Body and Subjectivation in Islam: An Ethnography of Syrian Sufism

This lecture focuses on the role of Sufi forms of religiosity in shaping religious subjectivities and inscribing Islam in the urban landscape of pre-war Syria, with the analysis of ethnographic material gathered in Aleppo from 1999 to 2010. In Aleppo, Islamic values and practices often worked as cultural idioms that express local processes of construction of order, identity and meaning. A large part of the Sunni Muslim population of Aleppo was linked to Sufi forms of religiosity, having their moral subjectivities constructed through the embodiment of Islamic principles through the religious experiences induced in the ritual setting of Sufi communities. The expression of Sufi subjectivities in the public sphere was done through various forms of moral performance, i.e. the enactment of embodied religious principles as the framework for social practices. This continuous mobilization by the Sufis of embodied religious principles had the effect of inscribing them in the processes that shape and constitute the urban identity of pre-war Aleppo and it will certainly be part of the reconstruction of the social fabric of the city in the aftermath of the conflict.