essay about islamic chant

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Understanding and Practicing Islamic Chants

Here are a few simple Islamic chants that help connect to the Divine

Article at a glance:

Introduction: Mantras and Islam

How does chanting help, five powerful islamic chants, benefits of chanting mantras, chanting the name of god as a mantra.

A mantra is a repetitive chant that creates positive vibrations within. Mantras are synonymous with Hinduism. Little do people realise that chanting of mantras is widespread in other religions as well. Islam, for one, greatly stresses on chanting of mantras to attain prosperity, wealth, health and peace of mind.

The term “ mantra ” is derived from two Sanskrit words, man and tra which mean mind and freedom respectively. Therefore, in the literal sense, “mantra” signifies freeing oneself from the mind. Being an effective tool, chanting of mantras eventually liberates an individual from the countless hassles of life, accelerates the healing process, relaxes and assists in making optimal use of the mind too.

Truly a mystical experience, mantras help in bringing the body, mind and soul in tune with each other. Moreover, it is a unique therapy though which a person can feel one with the Supreme God.

In Islam, there are 99 names through which Allah [God] is recognised. Reciting various names, as mantras, is believed to be the best way to attain spiritual growth, satisfaction, purification and rejuvenation.

An enriched mind devoid of tension and anxieties decides the quality of life. Everyday chanting, prayer or meditation , helps surmount psychological disturbances, uneasiness and senseless rage . The purpose of mantras is to train the mind to become more adaptable and less vulnerable. Additionally, regular chanting also balances both sides of the brain and augments intuition too. Thus, along with tranquillity, a state of harmony and infinite bliss can be achieved.

Our body is made up of vibrating energies and is comprised of cells that move in unison. When the natural movement and rhythm of these cells is disturbed; diseases and disorders crop up. Our cells respond to the chant [sound] within our bodies and vibrate to restore the harmony back. It also resonates with the chakra system, activates the flow of subtle energies, uplifts mood, balances the mind and, in effect, leads to a state of blissful joy.

Yet, most people complain that even after spending years of chanting mantras, they fail to develop an inner core of practice, or any sort of experience. If one recites them without understanding, in a parrot-like pattern or with no devotion to God, it is probable the chant won’t have any affect!

Chanting mantras, according to Islamic belief, is a path through which one can cultivate intimate relations with Allah [the Divine]. Therefore, the greater your faith in Him, the more powerful and enhanced your mantra-repetition becomes.

The recital of any mantra in Urdu is termed as vird [referred to jap in Hindi]. Vird could either be part of a prayer, meditation session, or a means to stay connected with the Lord. Generally, vird is done after [or, during] daily namaz [prayer offerings] with the use of a tazbeeh [Lil beads or mala], but it can also take place depending on the individual’s convenience or time. It is of essence that the mantra recitation be accomplished with understanding, feeling, love and full concentration.

From overcoming difficulties to dispersing calamities to attaining peace of mind and honour —there’s a chant for everything found in Islamic books. Typically, recited as duas [prayers] these chants act as an invocation to Allah and open the doors to blessings though which recovery, healing and progression manifest.

Though chanted primarily in the Arabic language, these can be translated and used accordingly. Yet, it is best to use them in their original form. Jawshan-e-Kabir is an excellent example of the Islamic book of Duas that can be used for everyday reference.

Here are five Islamic chants that are easy to remember and have great power:

Allahu Akbar

This is perhaps the most well-known of Islamic chants. It simply means God is great.

With its recital, we get connected with ourselves and the Divine, so its quite powerful and effective. The purpose of reciting this is mainly to gain peace of mind. It is recommended for those who get stressed easily due to various pressures.

Bismillah Al-Rahman, Al-Rahim

It means “In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful”. One of the most powerful Islamic chants, it acknowledges and thanks the Lord for His constant pouring of Divine Love.

Ya Ali Madad

“Imam Ali” is the 1st Imam out of the other 12. He is one who is greatly respected. His name is chanted often but mostly during times of pain and trouble; the mantra is recited to call upon his help and blessings. Pleading for help from the Imam, this prayer requests for His support to enable one to follow the true path.

Allaahumma Innee As a Luka BI-Ismika

1. dissolves the ego/self.

