Please join the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies for a workshop with Ismail Fajrie Alatas (Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU) and Discussant Angela Zito (Associate Professor of Anthropology at NYU).
This paper examines the intersection between the career of a Sufi Shaykh and the media. It focuses on Indonesia’s most influential contemporary Sufi scholar, Habib Luthfi bin Yahya (b. 1947), and his engagement with different media forms over the course of his career. Habib Luthfi began as a Sufi Shaykh and a mobile preacher who provide religious guidance to rural Javanese communities. In 2003, a newly established bimonthly Islamic magazine, AlKisah, introduced a Q&A rubric dedicated to Sufism and requested Habib Luthfi to become its expert host. Having his own rubric allowed Habib Luthfi to become known as an authority of Sufism outside of his traditional ṭarīqa circle. In 2010, several of Habib Luthfi’s disciples established the official website, Facebook page, and twitter account of their Sufi master with the aim to spread his ideas.
By presenting a short history of Habib Luthfi's engagement with different media forms and how his followers engage with such forms, the paper compares the contrastive relationship of authority formed in and through different media engagement. The paper interrogates how distinct forms of mediatization qualitatively transform a relationship of authority in contrasting ways, generating opportunities and excitements on the one hand, but also anxieties.
Ismail Fajrie Alatas is an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and History from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently preparing his monograph, tentatively titled "What is Religious Authority? Cultivating Islamic community in Indonesia," for publication.
Please contact us at Kevorkian.Center@nyu.edu for a copy of the chapter. It is expected that those who attend read the chapter.
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Co-sponsored by the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (MEIS), NYU.