kmiainfo: Religious platforms are more preoccupied with the afterlife than the worldly life Religious platforms are more preoccupied with the afterlife than the worldly life

Religious platforms are more preoccupied with the afterlife than the worldly life

Religious platforms are more preoccupied with the afterlife than the worldly life Ahmed Zayed: There is a rupture between the religious text and the requirements of reality in Egypt. Life also has a share The book “Voice of the Imam Religious Discourse from Context to Recipient” by Egyptian sociology professor Ahmed Zayed examines through analysis and interpretation the pulpit sermons that are given to people in mosques, to ask questions not only about the discourse but also about the context and texts it produces and the method for producing and receiving these texts, and these The questions are principled, such as: how is the context that produces religious discourse formed, and what is the role of religious education and the expansion of the circles of discursive platforms in expanding the influence of the religious field in life; How are religious elites formed? What is its historical role in making the most dominant and dominant religious intellectual framework? What are the features of this framework? And how to continue isolated issues of defense of religion and identity? The studied and analyzed texts in the book issued by the Family Library pose a second set of questions, which can be summarized as: What might the topics of these rhetorical texts be and the values ​​they transmit? Are there within the texts topics and issues that urge people to develop, advance, progress and strive towards changing life? Or is it an eschatological discourse that focuses most of its attention on what comes after life and is not preoccupied with issues of renaissance and development, and therefore how much interest in rhetorical texts is in the system of values ​​that are said to be values ​​that tend to improve the conditions of human existence, so what is the nature of development or progress that this discourse brings? Or is it a letter sent to meet professional requirements? From the texts to the reception, other questions arise: How does the public receive and does the religious habitus of individuals and groups play a role in this reception? Is the recipient subject to the texts in a negative way, or does he receive them with understanding, critic and interpreter? Zayed stresses that the study of discourse is inseparable from its context, for it is the context that produces the discourse and it is the one that receives it after its production. Also, this discourse returns to reality through the processes of receiving in order to direct this reality or contribute to its formation in a certain way, or at least in order to be understood in a certain way, and to receive and interact with it through this reality. The sample of sermons analyzed by Zayed reached 470 sermons that were taken from two sources. The first is sermons published in books, which are sermons delivered by senior preachers and published in books that have become an important reference for all mosque preachers from which they select their rhetorical ideas, and they may even memorize some of its paragraphs as memorization. The number of these sermons reached 228. The second was sermons that were recorded in their text from mosques, and these sermons amounted to 242 sermons, and these sermons were collected over a period that extended from the end of 2007 until the beginning of 2010 and covered the regions of Greater Cairo, Beni Suef, Fayoum, Minya and Sohag. Zayed points out that the discursive platforms that are spread in various places through different images (preaching in mosques, religious conferences, religious competitions, religious programs, on television...) work in a way that is completely compatible with the hegemonic religious framework supported by the elites who dominate the religious field, Religious elites produce discourse at the highest level in the form of sermons, books, or television programmes, and these discursive products are received through various platforms in order to be disseminated at the lower level. Religious “institutional and educational” money is large, and it also produces large numbers of bearers of all these qualities, albeit to a lesser extent, and those who spread on discursive platforms to deliver the messages included in the elite religious discourse, each according to their rhetorical and charismatic capabilities. Meanings and connotations The development of religious discourse depends on its discovery of the other worlds Contemporary capitalism, with its ever-evolving communication tools and its extensive consumer market, works to support these discourse platforms with modern “audio-visual” technologies that make the entire religious discourse an integral part of the consumer capitalist system, subjecting it in many cases to processes similar to the processes of supply and demand, or production and consumption. He continues that those standing on these platforms of discourse respond - whether in the sites of the religious elites or the horizontal positions in mosques, corners and classrooms - with this culture, so they excel in improving their traditional clothes or replace them with modern clothes, and they are skilled in showing their bodies while they are clean and covered with clean beautiful clothes, And manicured beards, and all of this is a requirement of contemporary capitalist consumer culture. Zayed reveals that the statistical reading of the eschatological and past-oriented sermons shows that the eschatological nature dominates the discourse, as the number of sermons with a religious orientation reached 362, or 77 percent, while the number of sermons with a worldly orientation reached 108 sermons, or 23 percent. They are discussed in religious sermons directed mostly towards the afterlife, as follows: Relationship with God repeats 76 by 21.2 percent, the home of the Hereafter repeats 66 by 18.4 percent, all kinds of worship repeat 65 by 18.1 percent, rulings, fatwas and warnings repeat 43 by 11.1 percent, Islam and Muslim attributes repeat 39 by 10.9 percent, the Qur’an repeats 30 by 8.4 percent, the Prophet and his attributes repeat 22 by 6.1 percent, historical events repeat 21 by 5.8 percent, for a total of 362 repeats by 100 percent. As for sermons with a worldly orientation related to worldly life, according to Zayed, they are few if compared to other issues. The number of sermons that were classified as dealing with worldly issues directly amounted to 108 sermons, representing 23% of the total sermons. These sermons covered various topics as follows: General: Political and social issues 12 recurrences at 11.1 percent, rights, 25 recurrences at 23.1 percent, relationships with self and others, 8 recurrences with 7.4 percent, values ​​and ideals, 51 recurrences, at 47.3 percent, criticism of behaviors, 7 recurrences, at 6.4 percent, issues General scientific repeat 2 by 1.8 percent, future 2.8 percent, total 108 by 99.9 percent. Ahmed Zayed: Religious discourse does not transmit messages urging individuals and groups to achieve social and economic advancement Here, we point out that political and social topics occupy 11% of the total worldly topics, indicating that these topics of speeches appear to be speeches on occasions ranging between politics and public events and interacting with general societal issues. Zayed discusses the meanings and connotations indicated by the speech according to the statistics and its analyses. He stops the analysis at a number of points, from which we draw attention to the point of “establishing fear” in which he said: “The speech embodies direct and indirect connotations and meanings to spread fear and establish it in the souls. On the one hand, talking about the torment and darkness of the grave on the other hand, and trying to portray the conditions of people as bad conditions, and that people have to make a great effort of faith to reach a state of reassurance on the third hand. All of this works to make fear close to the heart and mind of the believer. The connotations of fear and its meanings emanating from the discourse perform other functions beyond the state of fear and anxiety. The imam assumes that fear will bring man closer to God, but perhaps the exact opposite will happen. Fear may widen the distance between the servant and the Lord and create in him a degree of uncertainty about his faith. Among those points is the “worried self,” in which Zayed explained that the speech reveals a real misery for religious awareness, as it is a consciousness that is scattered between history and contemporary reality, including the different, dominant other. Awareness conflicts between these three components, “the deteriorating reality – the dominant other – the lost history,” so it becomes a naughty awareness, anxious looking for security and safety. Security, tranquility and happiness “There is no tranquility, no happiness.. no exhilaration of the chest, no pleasure in living, and a person does not enjoy a dress, even if it is luxurious.. nor a boat, even if it is ridiculous.. nor money, nor luxuries, nor a place that restores peace of mind. This is how the imam spoke, and the text reflects an anxious self that does not find happiness in anything except faith, which is always presented to achieve peace of mind for the soul. However, the intention of the speech towards emphasizing anxiety and lack of reassurance is parallel to another intentionality that talks about the self or the blamed self, the commanding self or the commanding self and the reassuring self. Or a reassuring soul. Also, in the context of his analysis of sermons, Zayed asks: Does religious discourse transmit messages that urge individuals and groups to achieve social and economic advancement? In other words, is there an intention in the speech to direct the listeners to build themselves as individuals and build their society as a nation? Through an analysis of the matrix of development values ​​in the texts of the 470 speeches, it first reveals that the most frequent values ​​in the speech are social values ​​by 34.1 percent, and the least frequent are work values ​​by 13.2 percent, as the reference to work was repeated 38 times in the speeches, and that most of the references and their percentage 89.5 percent was done indirectly. Secondly, the number of references to the matrix of values ​​is small compared to the number of sermons analyzed, as it reached 288 references in 470 sermons, or 61.3 percent. Third, the direct references to these values ​​are very few, reaching only 54 signals, or 18.7 percent of the total signals. Fourth, most of the signals were done indirectly, as the percentage of indirect signals amounted to 234 signals, or 81.3 percent of the total signals. Fifthly, there are values ​​that have never been dealt with, and there are 15 values, representing 27.7 percent of the total values. The absence of the present and the future Focusing more on the speech of the hereafter From what Zayed concludes, “The discourse is preoccupied with the afterlife more than it is concerned with the life of this world. The analysis indicated that 77 percent of the discourse’s topics are directed towards topics related to the afterlife or worship, that is, religious topics that are not related to life. Issues such as the issue of slavery to God and the afterlife, and various types of worship came to the fore in the topics that the discourse is concerned with. And when the discourse is preoccupied with topics such as the Qur’an, Islam, the Prophet, or even historical topics, its orientation is a purely religious orientation that does not link the discourse with the life of the world. As for the small number of sermons that address worldly topics, at a rate of 23 percent, the discourse tends to establish faith in souls more than directing people to specific goals, except for a small number. The rupture between the past and the present is not resolved by integrating the text into reality, but by past reflexivity He points out that most of the talk about worldly matters focuses on two topics: values ​​and ideals in 47.3% of the total worldly oriented speeches, and rights in 23.2 percent of these sermons, as the content of the speech here tends to transform the hadith into a purely religious talk with the aim of Consolidating faith in the souls, such as when the imam talks about the issue of fulfilling the covenant with the issue of fulfilling the covenant with God..and so on. Zayed believes that the speech is almost devoid of talk about the future. In fact, we may encounter here and there talk about negligence. Inattention may be understood as a failure to realize the causes of progress, and to realize the insight into the future. But the talk about negligence here is not related to the causes of progress or the future, but rather to the negligence in remembrance of God, or negligence in worship, or negligence in the servitude of God, or negligence in reading the Qur’an. It is considered one of the causes of negligence. This leads to a reflexive tendency to counter the tendency of modernity. If the reflexivity of modernity tends to the future, and it takes thought and life to renewed worlds, then the past tendency is moving backwards to consider that the past is better than the present. And that this past is the true storehouse of virtuous values, integrity and righteous judgment. This reflexivity is evident in the religious discourse in its bitter criticism of the lived reality as well as the culture of the other and its civilizational achievements and the intense glorification of the past and the victories and glories it contains. And he concludes that the discourse emphasizes that there is absent Islam and absent precepts, and there is a rupture between the text and reality, but this rupture is resolved through the discourse not by integrating the text into reality, but by past reflexivity, i.e. by talking about the past as an ideal that must be imitated and must be implicitly restored . The criticism that focuses on reality is not paralleled by the criticism of the past, for the past was bright golden, and the present is black and rusty iron that needs to be clarified, and there is no way to that except by analogy with the past and imitating it.(Mohammed Al-Hamamsi Egyptian writer )

Religious platforms are more preoccupied with the afterlife than the worldly life


Ahmed Zayed: There is a rupture between the religious text and the requirements of reality in Egypt.

Life also has a share
The book “Voice of the Imam Religious Discourse from Context to Recipient” by Egyptian sociology professor Ahmed Zayed examines through analysis and interpretation the pulpit sermons that are given to people in mosques, to ask questions not only about the discourse but also about the context and texts it produces and the method for producing and receiving these texts, and these The questions are principled, such as: how is the context that produces religious discourse formed, and what is the role of religious education and the expansion of the circles of discursive platforms in expanding the influence of the religious field in life; How are religious elites formed? What is its historical role in making the most dominant and dominant religious intellectual framework? What are the features of this framework? And how to continue isolated issues of defense of religion and identity?

The studied and analyzed texts in the book issued by the Family Library pose a second set of questions, which can be summarized as: What might the topics of these rhetorical texts be and the values ​​they transmit? Are there within the texts topics and issues that urge people to develop, advance, progress and strive towards changing life? Or is it an eschatological discourse that focuses most of its attention on what comes after life and is not preoccupied with issues of renaissance and development, and therefore how much interest in rhetorical texts is in the system of values ​​that are said to be values ​​that tend to improve the conditions of human existence, so what is the nature of development or progress that this discourse brings? Or is it a letter sent to meet professional requirements?

From the texts to the reception, other questions arise: How does the public receive and does the religious habitus of individuals and groups play a role in this reception? Is the recipient subject to the texts in a negative way, or does he receive them with understanding, critic and interpreter?

Zayed stresses that the study of discourse is inseparable from its context, for it is the context that produces the discourse and it is the one that receives it after its production. Also, this discourse returns to reality through the processes of receiving in order to direct this reality or contribute to its formation in a certain way, or at least in order to be understood in a certain way, and to receive and interact with it through this reality.

The sample of sermons analyzed by Zayed reached 470 sermons that were taken from two sources. The first is sermons published in books, which are sermons delivered by senior preachers and published in books that have become an important reference for all mosque preachers from which they select their rhetorical ideas, and they may even memorize some of its paragraphs as memorization. The number of these sermons reached 228. The second was sermons that were recorded in their text from mosques, and these sermons amounted to 242 sermons, and these sermons were collected over a period that extended from the end of 2007 until the beginning of 2010 and covered the regions of Greater Cairo, Beni Suef, Fayoum, Minya and Sohag.

Zayed points out that the discursive platforms that are spread in various places through different images (preaching in mosques, religious conferences, religious competitions, religious programs, on television...) work in a way that is completely compatible with the hegemonic religious framework supported by the elites who dominate the religious field, Religious elites produce discourse at the highest level in the form of sermons, books, or television programmes, and these discursive products are received through various platforms in order to be disseminated at the lower level. Religious “institutional and educational” money is large, and it also produces large numbers of bearers of all these qualities, albeit to a lesser extent, and those who spread on discursive platforms to deliver the messages included in the elite religious discourse, each according to their rhetorical and charismatic capabilities.

Meanings and connotations
The development of religious discourse depends on its discovery of the other worlds 

Contemporary capitalism, with its ever-evolving communication tools and its extensive consumer market, works to support these discourse platforms with modern “audio-visual” technologies that make the entire religious discourse an integral part of the consumer capitalist system, subjecting it in many cases to processes similar to the processes of supply and demand, or production and consumption.

He continues that those standing on these platforms of discourse respond - whether in the sites of the religious elites or the horizontal positions in mosques, corners and classrooms - with this culture, so they excel in improving their traditional clothes or replace them with modern clothes, and they are skilled in showing their bodies while they are clean and covered with clean beautiful clothes, And manicured beards, and all of this is a requirement of contemporary capitalist consumer culture.

Zayed reveals that the statistical reading of the eschatological and past-oriented sermons shows that the eschatological nature dominates the discourse, as the number of sermons with a religious orientation reached 362, or 77 percent, while the number of sermons with a worldly orientation reached 108 sermons, or 23 percent. They are discussed in religious sermons directed mostly towards the afterlife, as follows: Relationship with God repeats 76 by 21.2 percent, the home of the Hereafter repeats 66 by 18.4 percent, all kinds of worship repeat 65 by 18.1 percent, rulings, fatwas and warnings repeat 43 by 11.1 percent, Islam and Muslim attributes repeat 39 by 10.9 percent, the Qur’an repeats 30 by 8.4 percent, the Prophet and his attributes repeat 22 by 6.1 percent, historical events repeat 21 by 5.8 percent, for a total of 362 repeats by 100 percent.

As for sermons with a worldly orientation related to worldly life, according to Zayed, they are few if compared to other issues. The number of sermons that were classified as dealing with worldly issues directly amounted to 108 sermons, representing 23% of the total sermons. These sermons covered various topics as follows: General: Political and social issues 12 recurrences at 11.1 percent, rights, 25 recurrences at 23.1 percent, relationships with self and others, 8 recurrences with 7.4 percent, values ​​and ideals, 51 recurrences, at 47.3 percent, criticism of behaviors, 7 recurrences, at 6.4 percent, issues General scientific repeat 2 by 1.8 percent, future 2.8 percent, total 108 by 99.9 percent.

Ahmed Zayed: Religious discourse does not transmit messages urging individuals and groups to achieve social and economic advancement
Here, we point out that political and social topics occupy 11% of the total worldly topics, indicating that these topics of speeches appear to be speeches on occasions ranging between politics and public events and interacting with general societal issues.

Zayed discusses the meanings and connotations indicated by the speech according to the statistics and its analyses. He stops the analysis at a number of points, from which we draw attention to the point of “establishing fear” in which he said: “The speech embodies direct and indirect connotations and meanings to spread fear and establish it in the souls. On the one hand, talking about the torment and darkness of the grave on the other hand, and trying to portray the conditions of people as bad conditions, and that people have to make a great effort of faith to reach a state of reassurance on the third hand.

All of this works to make fear close to the heart and mind of the believer. The connotations of fear and its meanings emanating from the discourse perform other functions beyond the state of fear and anxiety. The imam assumes that fear will bring man closer to God, but perhaps the exact opposite will happen. Fear may widen the distance between the servant and the Lord and create in him a degree of uncertainty about his faith.

Among those points is the “worried self,” in which Zayed explained that the speech reveals a real misery for religious awareness, as it is a consciousness that is scattered between history and contemporary reality, including the different, dominant other.

Awareness conflicts between these three components, “the deteriorating reality – the dominant other – the lost history,” so it becomes a naughty awareness, anxious looking for security and safety. Security, tranquility and happiness “There is no tranquility, no happiness.. no exhilaration of the chest, no pleasure in living, and a person does not enjoy a dress, even if it is luxurious.. nor a boat, even if it is ridiculous.. nor money, nor luxuries, nor a place that restores peace of mind.

This is how the imam spoke, and the text reflects an anxious self that does not find happiness in anything except faith, which is always presented to achieve peace of mind for the soul. However, the intention of the speech towards emphasizing anxiety and lack of reassurance is parallel to another intentionality that talks about the self or the blamed self, the commanding self or the commanding self and the reassuring self. Or a reassuring soul.

Also, in the context of his analysis of sermons, Zayed asks: Does religious discourse transmit messages that urge individuals and groups to achieve social and economic advancement? In other words, is there an intention in the speech to direct the listeners to build themselves as individuals and build their society as a nation?

Through an analysis of the matrix of development values ​​in the texts of the 470 speeches, it first reveals that the most frequent values ​​in the speech are social values ​​by 34.1 percent, and the least frequent are work values ​​by 13.2 percent, as the reference to work was repeated 38 times in the speeches, and that most of the references and their percentage 89.5 percent was done indirectly.

Secondly, the number of references to the matrix of values ​​is small compared to the number of sermons analyzed, as it reached 288 references in 470 sermons, or 61.3 percent.

Third, the direct references to these values ​​are very few, reaching only 54 signals, or 18.7 percent of the total signals.

Fourth, most of the signals were done indirectly, as the percentage of indirect signals amounted to 234 signals, or 81.3 percent of the total signals.

Fifthly, there are values ​​that have never been dealt with, and there are 15 values, representing 27.7 percent of the total values.

The absence of the present and the future
Focusing more on the speech of the hereafter 

From what Zayed concludes, “The discourse is preoccupied with the afterlife more than it is concerned with the life of this world. The analysis indicated that 77 percent of the discourse’s topics are directed towards topics related to the afterlife or worship, that is, religious topics that are not related to life.

Issues such as the issue of slavery to God and the afterlife, and various types of worship came to the fore in the topics that the discourse is concerned with. And when the discourse is preoccupied with topics such as the Qur’an, Islam, the Prophet, or even historical topics, its orientation is a purely religious orientation that does not link the discourse with the life of the world.

As for the small number of sermons that address worldly topics, at a rate of 23 percent, the discourse tends to establish faith in souls more than directing people to specific goals, except for a small number.

The rupture between the past and the present is not resolved by integrating the text into reality, but by past reflexivity
He points out that most of the talk about worldly matters focuses on two topics: values ​​and ideals in 47.3% of the total worldly oriented speeches, and rights in 23.2 percent of these sermons, as the content of the speech here tends to transform the hadith into a purely religious talk with the aim of Consolidating faith in the souls, such as when the imam talks about the issue of fulfilling the covenant with the issue of fulfilling the covenant with God..and so on.

Zayed believes that the speech is almost devoid of talk about the future. In fact, we may encounter here and there talk about negligence. Inattention may be understood as a failure to realize the causes of progress, and to realize the insight into the future. But the talk about negligence here is not related to the causes of progress or the future, but rather to the negligence in remembrance of God, or negligence in worship, or negligence in the servitude of God, or negligence in reading the Qur’an. It is considered one of the causes of negligence.

This leads to a reflexive tendency to counter the tendency of modernity. If the reflexivity of modernity tends to the future, and it takes thought and life to renewed worlds, then the past tendency is moving backwards to consider that the past is better than the present. And that this past is the true storehouse of virtuous values, integrity and righteous judgment. This reflexivity is evident in the religious discourse in its bitter criticism of the lived reality as well as the culture of the other and its civilizational achievements and the intense glorification of the past and the victories and glories it contains.

And he concludes that the discourse emphasizes that there is absent Islam and absent precepts, and there is a rupture between the text and reality, but this rupture is resolved through the discourse not by integrating the text into reality, but by past reflexivity, i.e. by talking about the past as an ideal that must be imitated and must be implicitly restored .

The criticism that focuses on reality is not paralleled by the criticism of the past, for the past was bright golden, and the present is black and rusty iron that needs to be clarified, and there is no way to that except by analogy with the past and imitating it.(Mohammed Al-Hamamsi Egyptian writer )
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