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Abstract
In the lead essay to this special section, Talal Asad explores some of the avenues opened up by Wittgenstein's work for students of religion. Highlighting some of the philosopher's key insights on the life of language, Asad argues that, instead of taking the opposition between belief and practice as a starting point, scholars should attend to the variety of ways language comes to be used in contexts of embodied learning, contexts wherein the abilities and aptitudes germane to religious life are developed and honed. Turning his focus to what Wittgenstein called the "grammar" of such key concepts as conviction, persuasion, and critique, Asad points to some of the ways that our secular understandings of these notions are inadequate for grasping their place within religious lives. In the latter part of the essay, Asad brings a Wittgensteinian perspective to bear on a key debate within the Islamic tradition concerning the "rationality" of divine speech. The article is followed by five commentaries that take up and expand on different themes found in Asad's essay and developed elsewhere in his work.

AbstractThis paper explores what I call "online experiments in ethical affect" through an analysis of one popular Islamic genre: the short video segments of Friday sermons (khuṭub, s.khuṭba) placed on the video-sharing website YouTube. In my discussion of this media form, I give particular attention to the kind of devotional discourse and ethical socius that is enacted online around these taped performances: notably, the practices of appending written comments to specific videos, offering responses to comments left by others or criticisms directed at either the preacher or other commentators, and the act of creating links betweenkhuṭbapages and other web-based content. In examining these practices, I want to look at the way some of the norms of ethical and devotional comportment associated with thekhuṭbain the mosque carry over to the Internet context ofkhuṭbalistening/viewing while also engendering novel forms of pious interaction, argument, and listening.

This paper explores some of the ways that the Internet, and particularly the practice of blogging, has opened up new political possibilities in Egypt. As I examine, political bloggers in this country (Islamist as well as secularist) have pioneered new language forms and video styles in order to articulate an arena of political life they refer to as "the street." Egyptian bloggers render visible and publicly speakable practices of state violence that other media outlets cannot easily disclose. In discussing the sensory epistemology informing these blogging practices, I give particular attention to the way traditions concerning the sonority of the Arabic language and the relation of written to spoken forms are exploited and reworked by some of Egypt's most prominent political bloggers. I also examine how these language practices find a visual and aural analogy in the grainy cellphone video recordings found on many of Egypt's political blogs. This paper analyzes such practices in relation to emergent forms of political agency and contestation in contemporary Egypt. ; El autor explora algunos de los modos como Internet, en particular el escribir y publicar en un blog, ha abierto nuevas posibilidades políticas en Egipto. El estudio revela que los blogueros políticos en este país (que incluye tanto a islamistas como a laicistas) han creado nuevas formas de lenguaje y nuevos estilos de vídeo con los que vertebrar un espacio de vida política al que se refieren como "la calle". Los blogueros egipcios hacen visibles y motivo de debate público acciones violentas del Estado que otros medios informativos no pueden divulgar con la misma facilidad. El autor se detiene especialmente en el modo como los blogueros políticos más sobresalientes del país recurren y adaptan las tradiciones relativas a la sonoridad de la lengua árabe y a la conexión que existe en ella entre las formas habladas y las escritas. Asimismo, examina el modo como estas prácticas lingüisticas guardan una similitud visual y oral con las grabaciones de vídeo, de baja resolución, que se hacen con teléfonos móviles y que aparecen después en los blogs políticos. Todas estas nuevas prácticas revelan formas emergentes de acción política y de disidencia en el Egipto actual.

This paper explores some of the ways that the Internet, and particularly the practice of blogging, has opened up new political possibilities in Egypt. As I examine, political bloggers in this country (Islamist as well as secularist) have pioneered new language forms and video styles in order to articulate an arena of political life they refer to as "the street." Egyptian bloggers render visible and publicly speakable practices of state violence that other media outlets cannot easily disclose. In discussing the sensory epistemology informing these blogging practices, I give particular attention to the way traditions concerning the sonority of the Arabic language and the relation of written to spoken forms are exploited and reworked by some of Egypt's most prominent political bloggers. I also examine how these language practices find a visual and aural analogy in the grainy cellphone video recordings found on many of Egypt's political blogs. This paper analyzes such practices in relation to emergent forms of political agency and contestation in contemporary Egypt. ; El autor explora algunos de los modos como Internet, en particular el escribir y publicar en un blog, ha abierto nuevas posibilidades políticas en Egipto. El estudio revela que los blogueros políticos en este país (que incluye tanto a islamistas como a laicistas) han creado nuevas formas de lenguaje y nuevos estilos de vídeo con los que vertebrar un espacio de vida política al que se refieren como "la calle". Los blogueros egipcios hacen visibles y motivo de debate público acciones violentas del Estado que otros medios informativos no pueden divulgar con la misma facilidad. El autor se detiene especialmente en el modo como los blogueros políticos más sobresalientes del país recurren y adaptan las tradiciones relativas a la sonoridad de la lengua árabe y a la conexión que existe en ella entre las formas habladas y las escritas. Asimismo, examina el modo como estas prácticas lingüisticas guardan una similitud visual y oral con las grabaciones de vídeo, de baja resolución, que se hacen con teléfonos móviles y que aparecen después en los blogs políticos. Todas estas nuevas prácticas revelan formas emergentes de acción política y de disidencia en el Egipto actual.

While until quite recently debates in political philosophy on questions of pluralism, tolerance, and liberal governance foregrounded notions of culture and cultural difference, today it is religion that increasingly provides the historical and conceptual resources for the contemporary reassessment of the pragmatic and philosophical conditions for pluralist democracy. Drawing on a few recent writings in the field of political theology, this paper explores some of the analytical directions that this repositioning of religion within contemporary narratives of modernity has opened up within political philosophy. As I seek to demonstrate, the domain of political theology has become the problem space, where the tensions and contradictions between a simultaneous insistence on Europe's secular identity and its Christian one are being elaborated. Through a ceratin double movement, secularism and Christianity have become productively fused within the writings I address, in a way that repeats the story of European exeptionality while inscribing the essential otherness of the Muslim populations within its borders. In the second part of the paper, I want to contrast these reflections from political philosophy with debates in postcolonial Egypt around issues of religion and the possibility of democratic pluralism.