{"id":35663,"date":"2026-02-12T15:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/from-regulating-religious-sound-to-transforming-it-into-light-public-legal-and-architectural-debates-on-the-adhan\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:11:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:11:01","slug":"from-regulating-religious-sound-to-transforming-it-into-light-public-legal-and-architectural-debates-on-the-adhan","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/from-regulating-religious-sound-to-transforming-it-into-light-public-legal-and-architectural-debates-on-the-adhan\/","title":{"rendered":"From regulating religious sound to transforming it into light: public, legal and architectural debates on the adh\u0101n"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel)<\/a>, held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Dirk Ansorge<\/strong> (Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology, Frankfurt) spoke as part of Theme 2 \u2014 Aesthetics, ethics and everyday life: prohibitions, representations and practices.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of the paper<\/h3>\n

The muezzin’s public call to prayer (adh\u0101n<\/em>) is an integral part of the religious and cultural heritage of Islamic societies. It is nonetheless frequently subject to legal restrictions, even within those societies. In liberal societies, the adh\u0101n<\/em> is often perceived as the embodiment of a missionary Islamism, and rejected accordingly. The function of the adh\u0101n<\/em> as an open proclamation of the Islamic faith stands in contrast to the multiple meanings attributed to church bells, critics contend.<\/p>\n

Without a doubt, the adh\u0101n<\/em> is an “acoustic occupation of space” that is perceived very differently by different groups within society. In this light, judicial bodies at every level \u2014 local, national and international \u2014 have addressed the adh\u0101n<\/em> on several occasions over the past decades. Significantly, it is often not the content but the acoustic volume of the adh\u0101n<\/em> that becomes the subject of legal proceedings. The reason lies in the protection of the human right to the public practice of religion (UDHR, Art. 18; ECHR, Art. 9). This right, however, must not come into conflict with the human right to the respect of private and family life and of the home (ECHR, Art. 8).<\/p>\n

The rejection of public calls to prayer is not a new phenomenon in Europe. Historically, in regions where Christians and Muslims have coexisted, there have been various attempts to impose legal restrictions on the adh\u0101n<\/em>, going back to the Middle Ages. More recently, attempts have been made to defuse existing or foreseeable conflicts either by virtual calls to prayer via radio or online broadcasting, or by their transposition into a visual medium \u2014 through the so-called “adh\u0101n light” that has appeared on certain mosques. Such solutions raise, in their turn, aesthetic, juridical and theological questions about the very form of the presence of religion in public space.<\/p>\n

\nRead the panel synthesis by Piotr S\u0119kowski<\/summary>\n
\n

This synthesis was written in the aftermath of the congress by Piotr S\u0119kowski<\/strong>, under the Pluriel student-fellowship programme. It covers all three papers of the panel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Aesthetics as a forum for negotiating Islam’s public presence<\/h4>\n

The panel on aesthetics, ethics and everyday life was interdisciplinary in nature and demonstrated scholarly consensus on how aesthetic forms \u2014 sound, music, dress, ritual and the performance of memory \u2014 become vehicles for ethical, identity-related and political content. The three presentations showed that contemporary conflicts related to religion often do not focus directly on doctrine, but rather on the ways it is embodied and manifested. In this way, the panel presented religion not only as a system of beliefs, but also as a practice that is sensuously tangible, social and politically negotiated.<\/p>\n

The panelists were Jaime Flaquer, Dirk Ansorge and R\u00e9mi Caucanas. Their presentations, though addressing different contexts, can be read as three variations on the theme of aesthetics as a site for negotiating Islam’s public presence: the aesthetics of rebellion in countercultural music, religious audibility through the adhan, and the performative memory of the Mal\u00eas rebellion. In each of these cases, religion emerged not only as doctrinal content but also as a form of presence: in sound, rhythm, attire, bodily visibility, collective memory or the occupation of symbolic space.<\/p>\n

The first dimension of this question, presented in French by Jaime Flaquer, concerned the aesthetics of rebellion as a means of identity affirmation. Flaquer analysed the countercultural musical forms developed by Muslim communities in the United States and Europe, particularly rap, trap, punk and taqwacore. He demonstrated that these genres do not necessarily lead to a break with religion, as was often the case in certain parts of Western counterculture; on the contrary, they can become a tool for affirming Muslim identity and expressing demands for dignity, equality and justice. Particularly significant was the presentation of Islam as a symbolic resource used in the critique of liberal capitalism, heteropatriarchy and social homogenisation. The aesthetics of provocation \u2014 encompassing music, the body, clothing and styling \u2014 was presented as a form of political resistance, but also as a field for reinterpreting the very normativity of Islam.<\/p>\n

The second aspect concerned religion as a sensory and spatial phenomenon, particularly in its acoustic dimension. Dirk Ansorge, in a presentation delivered in English, discussed the public adhan as a religious practice situated at the intersection of freedom of religion, legal regulations and the social perception of Islam. Particularly significant was his characterisation of the adhan as a form of “acoustic occupation of space” \u2014 a term that aptly captures the way in which the call to prayer is sometimes perceived by parts of non-Muslim Western societies. The presentation demonstrated that contemporary disputes typically do not concern the content of the call itself, but rather its volume, range and impact on shared public space. The debate thus shifts from the level of theology to the level of managing the audibility of religion. Another significant contribution of the presentation was demonstrating the historical depth of these tensions and analysing attempts to transform the adhan from an acoustic phenomenon into a visual one \u2014 for example, through the “adhan light,” which raises questions about the relationship between aesthetics, authority and the presence of religion.<\/p>\n

The third perspective, presented in French by R\u00e9mi Caucanas, concerned the aesthetics of memory and resistance. Caucanas, analysing the memory of the Mal\u00eas rebellion in Brazil and its contemporary commemorations \u2014 particularly in the context of the Afro-Brazilian carnival \u2014 presented aesthetics as a tool for processing the history of violence, slavery and religious marginalisation. The rebels’ white attire, ritual symbols, amulets, the Arabic language and contemporary forms of performative commemoration were interpreted as elements constituting both historical memory and today’s forms of Black activism. However, the paper did not reduce the Mal\u00eas rebellion to a simple model of jihad or to an unambiguously formulated Islamic theology of liberation; on the contrary, it emphasised the complexity of the relationships between Islam, resistance to slavery, criticism of forced Christianisation and tactical alliances with other African groups. As a result, the memory of the Mal\u00eas was presented as a space in which aesthetics not only represents resistance, but actively participates in its realisation.<\/p>\n

The discussion clearly brought to light the issue of Islam’s public presence, a theme common to all three presentations. The panel demonstrated that disputes concerning Islam in today’s public sphere often revolve around forms of expression deemed too loud, too visible or too provocative. This applies to countercultural music, public calls to prayer and the aesthetics of memory referencing the Muslim past. One of the panel’s main scholarly achievements is demonstrating that aesthetics is not merely an adjunct to religion, but one of the fundamental forms of its social existence. The speakers convincingly showed that it is precisely in the aesthetic sphere \u2014 in sound, image, rhythm, costume and performance \u2014 that tensions between norm and freedom, tradition and transgression, visibility and exclusion are revealed. Despite the diversity of contexts, the panel proved coherent and intellectually inspiring, demonstrating that aesthetics constitutes one of the privileged spaces in which religion today negotiates its presence, meaning and legitimacy in everyday life. The final question remains open: to what extent can one speak of a Muslim ethics of resistance as a general category, and at what point should one rather speak of local and historical configurations of resistance?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":29},"video_collection":[854],"class_list":["post-35663","videos","type-videos","status-publish","hentry","video_collection-congres-de-cordoue-2026"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"\nFrom regulating religious sound to transforming it into light: public, legal and architectural debates on the adh\u0101n - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/from-regulating-religious-sound-to-transforming-it-into-light-public-legal-and-architectural-debates-on-the-adhan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From regulating religious sound to transforming it into light: public, legal and architectural debates on the adh\u0101n - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. 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