Islamic Sermons and Public Piety in Bangladesh

The Poetics of Popular Preaching

Max Stille

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781838606022
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Islamic sermon gatherings are a central form of public piety and public expression in contemporary Bangladesh. Held since the 19th century, waz mahfils became so popular that it is today possible to participate in them on a daily basis in many regions of the country. Despite their significance in the rise of popular politics, the sermons are often disregarded as Islamist propaganda and very little research is dedicated to them. This book provides unprecedented access into these sermon gatherings. Based on fieldwork and interviews, Max Stille analyses an archive of several dozens of sermons. He shows how popular preaching shapes roles and rules of what can be said, imagined, and felt. Waz mahfils are a participatory practice of the labouring classes in which religious, political and poetic consensus overlap. In them, Islamic tenets and morals are part of dramatic narrations, vocal art and affective communication, ranging from immersion and upheaval to laughter about political jokes and parody. Suggesting new ways to interpret musical and performative poetics of Islamic speech, this book calls for expanding conceptions of civic participation and public discourse, and rethinking the role of the senses and religious aesthetics in Islam.

1

Waz mahfils

Genre, actors and space

Waz mahfils (Beng. oẏāj māhˡphil) are a familiar picture in the cities, villages, markets, neighbourhoods and quarters of the Muslim-majority country Bangladesh. They are organized by mosques, madrasas, or on the invitation of religiously passionate Muslim brothers. Such a view can usually not be seen in any other Muslim country in the world. In all these well-arranged waz mahfils, prudent scholars, Sufi leaders, and wise elders keep offering normal Muslims comments on different religious topics to direct and advise them. From far away, on foot, on a motorcycle or different means of transport, the religion-loving Muslims keep taking part in all these waz mahfils and stay awake the whole night to listen with deep interest to the discussions on Quran and Hadith. The mothers and sisters covered by veils also habitually listen to the waz from their own homes or from those of relatives.¹

This quote from a Bangladeshi newspaper commentator stresses the ubiquity of waz mahfils in the Bengali religious landscape. It reiterates again and again, without the need to explain it, the composite term waz mahfils, a well-known entity in Bangladesh, but not as familiar outside the country. This was even true for me when I started conducting research on Islamic sermons in Bangladesh in 2012, and this despite the fact that I had listened to Friday sermons in mosques and stayed at the mass gathering (ijtemā) of the Tābligī Jāmāt (TJ), one of the largest movements of Islamic lay preachers globally in Bangladesh. In this chapter, I introduce the preaching gatherings by conveying some insights from my multi-sited and mobile fieldwork. I will start by situating the waz mahfils within the preaching landscape of contemporary Bangladesh. After this short introduction to other forms of preaching, I focus on the main actors of waz mahfils: preachers, organizers and audiences. I sketch the spatial set-up, both in terms of communicative practices and the religious and community-related conceptions that these practices rely upon and that they in turn shape. In short, this chapter is concerned with the multiple frames that surround the sermons: those anteceding the sermons, such as advertisements and songs, or those succeeding them, such as the collection of money or the (after)life of recorded sermons.

Islamic sermons in Bangladesh: From Arabic Friday ritual to popular Bengali forms

As outlined in the introduction, the distinction between different genres of Islamic sermons lies at the heart of my approach. I argue that the narrative, performative and emotional possibilities of waz mahfils are distinct from those in other forms of preaching. Approaching preaching via its genres also matches the way homiletic knowledge is organized in Bangladesh and comes closer to how research participants perceive it. While there is hardly any literature on ‘Islamic sermons’ in Bangladesh, there is an abundance of collections of sermons held or composed by luminaries of nearly all Islamic schools of thought found in bookshops in the vicinity of mosques and shrines.² These collections are nearly always marked as belonging to a specific genre of sermons. My interview partners, too, referred to generic differences. Rahman, one of the preachers I worked closely with, differentiated between the following places and their associated speech genres: the bayān held at the ijtemā of the TJ, the waz sermons of waz mahfils, the Arabic Friday sermons (khuṭba), the reformist sermons in madrasas (the isˡlāhī programme), teachings in class, and political speeches and council meetings.³

Of these forms of preaching, the Friday sermon is of particular significance. It the only sermon prescribed by Islamic law and therefore sets ritual standards, providing coherence and continuity to the other different sermon genres. It is also safe to assume that all male listeners of waz mahfils regularly hear Friday sermons. At the same time, because of its ritual restrictions, it is also the sermon genre that is most clearly distinct from the sermons held at waz mahfils. For this reason, a short discussion of the Friday sermon helps us to sharpen the focus for the subsequent analysis of waz mahfils. In turn, I also show how the Friday sermon, too, can be better understood by considering its dynamic relationship to other forms of preaching.

In Bangladesh, khuṭba denotes the ritually significant part of the Friday sermon, which is held in two parts before the Friday congregational prayer. The khuṭba is, as elsewhere in contemporary Sunni South Asia, most commonly held in Arabic.⁴ This linguistic choice has been championed, for example, by the Deobandī school since the nineteenth century. In his famous fatwas, Rashīd Aḥmad Gangohī (d. 1905) spoke out against any translation. He adds the argument that the khuṭba should be delivered before the prayer so that no one leaves early.⁵ A different opinion was voiced early on by the Ahl-e Ḥadīth, which was ‘the first Islamic movement in India to insist that the Friday sermon (khuṭba) be given not in Arabic, but in Urdu, so that it could be understood by the masses’.⁶ Continuing this controversy, the Bangladeshi preacher Olipuri accused the TV preacher Zakir Naik, whom many in the Deobandī community in Bangladesh deem part of Ahl-e Ḥadīth, of advocating a non-Arabic khuṭba.⁷

Collections of Arabic khuṭbas are foils for practice. They are not to be read by the interested reader, but to be performed by the Friday preacher prior to Friday prayer in the precise way they are printed. While some preachers do not use such collections and compile their Friday sermons anew each week, the more common model is to hold a khuṭba from one of the available compendia, with only some short preparation beforehand. The khuṭba compendia are ordered according to the weeks of the ritual year. This repetition is not a flaw, but rather serves to underline the khuṭba’s ritual function. In an environment where only the specialists know Arabic, the khuṭba mainly provides catchphrases that listeners recognize and offer the characteristic sound of the holy language.

