Abstract
The sermon in Islam has usually been classified into two typologies. The homily (wa’z) delivered any time as an exercise in exposition, explanation of a variety of topics in exegesis, jurisprudence or ethics. The second is the Friday sermon (khutbat al-jum’ah) delivered from the pulpit during the Friday worship service. During the first centuries of Islam preachers developed homilies rooted in a certain versed prose with attention to stylized language called albadi’. On this account, the sermon eventually exhausted its rhetorical and emotive devices and therefore became clichéd, regressive, and pedantic.
In the modern context and with the rise of new technologies, the sermon in Islam has exhibited radical and “unnerving” changes. My paper begins by tracing some of the major shifts of the Islamic sermon in the postcolonial period including the proliferation of state sponsored sermons to cassette-based sermons. Second, and by focusing on the case of the Palestinian Austrian preacher Adnan Ibrahim based in Vienna, I will argue that the ubiquitous alterations in sermon structure pertain to method and form. I will look at Adnan’s archive of digital YouTube series of critical sermons and lectures called “The Hammer of evidence and the Glass of Atheism”, “Al Ghazālī and the Search for Truth” and “the Evolution Theory”. Through comparison with other prominent preachers like Yūsuf al Qardāwī, Zakir Naik, Amr Khaled, and Fathullah Gülen I will show that Adnan’s case – which has been noticeably marginalized in Sermon and Islamic studies - demonstrates the most significant paradigm of transformation in sermon composition, texture and form grounded in an ontological and anthropological awareness of its “democratic” cyberspace, European diasporic place, and its multi-faith context. Adnan’s digital sermons attempt to preserve the truth claims of an “exilic” Islam and fractured Muslim communities by accommodating philosophical inquiries equally encroaching on a post secular Christian and Judaic sermon. Adnan’s innovation includes a methodical and “interdisciplinary” engagement with classical and modern sources of theology and philosophy favoring in particular the critical interface possible between classical Islamic thought and several post-Enlightenment Western thinkers. Adnan’s new method and form of Qur’anic exposition lies in interweaving several approaches of exegesis and hermeneutics in order to allow Islamic thought to shape and dynamize an exiled faith community, and to respond to the digital dissemination of exclusionary and ideologically driven sermons.
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