"The Politics of Sound"

Several ideologies and facts about the Islamic lifestyle were quite astonishing in Charles Hirschkind's "The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette sermons and Islamic Counterpublics" but one thing I did not know and which was significantly eye-opening was the importance of the sermons in the Muslim communities.

I personally grew up in a community in the southern part of Ghana, where there would be periodic broadcast from the central mosque in the town for about thirty minutes every day around 5 PM. However, I believed that to be a simple call to prayer and not necessarily a sermon broadcasted for all who could understand to listen.

It was also very interesting to see the power that sermons, through cassettes, have on the Islamic community- to the extent that some extremists could see great potential in that medium to broadcast, incite and propagandize extremist movements, especially when it is "well suited to underground political communication" (Hirschkind, 3). Subsequently, as Hirshkind points out, there is an increasing stigma and scepticism about these sermons from the non-Islamic governments and communities. Hirshkind presents that these sermons have always been an important part of the livelihood of the communities and that it would not be just to dub the entirety of the sermons as "terrorism-inspired." They, most at times, seek to promote democracy in the Middle East.

The use of something good and meaningful to a society to cause harm and violence does not necessarily change the inherent goodness in that entity. It points out the negative motives of the people who seek to twist the good for their own use but for those who still seek to follow the good and peaceful path should not be prosecuted for it.