearwould be visible in an informant's postureand expression,and at othertimes I not,despitehis claimto be feelingfear.Thismaybe usefullyunderstood, wouldargue,notvia a distinction betweenactualand imaginary kindsof intensiexperiences,butbetweendifferent ties or degreesof experiential involvement. 15. See Baxandall 1988 foran excellentdiscussionof thispointin regard the reception to of worksof artduring Renaissance. the 16. Suchintentional contentis not something mental,locatedin the consciousnessof the (1931) erroneously it asserted.Rather, is internal the habitual to actor,as Husserl activities(inor that,with repeatedpractice,people come to perform cluding perception) "naturally" "unAs and on note, in commenting the workof Merleau-Ponty: thinkingly." Dreyfus Dreyfus

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Ingeneral,ifthe expertresponds each situation itcomes alongin a waythathasproven to as in the past,his behavior achievethe pastobjectiveswithouthis havingto will appropriate havethese objectivesas goals in his consciousor unconsciousmind.Thus,although commusthave logicalconditions satisfaction, they can succeedor fail,there of i.e., portments intentional need be no mentalistic of content,i.e., no representations the goal. [1999:113] therewere peoplewho 17. Collingwoodmakesthispointin regard habitsof speech:"If to it at attention, would be becausethatgesturewas nevertalkedunlessthey were standing stiffly emotionalhabitwhichthey feltobligedto expressconcurrently with expressiveof a permanent (1966:246-247). anyotheremotionthey mighthappento be expressing" that 18. Thereis now a substantial bodyof workwithinanthropology exploresthe cultural includeFeld1982; Irving et of 1990; Kleinman patterning emotion.Usefulworksin this regard 1990. al. 1997; LutzandAbu-Lughod 19. As Augustine argues: in to than instructed, orderthatthey may If,however,the hearers require be rousedrather withthe be diligentto do whattheyalreadyknow,andto bringtheirfeelingsintoharmony and exof speech is needed. Hereentreaties reproaches, truths they admit,greater vigor and hortations upbraidings, all othermeansof rousingthe emotions,are necessary. and [1973:496] that informed a moralpsychology saw rea20. Thus,earlymodernChristian by preachers, actionwithoutthe assistanceof the passions,gearedmuch son alone as incapableof producing of to of theirpreaching the governance the passions,a taskthatincludednotjustthe modulation but of of emotionalintensities also the linking those emotionsto theirproper objects.See Brinsermons. to British ton 1992 fora discussionof this issuein relation 18th-century to 21. Fordiscussionof emotion in relation poetic practicein Arabiccontexts,see Abu1986 and Caton1990. Lughod and the to 22. The rhetorical (from verbrahhab, terrify, frighten) wacz techniquesof tarhTb to warnor admonish) employedin orderto instillfearin the heartof listensso are (fromwa'az, both as to steerthem towardcorrectpractice.Theyare the subjectof an extensiveliterature, a to classicaland contemporary, bodyof workof key importance the artof preaching. and emhave strongpostural kinesthetic and 23. Thesethreeterms,futir, sukOn, hurnmd bodiments.Futorin particular expressesthe sense of a slack, listless body. (My informants would slouch in theirchairsto depictthis state.)Itis also a word commonlyusedto designate state societies. saw whatmy informants as the contemporary of powerlessness amongMuslim 24. Of course, bothan obedienceto rulesand a measureof belief in doctrinemay be inin of strumental the cultivation these capacities. that withothersin a group,it was not uncommon one person 25. When listening together too attentive a sermon,slumping farbackin a to would criticizeanotherforbeinginsufficiently namewas when the Prophet's or to the chair,smokingduring audition, failing respondproperly in listenof course,does not implythatall who participate cassette-sermon This, pronounced. and or to itthese ethicalmotivations applythemselveswith seriousness concentration ing bring on everyoccasion a tape is used. and with theseschoolshaddeclinedin number attendance the riseof obligatory 26. Although of in secular education children Egypt, havewitnessed for something a comeback,especially they in in poorerneighborhoods, the contextof the IslamicRevivalof recentdecades. Foran excelsee 1998. educationin Egypt, Starrett lentanalysisof contemporary on worksin English thistopic are Denny 1980; Gade 1999; Gra27. The most interesting of treatments classicalMuslim ham 1985, 1987; and Nelson 1985. One of the most influential thistopic is thatof A. H. al-Ghazali (1984). 28. The verse cited is fromthe chapteral-lsra' (TheNightJourney), 109. The brackpp. translation. eted sectionsare in the original as use marked 29. Thisis frequently through of the collectiveplural, in "We grammatically one and we relyon Him,we ask His forgiveness," of the morecommon sermon praiseHim, openings.


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(or describesitmi'nan tumanTna) devotionalpractices,Padwick 30. Inherstudyof Islamic As that stillness is achievedby way of repentance. she notes: as the stateof physicalandspiritual is no drowsypeace, but a giftof for all its stillness,tranquillus then, "Tumanrna, tranquillans, gracethat can only come to heartsreadyto makethe responseof faithand costly discipline" (1996:123). 31. Moderntheateraudienceswho go to Shakespearean plays,or concertaudiencesalin choose to hearperformed, withthe compositions familiar participate a they readythoroughly of not dissimilarmanner:despite a foreknowledge the storyor musical score, the audience in evaluatesthe qualityof the performance termsof its abilityto evoke in thema rangeof emotional and intellectualexperiences.On the subject of storytelling,see Tedlock 1983 and 1990. Zumthor entitledDar al-Kafi is 32. One of the mostpopular a seriesof mosquelessonsbyOmarAbd of 33 tapes. al-Akhira Hereafter), (The consisting 33. I borrow the expression from Dreyfus who, commentingon Heidegger, notes: consciousof ourongoingevewantsto showthatwe arenot normally thematically "Heidegger consciousnessdoes arise,it presupposes andthatwherethematicself-referential rydayactivity, modeof awareness" non-se

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