Mantras are spiritual “formulae” that aid the person to release or “let go” of the self and conquer heavenly ecstasy and satisfaction. Recital of mantras not only produces vibrations within oneself, but also fills the surrounding atmosphere with positive energy. Its force and effect, however, largely depend on the faith, attitude and concentration of the individual. If conducted with full sincerity, mantras help us connect with our inner self and personality. And, while we’re meditating on that one phrase and analysing the deep shades within us, a state of happiness and serenity is felt. In time, mantras assist in uniting us with our real soul.

2. Improves brain function

Since chanting mantras is all about devoting our mind towards a single chant, a significant effect on the brain is observed. Everyday recitation leads to sharper memory and enhanced concentration levels. Thanks to this, the invoker experiences subtle layers of confidence building up and becomes positively charged.

3. A feeling of calmness

Undoubtedly, an intense feeling of calm and silence is felt when one chants mantras.

4. Boosts energy

Since chanting leaves us more energised and fills us with fresh prana [life force], the process of healing is accelerated.

5. Connection with God

Most evidently, chanting of mantras is a tool through which a follower can stay unified with the Lord. They are prayers that invoke the blessings of the Almighty and help us lead a peacefully gratifying life. Chanting of mantras is not merely a continuous process of repeating words, it is an effective tool to awaken our senses and connect with celestial powers.

In the case of the Hebrew tradition, there are 72 names of God, each representing some aspect of God. In the Islamic tradition, there are 99 names of God, which again represent various aspects of God. Many people believe Hinduism has many gods, but again, each individual god in Hinduism represents some aspect of the ultimate reality which is beyond thought or conception.

Belief is the most important aspect of mantra repetition. You have to really believe what you’re saying, or have the feeling of belief in what you’re saying for it to really work.

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Music in the World of Islam handasah al sawt

