Page 54 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

As a result, many of those active in da"wa do not categorically identify the state
as an enemy or antagonist. Rather, among those involved in the movement one
¤nds a plurality of arguments and opinions in regard to the state, ranging from
outright condemnation to distrust and ambivalence to indifference.
While in practice da"wa may entail an oppositional stance regarding the state
in the various ways I have described, this type of public does not in its present
form play a mediatory role between state and society. In other words, the prac-
tice of da"wa does not take place within, nor does it serve to uphold, that do-
main of associational life referred to as civil society. While the nation inhabits
the da"iya’s discourse as a necessary object of re®exive self-identi¤cation, it is
as an object embedded in (and subordinate to) the broader moral project of an
Islamic umma. As performatively enacted within da"wa discourse, the nation’s
claims on loyalty and identity are relativized in light of the demands of this
moral project, one understood to be irreducible to the concepts of territory, eth-
nicity, and collective historical experience upon which the nation is founded. In
this regard, when asked where the effect of the da"wa movement was most evi-
dent, rarely did those I worked with refer to “Egyptian society” or “the nation.”
Instead, when indicating the positive impact of da"wa, most of them would re-
fer to speci¤c popular neighborhoods where in their view residents’ neighborly
conduct accorded with Islamic standards: assistance was provided to the sick
and poor by the community, those behaving improperly (e.g., drinking, swear-
ing, ¤ghting, or dressing inappropriately) were readily confronted by commu-
nity members, and most people prayed and attended mosque regularly. While
participants of this movement clearly considered themselves to be Egyptian
citizens, they also cultivated sentiments, loyalties, and styles of public conduct
that stood in tension with the moral and political exigencies, and modes of self-
identi¤cation, of national citizenship. In this sense they constitute what I have
called a counterpublic.

Dialogic Conditions

Cassette sermons have played a central role in the creation of the public
domain I have thus far described. By allowing the sermon to move outside the
more rigid framework of the mosque, the cassette medium enabled this oratori-
cal form to become a key instrument of da"wa. Traditionally the Friday ser-
mon occurs within a highly structured spatial and temporal frame, as a duty
upon the Muslim community as established in the exemplary practices of the
9
Prophet. As a traditional and obligatory component of Muslim weekly routine,
the khatib’s performance anchors its authority in its location and timing, in the
khatib’s competent enactment of a tradition-required role as established within
the instituted practices of Muslim societies. During the initial years of their use,
taped sermons permitted an in¤nite extension and replication of this perfor-
mance but remained beholden to it, a mere supplement, and not a departure
or transformation, of a long-standing authoritative Islamic oratorical form.
Sermon speech was now displaced outside its assigned locus but only as a re-

Cassette Ethics 43