The 'new preachers' — between renewal and innovation

"The new preachers" (al-du'at al-judud) is a term which Tareq al-Suwaidan says the media coined, in the press, in writing and in television interviews. He gave it an episode of his programme Al-Wasatiyya under the title "The new preachers between renewal and innovation". ¹ The recording kept in the archive for this episode runs only about seven minutes, so it preserves no more than the opening, the first poll and the first audience views.

In his opening the presenter set out the questions: what the term really means and what its criteria are, how a new preacher is told apart from an old one, and whether this is a new phenomenon or an old one under other names. ³ He asked whether what marks them out is appearance, the fact that they do not wear the traditional Azhari or shaykhly dress, or something deeper. ^{3 4}

He said he had read a large number of books, websites and articles criticising them or commenting on them, while on the other side there is a strong following for them, and he asked what lies behind that following and what draws young people in particular. ⁴ He set the episode's aim as analysing the phenomenon and guiding it, so that the community benefits from its strengths and moves past its faults. ⁵ He said the topic drew so much interest that many young people who wanted to attend could not be given a place. ⁶

The presenter asked the audience: do you have clear criteria by which you distinguish the new preachers from others? He gave three choices: clear criteria; general criteria that are not precise; or not accepting the label "new preachers" at all. ^{6 7} The result: 21% said they had clear and precise criteria, 60% general criteria that let them tell broadly, and 19% did not accept the label. ² These are the votes of that episode's studio audience.

A young man who had chosen "clear criteria" said the new preachers use a modern, civilised way of conveying information, and that their words go from heart to heart. ^{8 9} When the presenter tested him with names, he said Shaykh al-Sha'rawi is not one of the new preachers, and that the singer Sami Yusuf is. ^{9 10}

In the last surviving lines a speaker, who from the context appears to be the presenter, says that by these criteria he is not one of the new preachers, since he speaks classical Arabic most of the time, while granting that he is an exception in that he does not wear the shaykhs' cloak (bisht). ¹¹ Attributing these words to the presenter rests on the context, not on an explicit statement in the recording.

The recording does not preserve the views of the guest scholars and experts or the presenter's closing, so this entry gives no position of theirs on the question; no academic or other view from other sources has been added here yet.