From Text to Sound: Postcolonial Critique and the Anthropology of Islam

Like many Jahriyya Sufis in northwest China, Sijiu is a scriptophile. He loves Islamic texts, and owns a small patrimony comprising assorted religious books. It was not really a library, merely two shelves, barely filled to their full capacity, in a small wooden bookcase ensconced in his unassuming bedroom. Some of the texts are in Arabic; more are in Chinese. Sijiu cannot read Arabic; even his Chinese is woefully inadequate for complicated prose. Born in the 1940s in rural Ningxia, northwest China, he travelled the winding route of public education on and off throughout the years, and was hit full on by the relentless headwind of the Great Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). And yet his lack of literacy in both languages in no way dampens his enthusiasm. One of the books he once proudly showed me at my irritatingly insistent request, is a hard copy of Madā’iḥ, a long Arabic panegyric dedicated to the Holy Prophet. It narrates the miracles that preceded the birth of the exalted prophet (a common theme for such poetry across the Muslim world); one section, for instance, relates how previous prophets one after the other visited the blessed mother and offered their unreserved reverence. They sang the glory of the last and sealing messenger. The praise rose to the heavens; and upon hearing its ennobling tune, the celestial angels joined the chorus to celebrate the incipient arrival of the august saint.

On the inside of the worn-out back cover of the specific copy Sijiu showed me is a dizzying register of the Jahriyya commemoration rituals to be performed annually, either in the public prayer hall or privately at home. The commemorated constitute a dauntingly lengthy list; they include not only deceased saints, all of them predictably male, but also their close associates, intimate confidantes, loyal wives, and fearless daughters. “It does not even include all the rituals,” Sijiu says, regardless of my gasp of astonishment, “and many family rituals are left out.”

The list is penned in elegant long hand. Now wrinkled, fragile, and tinged with a light brown, the paper has been  recently laminated, carefully conserved for posterity. “I learned to recite the Madā’iḥ just by listening to my father,” Sijiu is candid about his lack of systematic training, “I didn’t study the Arabic alphabet until much later .” In point of fact he largely ceased after having acquired a basic knowledge of the alphabet. Like most elderly Jahriyya I know of who came of age before China’s reform era (late 1970s to the present), Sijiu’s interest in Arabic is confined to its alphabet; his ambition is only to recite the text, give it a melodic voice, and breath it to life. An academic understanding of its meaning is of course the ultimate ideal, and yet most followers of the Jahriyya ṭarīqa (“path”), just like Sijiu, do not have the time, or the competence, or the requisite resources, to engage in intensive studies. And the fact that Sijiu has participated in innumerable rituals as a venerable reciter and his ignorance about the Arabic language has seldom hindered him from doing so, has only reinforced the common perception that you do not really need much knowledge of Arabic to be a good reciter – at least for everyday ritual purposes.

Like most of his peers Sijiu has rather a general – yet no less accurate – idea of what the text of Madā’iḥ is about. Not knowing the specifics does not prevent him from investing his emotions in the recitation. “It is a praise of the prophet,” he repeatedly says to me. Upon my annoying inquisition, he would open a bilingual copy of Madā’iḥ and read out excerpts from its Chinese translation. Occasionally he would pause and contemplate the meaning of some lines. In no case does he return to the Arabic original; and unless I inquire specifically about meanings (which I rarely do) our conversation fixates almost completely on the minute rules regulating the sounding of the sacred text. On such a topic Sijiu can speak for hours on end; when he opens the book for demonstration, no attention is wasted on semantics.

For a long time our study of Islam has focused on texts, for good reasons. Islam is a “religion of the book”; the name Qur’an is derived from the word “to read” (qara’a) in Arabic.

For a long time our study of Islam has focused on texts, for good reasons. Islam is a “religion of the book”; the name Qur’an is derived from the word “to read” (qara’a) in Arabic. Muslims, in the space of one and a half millenniums, have produced a remarkable amount of texts, composed in innumerable languages as the ecumenical religion spread to all four corners of the human world. Texts are inscribed, ornamented, studied, and cherished; learning by means of ancient scripts is enshrined among many Muslims. According to an admittedly apocryphal ḥadīth (saying of the Prophet), Muslims should “seek knowledge even if it is far afield in China.” Such pursuit of knowledge would be severely limited were it not for the abundance of well-preserved classical texts.

