The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics

Cultures of History

by Charles Hirschkind

Charles Hirschkind's unique study explores how a popular Islamic media form—the cassette sermon—has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades.

An essential aspect of what is now called the Islamic Revival, the cassette sermon has become omnipresent in most Middle Eastern cities, punctuating the daily routines of many men and women. Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have been recalibrated to a modern political and technological order—to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call for citizen participation. Contrary to the belief that Islamic cassette sermons are a tool of militant indoctrination, Hirschkind argues that sermon tapes serve as an instrument of ethical self-improvement and as a vehicle for honing the sensibilities and affects of pious living.

Focusing on Cairo's popular neighborhoods, Hirschkind highlights the pivotal role these tapes now play in an expanding arena of Islamic argumentation and debate—what he calls an "Islamic counterpublic." This emerging arena connects Islamic traditions of ethical discipline to practices of deliberation about the common good, the duties of Muslims as national citizens, and the challenges faced by diverse Muslim communities around the globe. The Ethical Soundscape is a brilliant analysis linking modern media practices of moral self-fashioning to the creation of increasingly powerful religious publics.

Genres: Anthropology, Islam, Nonfiction, Middle East, Religion, Academic, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

this books offers a very interesting theoretical insight in regards to the "reason" of senses and the spatiality of the soundscapes created by cassette-sermons in Cairo, Egypt. it also is in conversation with the likes of Talal Asad (to whom his work is explicitly indebted) and other works that discuss the limits of modern liberal democratic imaginations to understand religo-political movements. it feels a little repetitive at parts, but overall is very thought-provoking, especially in his discussion of the sensory experience of the "pious listener."

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ethnography of contemporary listening practices in the Islamic world. Religion is reconstituted in the space of cabs and stores, where people listen to tape sermons. Theory by Habermas.

[Onur Engin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Ethical Soundscape, Charles Hirschkind examines the use and impact of cassette sermons during the Islamic Revival movement in Egypt from the 1970s through the 1990s. During this time, preachers affiliated with Islamic groups were banned or surveilled by the state, leading to the proliferation of cassette recordings of sermons as a response to state surveillance. Hirschkind offers a detailed ethnography of the people who listened to and produced these sermons, which were often heard in public spaces and often seen as symbols of fanaticism. However, Hirschkind argues that most of these sermons promoted values such as social responsibility, ethical discipline, and social equality, and had a powerful emotional and intellectual impact on their audience. He also challenges the idea that these sermons were primarily used for fundamentalist indoctrination, and instead argues that they shaped an Islamic counterpublic that discussed the complexities of a pious life and enabled individual activism and ethical sensibility. However, Hirschkind does not deny that cassette sermons also contributed to violent anti-Coptic sentiments and the overthrow of the Shah in the 1979 Iranian revolution. Hirschkind's approach highlights the complexity of the Islamic Revival movement and critiques the Western ocularcentric epistemology that views orally based societies as inferior. He argues that cassette sermons can create alternative communities and demonstrate the valuable contributions of auditory mediums to social science, with their poetic and performative dimensions offering historical and political insights into social realities.

[n]

Scholarship on Islam in the Asad-ian tradition is always impressive but this work in particular is so so cool. Hirschkind deftly weaves multiple of traditions together (anthropology of the senses/secularism/sound/Islam) in a monograph that is also really accessible.

[N · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm puzzled by Charles's decision to devote such time and energy to a topic that feels, at best, trivial. The book is padded with fluff, constructed on tenuous, often contrived arguments, and ultimately lacks the depth or substance one would expect from a work of this length. It's a curious investment of effort for so little intellectual return.

second read:
reading this book left me more frustrated than enlightened
it sounds sophisticated but it's not.
it feels like a delibrate over-complication
What’s missing is an honest recognition that these were not neutral “ethical soundscapes” -- his argument is too romantic and unnecessarily dense

[Elana Metz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very difficult but worth it!