Due to the general repeatability of the khuṭba, a limited number of khuṭba collections can cover a large number of the khuṭbas held in Bangladesh, and new collections are not necessarily needed. My collection of Bangladeshi khuṭba books attests to the strong presence of the luminaries of the two large South Asian Sunni ‘ideological orientations’⁸ (maslaks), the Deobanīs and the Barelwīs. The Barelwī tradition is represented most prominently by the Collection of Scholarly/ʿIlmī’s Khuṭbas (Majmūʿa ʿilmī khuṭab), first published in 1877. Its Bengali translation Majˡmuẏāh elˡmī khotˡbā by Maulabī Ābdu Raśid Sāheb was published in the typical cheap paperback format of the Gaosiẏā Lāibrerī at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Bengali version only retains the Arabic khuṭbas, leaving out the Urdu poems that are added after each khuṭba. However, it adds practical advice for the Friday preacher, the khaṭīb, for example, by advising him to sit down in between the two parts. The Bengali translation, transcription and pronunciation of the Arabic text are given interlineally.

The Deobandī school is represented by the khuṭba collection by Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī⁹ called Sermons of the Rules, for the Year’s Fridays (Khuṭbāt al-aḥkām li-jumuʿāt al-ʿām), originally published in 1929.¹⁰ I reviewed two Bengali editions and translations, one from India and one from Bangladesh, both of which were translated into Bengali from a Pakistani edition published in Karachi. An important difference between the two Bengali translations is their arrangement: while the Bangladeshi translation follows the order of the Urdu original, the West Bengali one has an altogether different order.¹¹ Both editions feature not only Arabic text but also a Bengali translation of Thānawī’s originally Urdu explications on the importance and rules of the khuṭba.

Thānawī’s collection is a particularly interesting case, as the Friday sermons are clearly outnumbered by his Urdu sermons. The latter are read in Bangladeshi komi madrasas, where Thānawī’s ideals of reform of individual and religion, often linked to ideas of balance, continue to be popular. While these Urdu sermons are several hours long and feature extended theological discussions alongside an equal amount of moral advice, educational stories and poems,¹² the Arabic khuṭbas of this collection of Friday sermons are very short and devoid of narratives. After the obligatory praise of God and the Prophet and the profession of faith, a very compressed sermon follows. It begins with one or two sentences on the sermon’s message and quotations of Hadith, and includes one or two Quranic verses at the end. Each khuṭba covers about two and a half pages of Arabic text. The khuṭba collects the most important canonical Arabic quotations. They are interpreted and given meaning in the Urdu sermon.

While the two khuṭba collections discussed thus far indicate the importance of ‘traditions’ from the influential South Asian Sunni schools of the late nineteenth century, there are a number of collections that seem to have been composed in Bengal after the independence of the South Asian nation states from colonialism. The oldest of these was published in 1949 and from the Chārchīnā darbār in what is now Southern Bangladesh. It is simply called Khuṭbas Translated into Bengali (Baṅgānubād khutˡbāh) and contains instructions to the preacher to call upon the people to visit the shrine.¹³ The second collection from the same place was published shortly after Bangladesh gained independence; the latest edition is from 1993.

Their prefaces prescribe the procedure of the Friday sermon. Next to stressing its timing prior to Friday prayer, the authors provide the minimum number of congregants and detail requirements for the voice of the preacher and the sermon’s brevity:¹⁴

For a khutˡbāh, it is obligatory to only say āl hāmˡdūlillāh, subahānāllāh or lā-ilāhā illāllāh, but it is repugnant to finish the khutˡbāh with only that. If one says āl hāmˡdūlillāh after sneezing or subahānāllāh when surprised, the khutˡbāh is not realized. If the khutˡbāh and the beginning of prayer are separated by too long a timespan, then the khutˡbāh has to be read again. It is sūnnat to read two khutˡbāhs. It is repugnant (mākrūh) if both together are longer than the surās of the ‘tuẏāle muphācchāl’, particularly in the winter season.¹⁵

The prescriptions for the khaṭīb are to be ritually clean (pabitra) and to read the khuṭba standing on the minbar, facing the listeners. The preacher should leave the minbar from the prayer niche (mihrāb) and the listeners should face the imam.

I started by saying that the khuṭba is commonly performed in Arabic. While this is true, it is to a degree tautological: khuṭba in this sentence refers specifically to the Arabic part of the Friday sermon, not the Friday sermon as a whole. At the end of the instructions of the Khutbas Translated into Bengali from 1949, the qu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Waz mahfils: Genre, actors and space
• 2 Aesthetics of religious language: Code switching and connoisseurship of the poetic
• 3 Heroes of courage and compassion: Public piety between mobilization and melodrama
• 4 Melodic narration: Performative exegesis, joint self-affection and musical valuation
• 5 Humour: From ridiculing the Other to parody of waz mahfils
• Outlook
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright