CENSORING THE KISHKOPHONE: RELIGION AND STATE POWER IN MUBARAK'S EGYPT

Abstract

AbstractHow do states produce religion and how can the study of state censorship cast light on this phenomenon? This article examines the logic by which two Egyptian government bodies, the Ministry of Culture and the Islamic Research Academy, censored the sermons of a premier Islamist preacher, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Hamid Kishk (d. 1999), between 1987 and 1993. To do so, it draws on two distinct sets of sources: a sixteen-volume printed edition of Kishk's sermons published in Egypt and MP3s of original performances recorded initially by audiocassette. While previous studies on religion and state power in the Middle East emphasize the strategies by which states use religion to assert their interests, this article uses the censorship of a leading antiregime preacher to probe the undertheorized distinction between claiming and producing religion. A focus on the strategies, in turn, casts light on both the internal diversity of religious visions within the Egyptian state and on the subtle, yet significant, ways in which state actors not only censor but also are shaped by their Islamist challengers.