Page 56 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

Fig. 1.6. A tape on “Washing
and Enshrouding the Corpse,”
by Shaykh Ismail Humaidi.

Image right unavailable

mands placed on it by the new public context wherein it now circulates. Within
this sphere, taped sermons mediate multiple forms of argument and contesta-
tion. Khutaba#, for example, not only provide a critical commentary on trends
within society, actions taken by the state, and international events seen as im-
portant to Muslims but also commonly draw attention to erroneous positions
put forward by other khutaba# or religious scholars. Likewise sermon listeners
frequently disagree with arguments made by khutaba#, both in content and style.
Many of my informants, for example, felt that Shaykh Kishk’s style, at the time
of the regime of Anwar Sadat (1970–1981), of criticizing public ¤gures directly
and openly was a violation of the ethics of public criticism within Islam. This
points to another level of dialogue mediated by cassette sermons, namely, that
tapes frequently serve as a catalyst for arguments between listeners, including
arguments about the responsibility of the khatib in relation to the state.

The Virtues of Civic Debate
Within da"wa literature, and among the young men of my study, the
performance of da"wa is understood to be predicated upon a prior cultivation
10
of the virtues. As I describe in this section, the virtues play more than an in-
Cassette Ethics 45