The scandal of ecstasy: communication, Sufi rites, and social reform in 1930s Morocco

Abstract

Modern Islamic reformists in Morocco condemned ecstatic Sufi trance rites as heterodox spectacles. But if the heterodoxy of these rites remains self-evident, the still common reformist critique of spectacle begs historical explanation. This article proposes that a main theme of post-1930 nationalist reformism in Morocco was communication and its containment. In this period, new reformists – “Young Moroccans” and “New Salafis” – fixated upon the power of ecstatic rites to connect and coalesce the urban underclasses and to elicit recognition from the colonial state and an emergent global audience. Just as new reformists sought to use technologies of mass communication, including the newspaper and camera, to speak to and for “the People,” they chafed at the global renown these same media lent to public Sufi spectacles. Examining Moroccan print media in 1930s Fez, I show that anti-Sufi critiques were primarily neither doctrinal nor anti-colonial; new reformists aimed, rather, to domesticate the popular connective force of ritual as well as the enhanced power of these picturesque rites to speak for the nation.