Morocco has long been noted for its specific and unique brand of Islam, which blends orthodox Islamic teachings with an amalgam of Sufi mystical rituals and occult practices. Few studies have delved into the micro-dynamics and significance of such rituals in Moroccan society and politics. Emilio Spadola's Calls of Islam is one such informative anthropological study of popular Sufi rituals of sainthood, jinn curing (exorcism), and trance rites, and the technological means of their dissemination in urban Morocco. Spadola's general thesis is that these rituals and practices are in fact competing calls of Islam, which delineate the boundaries of personal ties, elite versus underclass status, political authority, and national identity.
Rituals of exorcism (ruqya sharʿiyya or legitimate curing) and the trance-inducing tales of Aisha constitute calls of Islam that are appropriated, constructed, and reconstructed by state religious apparatus, Sufi authorities, and local Islamists to cultivate a sense of the pious and national cultural unity. These rituals are intrinsically linked to acts of mediation—as repeated processes and practical acts of communication—in urban Morocco. The calls of Islam in this context of Sufi rituals “have staged socio-religious power to call forth and control local difference between elite and underclass” (8). Based on extensive field research mainly in the city of Fes, Spadola examines popular Sufi spirit veneration, trance spectacles of Gnawa, and jinn exorcism. The book then analyzes the power and significance of these rituals in shaping a modern socio-religious and political identity in Morocco.
The book's first chapters offer dense, theoretically insightful historical analysis of the calls of Islam, mass-mediation, and “Moroccan Islam.” Historically, the monarchy has served in pre- and post-colonial Morocco as the dominant sharifian structure. Various state-backed Sufi orders with different and competing ritual “calls of Islam” sought to maintain the existing political-cultural order, in which the regime is exclusively in control of the religious field and Sufi revivalism occupies a privileged status in defining the realm of the sacred for Moroccans.
Sufi revivalism, especially under Mohammed VI, reinvigorated the national significance of Sufi calls and rituals within a formidable state bureaucracy with exclusive control of traditional media outlets. After the 2003 terrorist attacks in Casablanca, the state shattered other mainly Salafi calls to Islam (17–18), replacing them with innocuous Sufi rituals that did not challenge “the spiritual security of the nation” (137). Thus the state's religious narrative as sustained by Sufi rituals has been instrumental in maintaining the regime's monopoly over a national religious identity. Spadola provides a rich ethnographic analysis of these state-sanctioned rituals of jinn summoning, exorcism, local trance spectacles, and (at the national level) the Gnawa music festival in Essaouira.
Jinn rituals, largely performed by the lower classes, presented a challenge to the sharifian authority of the monarchy. Spadola argues that the regime's attempt to reconstruct these “socially destructive” rituals unfolded in the powerful state-sponsored media, which disseminated a narrative of common national heritage and identity. The trance tale of Aisha's youth, unity, and loss, Spadola argues, captivates the audience and enraptures Moroccans in a reconstructed common national culture (115–6).
Towards the end of the book, Spadola juxtaposes state-sponsored rituals of jinn curing, the “trance-nationalist” tale of Aisha, and Gnawa festivals’ emphasis on cultural renewal and national unity with Islamist jinn exorcism and ruqya shariʿyya practices. Like state-sanctioned rituals, Islamist rites are performed through communicative practices of talismanic writings and trance rites. Islamists, Spadola observes, do indeed practice calls of Islam to convene Muslims to adopt proper pious practices, in a society they perceive to be lacking “consciousness of Islamic traditions” (120).
Spadola points out the contradiction in the Islamists’ discourse and practice of exorcism, which opposes the immorality of traditional practices and belief in sorcery and trance, while they engage in their own form of ritual practices. Islamist rituals, Spadola observes, expand the religious ritualistic dimensions of society, and add a Kafkaesque “ghostly element between people” (121).
Calls of Islam is theoretically sophisticated and empirically informative. While Spadola provides a thick anthropological description of the major concepts of jinn and ruqya, he does not provide an equally rich historical and religious account of the genesis of these concepts in the larger Islamic tradition. Similarly, Spadola's focus on jinn, jinn exorcism, trance tales of Aisha, and Gnawa provide a thick socio-cultural portrait of Morocco, but a rather thin political analysis of other important rituals of power that the regime possesses in its religious capital. In particular, the status of the king as the commander of the faithful, both constitutional and moral, could in fact constitute a “call of Islam” in its own right and is not treated in depth in Spadola's study. Neither is the spectacle of bayʿa (allegiance), which links the regime to society every year in a grandiose display, broadcasted and disseminated through the state's communicative technologies.
The methodological choice of Fes, while interesting, poses an additional limitation on the scope and range of the study in terms of generalizability in Morocco. How might rituals of jinn curing and trance tales be performed in other regions of Morocco, urban and rural, Arab and Amazigh? And how do they support, if at all, the overall thesis of the book?
Despite these lacunae, Calls of Islam is an instructive contribution to the literature on Morocco's socio-cultural and political idiosyncrasies. However, it is perhaps more instructive to scholars and advanced students of political anthropology in the Middle East and North Africa.