Table of Contents: Introduction The (in)admissibility of music in Islam Religious manifestation in Islamic sound art Conclusion References Introduction In a discussion about music in the world of Islam, it is first important to distinguish that Muslims do not use the term "music" in the same manner employed in the English language and in other Western languages. The Arabic term for "music," musiqa , does not apply to all types of artistic vocal and instrumental arrangements of sounds or tones and rhythms; rather, the Muslims term this general case " handasah al sawt ," or " the art of sound ." Musiqa , or "music," applies rather "only to particular genres of sound art, and for the most part it has been designated for only those that have a "somewhat questionable or even disreputable status in Islamic culture" (al Faruqi, 1986). " Handasah al sawt " is a recently coined term used by Muslims to separate their Islamic conception of "music" from that held in the Western and non-Islamic world, which, as we will see, often contrasts in very fundamental and critical ways. In this paper, it is my goal to study the influence of the Qur'an and Islamic religious beliefs on the role and realization of sound art in the world of Islam. My first step towards this end will be to look at the various ethical considerations that Muslims have made considering handasah al sawt . Next, I will look at how religious beliefs are manifested in the sound art itself. I will make comparisons, furthermore, to Western music where I am able. I believe many similarities exist between handasah al sawt and various examples from contemporary Western art music, especially, and also certain forms of jazz. Such comparisons are made in the hope of making the "sound art" of the Islamic world more accessible and undertstandable not only to myself but also to readers more familiar with developments in the musical world of the United States and of Europe. I will use the term "music" for simplicity's sake throughout this essay, but in reference to Islamic culture I use the term music to mean handasah al sawt rather than the Arabic musiqa . The (In)Admissibility of Music in Islam "The attitude toward music [in the world of Islam] has always been ambivalent, as expressed in a series of contradictory feelings and concepts: predilection and mistrust; divine-devilish; exalting-disruptive; admissible-prohibited" (Shiloah, 1995). Views about the admissibility of music, or sound art, in the world of Islam run the gamut from complete negation to complete acceptance, even of dance. Many Muslims fear the "magical," intoxicating powers of music and prohibit it as a tool of the devil. Other Muslims, however, find music inspiring and entirely spiritual. Most Muslims fall somewhere in between these poles, restricting the practice of handasah al sawt to some degree but allowing it in various controlled forms. Like other legal judgements in the Muslim world, judgements about the admissibility of music must be based on the sacred writings or on analogy and not merely on individuals' a priori decisions or opinions. Opponents and advocates of music, thus, base their arguments primarily on the (a.) Qur'an and on (b.) the hadith literature: As for the Qur'an , nothing of it deals explicitly with the topic of music, though legalists and religious authorities have recourse to a couple verses that they believe have implications on the role of music. Opponents of music claim that "diverting talk" in verse XXXI:5, refers to music: "There are some men who buy diverting talk to lead astray from the way of God" (Shiloah, 1995). Those who approve of music, however, claim verse XXXV:1, refers to a "beautiful voice": "He increases in His creatures that which He wills," and that verses XXXIX:17-18 refer to singing: "So give good tidings to my servants who listen to al-qawl (the spoken word) and follow the fairest of it" (Shiloah, 1995). These Qur'anic arguments are somewhat far-fetched, though, with no explicit mention of music. Stronger support for or against music can be found in the hadith writings, which describe the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. One hadith that is often used to defend the use of music is the story of two young girls performing song to a drum in Muhammad's wife A'isha's house. When Abu Bakr (later the first Muslim caliph) rebukes the girls for singing, Muhammad responds to "Let them alone" (Shiloah, 1995). However, this same hadith is also used by Muslims to oppose the use of music: Abu Bakr had called the above singing " mizmar al-shaytan ," or reed-pipe of satan and Ibn Umar had once seen Muhammad plug his ears when he heard the sound of mizmar (Shiloah, 1995). The hadith literature, then, like the Qur'an, fails to come to any definite conclusions regarding the role of music in Islam. The main reason for Muslim reservations about music is that many believe it is a very powerful intoxicating force, capable of creating extreme excitement in listeners that can potentially cause them to lose control of their reason, diverting them from their devotional life and inviting sinful behavior: "...its maximal effect can send the listener into an emotional, even violent paroxysm.... This quasi-somnambulistic state is considered to be in contradiction to the exigencies of rational religious precepts" (Shiloah, 1995). Such a state of trance, furthermore, is seen as false ecstacy and "a temptation of the devil who dominates the soul and makes it a slave of passion" (Shiloah, 1995). These anti-music proponents of Islamic society point to music's lack of mention in the Qur'an as proof of its unimportance in life. Muslims who have supported the use of music, on the other hand, include certain sects of the mystic Sufi Muslims, who believe that music impels a person to seek the spiritual world: "[Man's] soul, which originates in the world above, remembers its homeland [through music] and yearns to attain the state that would enable it to untie the knots binding it to matter, thereby facilitating mystical union with God" (Shiloah, 1995). Rather than a temptation of the devil, music and dance are seen instead as manifestations of "infinite, ecstatic love of God." These Muslims argue that "the nature of music's influence on man very much depends on the basic intentions of the listener" (Shiloah, 