Even when we suspend our intellectualist bias and set out for fieldwork, expecting to work amongst “ordinary Muslims” for whom texts are as much objects of veneration as they are repositories of knowledge, we may be led immediately back to texts. Generous “informants” may re-direct our aimless wandering to the humble – or exquisite – abodes of notable local clerics. We may end up being a diligent or impatient student in a private session that instructs on decoding particularly significant passages from a Sufi classic. Religious erudition is championed in most Muslim societies; and much of this erudition is condensed in texts and passed on by those who have spent decades interpreting such texts. Oftentimes what we learn in fieldwork is not necessarily how people go about in their common practice; more often it is what our interlocutors wish us to know. They want to show us the “best” of their world; and what counts as the “best” in any social world, as we know well by now, is invariably mediated by structures of power and histories of domination.

For the Sufis I study, sound is the pivot for their everyday piety. Allegedly an offshoot of the grand Naqshbandiyya in Yemen (though it is more plausible that they have received the bulk of their books from Central Asia, more specifically the area centred on Herat in present-day Afghanistan), the Jahriyya in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region are thus named after their explicit reliance on sound. The name means “loud (ones)” in Arabic; and despite evidence to the contrary many (not all) Jahriyya followers continue to hold the view that it is their particularly loud and melodious chanting that sets them apart from other Sufi and non-Sufi Muslims in China. At times the significance of sound even surpasses that of textual learning in assessing the position of a Sufi in the spiritual hierarchy. It is said that on certain occasions, some lay members with little clerical training have nonetheless been given noble duties and superior statuses because of their evocative voices in reciting the Qur’an and the Sufi poetry; between sound and sanctity there seems to be a special link. However, even from the outset such privileging of sound is not stable and may vary at the whim of the reigning Jahriyya murshid (“guide”) in a particular period.

What does call for attention is the fact that for most Jahriyya Sufis who can and have been reciting all their lives, the semantics of the Sufi poems seldom impinges on their vocal recitation. While some clerics insist on the importance of textual learning, and hold entrenched contempt for those who recite without knowing the meaning of what they recite, for many ordinary Jahriyya disciples a schism between text and recitation is empirically undeniable. While people may now and then aspire to the ideal of religious erudition, in practice the perpetuation of the Jahriyya order has for centuries relied on the daily performance of voice. The plot of the story soon thickens when we delve deeper into the voice. For even the Jahriyya pronunciation of Arabic exhibits eccentric idiosyncrasies. Paying due attention to sound in a study of Islam immediately gives rise to a series of discoveries. Let me elaborate on these discoveries and explore their relevance to a postcolonial critique of the contemporary anthropology of Islam.

First, this shift to sound is not merely propelled by an interest in Islamic music. While Sufi recitation surely can be studied from a musical perspective, and ethnomusicology does constitute a source of inspiration for my project, labelling this shift of perspective as merely a change of focus from text to music undermines its potential power. The Jahriyya recitation does not follow tajwīd, the canon that regulates the recitation of sacred Islamic texts, in particular the Qur’an. The Arabic used among the Jahriyya shows dramatic phonetic shifts from its “original” form. While one view may argue that such shifts indicate a “corruption” of Arabic as Islam spread to non-Muslim regions, the reverse may be closer to history: namely, that the spread of Islam and the “preservation” – even creation – of classical Arabic are both political processes; the “standard” recitation we now hear reproduced throughout the Muslim world is by no means “natural.” Rather it is in itself a product of continuous political intervention and ideological suppression. While Muslims may revel in the remarkable power of Islam to convert populations at the far end of the known world, almost inevitably the language of Islam would in the same expansion be subject to the mediation of multiple local languages and dialects. While elite clerics may strive to preserve and institutionalise the “standard” recitation and condemn its “corrosion” by (trans)local influences, for many ordinary Muslims “substandard” Arabic may have been the norm rather than the exception much of the time. Persian (with its own diverse dialects), Chinese (equally heterogeneous), Tibetan, Mongolian, Turkish, and other languages and dialects, all have a role to play in the making of the Jahriyya sound. Whether this is celebrated as a mark of pre-modern cosmopolitanism or decried as a sign of religious impurity is a matter of ideological preference; the empirical fact of acoustic heterogeneity, however, remains undeniable.

