Page 226 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

one of these ¤xed moments provided a reference point to which the entire tele-
vision schedule could be resynchronized.
The “reset point” for this synchronization was the maghrib call to prayer.
In Cairo the end of the daily fast was customarily signaled by a cannon blast
(now broadcast on television and radio), announcing the maghrib prayer, after
which food was served. The period from maghrib until the end of the Fawazir
Ramadan program consisted, in effect, of a distinct bloc of television-watching
time for millions of people. This bloc was not exactly an event, or at least not
analogous to the experience of a play or a ¤lm—in other words, it was the non-
televisual experience that Williams contrasts to the televisual “®ow.” In the
maghrib-to-Fawazir Ramadan programming block people were not just “watch-
ing television” (as Williams [1975, 94] described it), nor were they watching
precisely a television “event.” The events (the maghrib adhan and the ensuing
iftar) were of a ritual nature. Television programming and spectatorship was
therefore consciously linked to ritual time. In effect, the overall structure of the
post-iftar television segment facilitated a transition from fasting time to “nor-
mal” time. The main Fawazir Ramadan program—the culmination to the pro-
gramming sequence, featuring imagery that was not just nonreligious, but ag-
gressively secular—occurred after the last call to prayer of the day. From the
"isha# until the next day’s fajr prayer people had the greatest possible license to
indulge in activities forbidden during the fast.
"
The television segment analyzed here began just before the isha# prayer and
continued to the Fawazir Ramadan. The ostensibly child-oriented (but highly
commercialized) “caricature” fawazir described above came ¤rst. Between that
program and the adhan was a brief interval ¤lled not by advertising but by a
religious song. The song was perfectly ordinary devotional music sung by a
woman who wore a scarf over part of her light-brown hair—not exactly a hijab
but at least a nod to what most people regard as modest dress. As she sang, the
image of her face faded to scenes of a Su¤ order circling a tomb (that of Husayn,
grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in Cairo). Given the relatively ancient
veneration of Husayn, the choice of song to go with the image was odd. It was
arranged with harmony, which gave it a sound resembling a Christmas carol. It
ended with the shahada (the witnessing of the unity of God) sung in harmo-
nized rounds, suggesting pealing bells far more than either Quranic recitation
or any recognizably Arabic style of music. 17
This overproduced, harmonized, and lavishly orchestrated Su¤ song func-
tioned as a transitional buffer to the call to prayer. In normal television time, as
previously mentioned, the call to prayer would simply have been inserted into
whatever program was in progress. In Ramadan time perhaps more care was
taken to juxtapose the sacred with of¤cially sanctioned imagery. In many ways
this devotional song was an expression of the state’s modernist vision of a do-
mesticated nonoppositional Su¤sm that nonetheless evoked only shallow appeal
at best (Gilsenan 1982, 238–243). 18
The buffering function of the song was emphasized by blending it into the
adhan. While in normal television programming the adhan can occur any-

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