The Calls of Islam Sufis, Islamists, and Mass Mediation in Urban Morocco [Hardcover]

The sacred calls that summon believers are the focus of this study of religion and power in Fez, Morocco. Focusing on how dissemination of the call through mass media has transformed understandings of piety and authority, Emilio Spadola details the new importance of oncemarginal Sufi practices such as spirit trance and exorcism for ordinary believers, the state, and Islamist movements. The Calls of Islam offers new ethnographic perspectives on ritual, performance, and media in the Muslim world.

Honorable Mention, 2014 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of ReligionHonorable Mention, 2015 L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize in North African Studies

Introduction: The Calls of Islam
1. Calls from the Unseen
2. Nationalizing the Call: Trance, Technology and Control
3. Our Master's Call
4. Summoning in Secret: Mute Letters and Veiled Writing
5. Rites of Reception
6. Trance-Nationalism; or the Call of Moroccan Islam
7. To Eliminate the Ghostly Element between People: The Call as Exorcism Epilogue: The Arab Spring, the Monarchy's Call

Spadola's dense but short study . . . manages admirably well to deal with a complex topic, skillfully balancing ethnographic and analytic elements.Writing with great subtlety and insight, Spadola shows us how a technological imaginary has forcefully insinuated itself into the categories and practices of religious reformism in contemporary Morocco. An ethnographic and historical examination of Islamic ritual practices in the era of mass communication, The Calls of Islam provides a superb demonstration of anthropological analysis at its best. A major contribution to our understanding of the complicated nexus of religion, nationalism, and technology.

Emilio Spadola is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Colgate University.

Calls of Islam is an instructive contribution to the literature on Moroccos socio-culltural and political idiosyncrasies.

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