2011 Autumn school ‘Secular sounds, Islamic sounds and politics of listening’

Much research has been done in the last decade or so on the new visible presence of Muslims in the Diaspora in the West, in Europe and in North-America. Literature has focused on issues such as veiling and other visible bodily practices or on the changing outlook of multicultural cities through mosques, halal shops, etc.

While the aspect of the visible presence is crucial to understand the developments of the Islamic revival in the West as well as the ensuing (often affective, visceral) debates regarding Muslim's access to the public sphere within the context of regimes of secularity, a crucial aspect seems to have been overlooked. It concerns the audible presence of Muslims in these contexts. Muslims have not only impacted on the visible landscape, but they also have transformed the soundscape.

This autumn school aims to address this gap and focus on the audible or sonic aspects of the Muslim presence. The emphasis on the audible should, however, not be perceived as diminishing the aspect of the visual or as denying its inherent entanglement with the former. It is understood here that the perception through one sense register never occurs alone, but always co-functions with other senses.

Islamic (inspired) soundscapes have been flourishing notably within Islamic counter-publics in the recent ten years. Listening practices closely related to traditional modes of piety such as Quran recitation or khutbas have been proliferating through new media technologies. But also music practices have been flourishing, notwithstanding the contested character of music within strands of Islamic theology. From a revival of the nasheed tradition have followed the emergence of a diversified Islamic music culture, including forms of pop, country, rock and rap music.
However, Islamic sounds can also potentially leave the circumscribed and somehow protected spheres of the Islamic milieu. Islamic sounds become audible in a larger public sphere when, for example, Muslim musicians perform Islamic music at multicultural festivals or mixed cultural events, they become audible on the street when cell phones resonate the call for prayer or nasheed melodies, or if a mosque has the permission to use loudspeakers for the call for prayer.

Yet, the audibility and sonic presence of Muslims raises issues similar to their visual presence in the secular public sphere (in particular in Europe) which has been subjected to stigmatizing (media) representations and governmental policies seeking to regulate and circumscribe them. Most European countries today forbid, for instance, the diffusion of the call to prayer outside mosques.

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