Page 52 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

sustaining the totality of practices upon which an Islamic society depends. For
the du"at (those undertaking da"wa) I spoke to over the course of my ¤eldwork
in Cairo, this practice has been necessitated by the erosion of the Islamic char-
acter of society under the impact of what is most often referred to as “al-ghazwa
al-¤kri” (ideological conquest, i.e., Western cultural imperialism), and particu-
larly its forms of consumerism and sensualism that are seen to be corrosive of
the virtues enabling one to live a Muslim life. In this context, da"wa responds
to the need for an individual and communal praxis to uphold what is perceived
to be an enfeebled Muslim community. The scope of this practice is not lim-
ited to issues of personal piety but necessarily extends to address such matters
as the methods and content of education, appropriate styles of popular enter-
tainment, modes of public conduct for men and women, and even appropriate
forms of employment. In short, as a project aimed at securing the conditions
necessary for the practice of Islamic virtues, da"wa entails an intervention into,
and transformation of, the activities and institutions that constitute the com-
munity. By promoting the cultivation of sensibilities and the adoption of cer-
tain goals, the movement shapes the form of collective life and culture that its
adherents, as Muslims and national citizens, will endorse, the arguments they
will ¤nd persuasive, the projects to which they will contribute their energies.

Contestatory Religion
Although the practice of da"wa does not presuppose the idea of the na-
tion so much as that of the collective of those who practice Islamic virtues,
national institutions are a necessary object of the da"iya’s discourse insomuch
as they shape the conditions of social existence for Muslims in Egypt. As we
know, through the processes central to modern nation building, such institu-
tions as education, worship, social welfare, and family have been incorporated
to varying degrees within the regulatory apparatuses of the modernizing state.
Whether in entering into business contracts, selling wares on the street, disci-
plining children, adding a room to a house, in all births, marriages, deaths—at
each juncture the state is present as overseer or guarantor, de¤ning limits, pro-
cedures, and necessary preconditions. As a consequence, in Egypt as elsewhere,
modern politics and the forms of power it deploys have become a condition for
the practice of many personal activities. When the state acts in ways that fore-
close the possibility of living in accord with the Islamic standards promoted
by the movement—such as forbidding schoolgirls from wearing headscarves,
broadcasting television serials that show what are considered indecent public
behavior (e.g., kissing), or cutting back on the amount of time dedicated to
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learning the Quran in schools —khutaba# use the mosque sermon to publicly
criticize these actions, a critique that is then quickly distributed on tape.
The Egyptian state is anxious about the loyalties and sensibilities of the re-
ligious subject being forged within the da"wa movement and has sought, in re-
sponse, to establish a network of secular cultural institutions as a prophylaxis.
Thus, within the government-controlled press, we ¤nd numerous articles call-

Cassette Ethics 41