Page 58 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

tails not a simple suppression of the passions but their moderation or attunement
in accord with an authoritative model of the virtues. A speech devoid of passion
—what Muhammed Hassan, referring to certain modern media style, calls “cold
culture [al-thaqafa al-barida] addressing only the intellect [al-adhan]”—lacks
the rhetorical force to move the moral self toward correct behavior—the central
aim of da"wa public discourse. The men I worked with sought to achieve this
attunement through disciplinary techniques including listening to cassette ser-
mons, Quranic recitation, mosque lessons, and the ongoing practice of da"wa
itself.
Also necessary for the practice of da"wa is the virtue of courage (shaja"a).
Indeed, courage was one of the qualities most often cited by the men I knew in
identifying the excellence of a particular da"iya. The exemplary ¤gures here
are again the khutaba#. One of the most commonly mentioned attributes of a
true da"iya-khatib is his courage to speak the truth in the face of the very real
danger of arrest and torture by the Egyptian state. Tales of Shaykh Kishk’s feats
of courage while in prison, including standing undaunted before attack dogs
brought to his cell, are widely known and frequently recited by da"wa partici-
pants. In addition, many of the young men I knew in Cairo cited a lack of cour-
age as largely responsible for the failure of people to enact da"wa, and they wor-
ried that Egypt would become like the U.S. where (as they had heard) no one
dares speak or take action in public on the behalf of others out of fear.
The virtues of sincerity (ikhlas), humility (khushu"), and fear of God (taqwa
or khauf ) are also frequently associated with the performance of da"wa and are
given great emphasis in sermons and manuals on the practice. As elaborated
within classical Islamic moral doctrine, these dispositions endow a believer’s
heart with the capacities of discrimination necessary for proper moral con-
duct and reasoning. In the rhetorical context of public deliberation discussed
here, this understanding has implications for both speaker and listener. For the
speaker’s discourse to result not merely in abstract understanding but in the
kind of practical knowledge that impacts on how one lives, the discourse must
be imbued with those virtues that enable it to reach the heart of the listener.
Alternatively, from the listener’s perspective, without having ¤rst imbued the
heart with the requisite emotional dispositions he or she will be incapable of
actually grasping and digesting what is at stake in the discourse. The virtues,
that is, are a condition for both the effectiveness of the da"iya’s utterance and
the listener’s audition. As affective-volitional dispositions sedimented in one’s
character, they form the evaluative background enabling one to act and speak
reasonably and effectively within the public realm.

The kind of public arena that has been created by the da"wa movement in
Egypt is both normative and deliberative, a domain for both subjection to au-
thority and the exercise of individual reasoning. As I have argued, it is less an
empirical structure than a framework for a kind of action, one intertwining
moments of learning, dialogue, and dispute, as practices necessary for the moral
guidance of the collective. In this sense we can see that one does not undertake

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