Blurring boundaries: aesthetics, performance, and the transformation of Islamic leadership
This article demonstrates the importance of performance - and in particular performances that blur boundaries between aesthetical styles - to the emergence and impact of 'new religious intellectuals', a group that radically transformed Islamic leadership in the twentieth century and were i...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
[2015]
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| In: |
Culture and religion
Year: 2015, Volume: 16, Issue: 2, Pages: 160-174 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Egypt
/ Islam
/ Intellectual
/ Religious leader
/ Performativity (Cultural sciences)
/ Clothing
/ Aesthetics
/ History 1900-2000
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AE Psychology of religion BJ Islam KBL Near East and North Africa TJ Modern history TK Recent history |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This article demonstrates the importance of performance - and in particular performances that blur boundaries between aesthetical styles - to the emergence and impact of 'new religious intellectuals', a group that radically transformed Islamic leadership in the twentieth century and were involved in setting up the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from 1928.This article builds on previous work on performance and the legitimation of Islamic leadership to show that aesthetics should be considered alongside education and discourse as a differentiating factor between new religious intellectuals and the 'ulama'. Drawing on Birgit Meyer's approach to aesthetics, it argues that aesthetical styles formed a crucial part of the vocabulary of the performances through which leadership and group belonging was legitimised in interwar Egypt. This emphasises further that the legitimation of leadership is about more than demonstrating intellectual mastery of information and techniques, whether Islamic or European-influenced. Finally, the article demonstrates the importance of blurring boundaries to sociocultural change and specifically to the emergence of new religious intellectuals in interwar Egypt, because it highlights how early new religious intellectuals straddled the boundary separating the 'ulama' from the efendiyya to establish themselves as religious leaders for the self-consciously modern 'efendiyya'. While early new religious intellectuals drew on hybrid educational backgrounds, their vocation and discourse were fairly closely matched to the efendiyya. Instead, it was in the area of aesthetics that the most blurring occurred, with leaders performing elements of both 'ulama' and 'efendiyya' aesthetics to establish legitimacy as both social leaders and religious authorities within the 'efendiyya'. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-5610 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Culture and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/14755610.2015.1058528 |