7 - Brief Reminders: Muslim Preachers, Mediation and Time
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2020
Summary
On 7 August 2016, the Swedish Muslim preacher Bilal Borchali (b. 1970) published the first of a series of fifteen short videos on Facebook. After initial greetings and blessings on the Prophet Muhammad in Arabic, he continued in Swedish:
Just like the logo here above me, 90 seconds, that is precisely what inshʾallah will be here in the future, in ninety seconds we will give a message, food for thought, something that can be useful for every practising believer. Let us start with the first food for thought, my siblings [syskon], may Allah subḥāna wa taʿālā preserve you. When you buy a mobile phone, what is the first thing you buy with the phone? Exactly! Screen protection. You want to protect the screen so that in case you drop it, it won't break; you want to protect it from scratches subḥān Allah. When you buy a computer what do you do? You buy an antivirus software […]. What about our īmān [faith], my siblings, how do we protect our īmān? How do we protect our īmān!? Do we really think about that which is beneficial for us, our īmān, that which can give us īmān, that which can give strength to our īmān, that which preserves our īmān, like the Prophet Muhammad ṣallū wa sallam, he says, īmān increases with good deeds and decreases with bad deeds. How is your īmān? Have you thought about, brother, have you thought about, sister, have you thought seriously about what it is that can make your īmān stronger? That is today's food for thought, so think carefully, the Prophet Muhammad ṣallū wa sallam said, īmān increases with good deeds and decreases with bad deeds, make sure to do good, make sure to take care of your īmān so you can be happy in this life and the coming life. See you soon again, salām ʿalaykum wa raamatullāhi wa barakātuhu. (Borchali 2016a)
The length of this video was almost two minutes, which, although longer than the promised ninety seconds, is certainly brief for being an instance of religious preaching. This type of self-imposed brevity on preachers’ output in their attempts to catch the attention of an audience is this chapter's main focal point. How is preaching adapted to a short, often audio-visual, format?
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- Muslim Preaching in the Middle East and BeyondHistorical and Contemporary Case Studies, pp. 132 - 152Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020