Which leads me to the second point. This acoustic heterogeneity compels us to put sound in its proper place. For if many Jahriyya recite without being literate in Arabic, and their limited knowledge of the alphabet is mediated by the sounds of diverse languages, a stress on texts and their interpretation may perpetuate the intellectualist ideology that continues to govern this approach. In this the textual approach of Oriental Studies joins forces with the elitist intellectual traditions in many Muslim societies. The result is nearly a global obliteration of what Islam is for many ordinary Muslims. The point, however, is not to make the voices of the downtrodden heard; for it is often the case that everyone, including those whose everyday practice has thus been erased from historical records, will look to the venerable textual tradition to define who they are or wish to be. There is no “subaltern” voice to be recuperated. The practice to be recovered from effacement does not have a voice; it cannot speak up for itself. There is no “native’s point of view” that comes to our assistance; if anything, the “natives” and the “experts” share the same vision, and the same contempt for – or bewilderment at – “substandard” voices.

Jahriyya followers continue to hold the view that it is their particularly loud and melodious chanting that sets them apart from other Sufi and non-Sufi Muslims in China. At times the significance of sound even surpasses that of textual learning in assessing the position of a Sufi in the spiritual hierarchy.

The picture can be further complicated; and the politics it gives rise to requires more nuanced engagement. Scholars of Islam have always been a major force in combating Islamophobia, and we are quick to show, at the goad of incendiary reports fanned out by right-wing media, that Islam is a religion of peace; that the Qur’an teaches non-violence and tolerance; that most Muslims live a life of “moderation” and reject brutality just like the rest of humanity (the number of this “rest” may be dwindling, unfortunately). Some anthropologists go to such great lengths as to take classes in mosques and vindicate the reputation of new Islamic movements. Very often the purpose is to redeem “subjugated voices.” We are there to listen; and then we record, and show by means of such recorded voices that the world of Islam is infinitely more complex than shown in the daily media reports. There are people who want to hear such voices; and there are those who want to be heard, too. We act as the self-effacing (despite the fame gained) moderator, creating a theatre of voices where politics (whose politics?) is remade.

However, often overlooked in such feats is the fact that what we can and cannot hear, and what can be allowed to cross the threshold of audibility in a local Muslim society, is always channelled through specific routes furrowed by power. Such power has been and will continue to be transnational; what counts as the canonical texts and how such texts shall be interpreted and sounded are by no means parochial local concerns. And whether the interpretation of texts defines the daily being of many ordinary Muslims may also be determined by relations of power, this despite what is consciously conveyed to the anthropologist in words. A champion of textual learning who wishes to perfect her Arabic pronunciation may continue to hold dear the “substandard” recitation; or certain practices may miraculously persist for centuries despite the fact that some of its practitioners would rather show an outside anthropologist something else, something presumably more “worthy” of attention, such as the preserved texts and the intense training in textual interpretation. More than once a slight unease attended some of the young Jahriyya followers when I inquired about their recitation; and the “old tune (laodiao),’’ set in contrast presumably to the “standard” recitation regulated by the phonetics of classical Arabic, constitutes for many a source of embarrassment. People live in contradictions; but when they verbalise their stories and pass these on to interested anthropologists, they may prefer, or merely unconsciously succumb to, the allure of coherency. Diverse, enigmatic, and “substandard” sounds give way to textualised doctrines and uplifting sermons. Everyone looks to an ideal ego that reality is pushed out of the visible field.

Moving from text to sound in the study of Islam, therefore, entails nearly a complete shift of perspective, and raises new questions in the political terrain. This is precisely why good social science, especially good ethnography, is inherently political. The ultimate question raised by an ethnography of the Jahriyya voice would then be, have we ever had a genuinely postcolonial moment in the study of Islam?