1995). Therefore, music is not inherently evil: rather, the listener's interpretation of musical experience can be evil. For this reason, these Sufis prohibit much of music for novices and noninitiates, who have not yet been saved from "the clutch of the carnal soul" (Shiloah, 1995). Advanced gnostics, however, are permitted all forms of music and dance and find inspiration and divine beauty in them. Questions as to the admissibility of music, it should be further noted, are not unique to the Islamic tradition: one can also find heated religious debate concerning the role of music in Western history as well. In the Middle Ages, so-called Gregorian chant was formulated under strict rules of musical structure called "counterpoint" that had foundations in Catholic religious beliefs, restricting the use of certain musical intervals, like the tritone for example, for their supposed evocation of the devil. In ancient times, also, Plato had mapped out certain musical modes and scales in his Republic that were considered illegal for evoking certain undesirable and dangerous kinds of emotions. St. Augustine , furthermore, a Christian ascetic, had spent much focus trying to define the point at which music distracts the listener from reflection of God, at which point music thus becomes sinful. Religious Manifestation in Islamic Sound Art and its similarity to music in the West Regardless of the admissibility or not of music in the Islamic world, however, Islamic music usually strives to realize and express as much as possible the ideas and beliefs of Islam as set down in the Qur'an. Qur'anic chant , for example, can be seen as the prototype of all Islamic music and the most pervasive genre of Islamic sound art. The point of much music in the Islamic world is, therefore, to express and encapsulate the most important concept of the Qur'an: tawhid , or "unity with God." We will look at the various devices that Muslims use to express tawhid , but in sum these characteristics can all be described as forms of abstraction : "Since tawhid teaches that God cannot be identified with any object or being from nature, He cannot be musically associated with sounds that arouse psychological or kinesthetic correspondences to beings, events, objects, or ideas within nature" (al Faruqi, 1986). Thus, Islamic music must be nonprogrammatic and must not create events that would evoke or express extra-musical ideas that are associated with human emotions, human problems, or earthly/natural occurrences: "We refer to the saying of the Prophet in which he condemned artists who try to 'ape' the creation of God: in their afterlife they will be ordered to give life to their works and will suffer from their incapacity to do so" (Burckhardt, 1987). Such abstraction can also be readily perceived in Islamic art—" arabesque " art, for example, which never depicts images of humans, animals, or the natural world, but instead focuses solely on the creation of patterns . The point of abstraction in both Islamic art and music is to avoid focus on worldly concerns, which are of no value and only distracts man from focus on God: "Islamic art corroborates a void with abstract forms... instead of ensnaring the mind and dragging it into some imaginary world, it dissolves mental 'coagulations,' just as the contemplation of a stream of water, or a flame, or of leaves trembling in the wind can detach the consciousness from its inward 'idols.' This void which Islamic art creates by its static, impersonal and anonymous quality enables man to be entirely himself, to repose in his ontological centre" (Burckhardt, 1987; italics added). Rather than be transformed and defined by his own art, in other words, man without images of himself can remain more pure and uninhibited from contemplating God. Example of Arabesque art. A good comparison to Western music that displays a similar "impersonal and anonymous quality" is the music of " bebop ," which is a special type of jazz created in the 1950s. Jazz is often perceived as a music of passion and energy, but, as described by 20th-century German composer Louis Andriessen, bebop is a very "cold," or impersonal, style of jazz: "This is very important: you think bebop is hot, but it's cold msuic. You can hear this more clearly listening to Miles Davis than to Dizzy Gillespie. But Charlie Parker most of all: he had an enormous distance from his musical material . I call that classicism , in that it's contradictory to romanticism . Romanticism takes you by the hand and leads you to another world; classicism has a certain distance always from the musical object...." (Andriessen, 1992; italics and boldface added). To continue on the point of abstraction, however, not only does the music of Islam try to detach itself from the world, the musician himself in Islamic music tries to detach himself from his music: "The Moslem artist, by his very islam , his 'surrender' to the Divine Law, is always aware of the fact that it is not he who produces or invents beauty, but that a work of art is beautiful to the degree that it obeys the cosmic order and therefore reflects universal beauty" (Burckhardt, 1987). Again, it is Western Romanticism that had created the notions of "individuality," "genius," and "masterpieces" and had thus placed prime importance on the creator of music and art rather than on the creation itself . However, this is a relatively recent development in the history of Western music (late 18th century), and such principles had not been the modus operandi beforehand in the Classical and Baroque eras and nor are they held in most of modern art music in the West, though they may persist in mainstream styles of music. Rather, detachment of the artist from his/her creation, as described of Islamic culture in the above quote, was and has again become the primary focus of Western creation. For example, let us consider the following quote: "For the Moslem mind, art reminds man of God when it is as impersonal as the laws that govern the movement of the heavenly spheres" (Burckhardt, 1987). An excellent literal interpretation of this quote in Western music are the Freeman Etudes of American 20th-century composer John Cage , which are based on no other principle than the alignment of stars on star charts! The points of stars on the star charts are mapped directly into pitches of music in the composer's attempt to remove/detach himself from his own composition, which fully embodies the aim of abstraction also found in Islamic music. In recent Western musical movements like serialism , furthermore, music is created solely through the realization of predefined mathematical systems with the same aim of removing the composer from the act of composition and defining beauty in abstract, unhuman ways rather than on the emotive a priori decisions of the composer. One realization of abstraction in Islamic music is the absence of descriptive titles. Rather than give titles to musical pieces that evoke worldly images, Muslims mostly entitle their works based on the modes, or scales, that the music is based on (e.g. Hossein 'Omoumi's Dastgah-e Homayun ; dastgah means modal system and homayun is one type of modal system). This is similar to much of serial music in the West, which has generally numeric titles (e.g. Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klaveirstucke XI ) or titles that evoke simple abstract and non-emotive principles. Another realization of abstraction in Islamic music is its use of form, which is non-developmental , or static . Often no perceivable beginning or ending exists to the music, nor any apparent large-scale changes in between: "Instead of exhibiting a developmental form with steady evolution toward one overall climax and a conclusive ending, the sound art performance of Islamic culture defies its experience as a single unity.... It is a dynamism that activates the human mind with the discovery of beautiful patterns that stimulates the contemplation of a greater cause, that leads it from concern for mundane matters and personal problems to a higher reality" (al Faruqi, 1986). A good example of static, non-developmental form in Western music can be found on the record Free Jazz (1964) by free jazz musician/composer Ornette Coleman , about which has been written the following: "Despite an abundance of motivic interaction, the overall character of Free Jazz must be called static rather than dynamic. Only rarely do emotional climaxes occur, and there is hardly any differentiation of expression. The wealth of musical ideas and the continuous exchange of thoughts take place on an unvarying expressive level.... It may be that Coleman set out to create a statical, homogenous whole ...." (Jost, 1975; italics added). Another example of "static" Western music is that of today's techno , ambient , or trance electronic music, which often tries to create soundspaces for meditative listening rather than to create a musical narrative that must be heard from beginning to end, such as in the music of one of its important founders, Brian Eno . The example of Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz brings up other similarities with abstractive techniques employed in Islamic music as well. Just as there is "hardly any differentiation of expression" in the Free Jazz composition, so too there is highly limited dynamism in Islamic music. Melodic and rhythmic elaboration is confined to small segments of musical scales, often encompassing no more than four or five tones (al Faruqi, 1986). Intervals of more than a third rarely occur, motivic materials are usually very short in content, and changes in dynamic level (loud vs. soft) are very minimal if at all present (al Faruqi, 1986). And just as "a wealth of musical ideas" exists in Coleman's Free Jazz piece, so too Islamic music is often very ornate and intricate: "Patterns can more effectively attract the attention and concentration of the listener if they are sufficiently involved and complex" (al Faruqi, 1986). Muslims create intricacy with extremely melismatic melodic lines and ornamental rhythmic figures, extensive use of trills and slides from one pitch to another, durational ornaments such as constant shifts of accent and tempo changes, and also in dividing the octave into more than twelve tones so as to include several microtones in between them. The extreme nature of this intricacy is used to steal focus from any single line of development and thus to strengthen the abstract and nondevelopmental form of the music. The lack of single themes and their elaboration and the lack of fixed meter "explains why foreign listeners unfamiliar with this music sometimes regard [Islamic music] as formless improvisation" (Touma, 1996). Free Jazz has met with similar criticism. Other techniques that Muslims use to realize abstraction and thus tawhid are extensive use of repetition and the creation of infinite patterns . From single notes, to motives, to whole sections of music, outstanding usage of repetition is characteristic to Islamic music. This repetition is used to evoke a sense of the eternal and thus the divine : "Extensive use of repetitions is not the result of a poverty of musical ideas... instead it is a structural feature necessary for the creation of infinite patterns. Repetition denies individualization, but also contributes to the never-ending quality that the aesthetic expression of tawhid should manifest" (al Faruqi, 1986). Examples of extensive use of repetition are also abundant in modern Western art music, especially in a movement known as " minimalism " that employs "minimal" use of musical materials in repetitive ways that change very little (note: limited dynamism, as in Islamic music) and try to thereby recapture the essence and meaning of musical materials in Western music: composer like Louis Andriessen , Steve Reich , Philip Glass , and Terry Riley to name a few. 20th-century French composer Olivier Messiaen , furthermore, was especially intrigued with the creation of "infinite patterns," as in his piece entitled The Crystal Liturgy , in which mechanisms of repetitions would take nearly two hours to get back to its starting state. Messiaen had a "concern with time beyond time—with the presence of the eternal in the transitory" (Messiaen, 1979), which is derived from his strong Catholic beliefs and focus on God, much in the way the Islamic ideal of tawhid influences Islamic music. Conclusion In sum, most Muslim musicians employ various techniques of abstraction to instill a fundamental sense of tawhid in their music, or "sound art" ( handasah al sawt ). Though the Western world does not explicitly refer to tawhid or to "unity with God" in their music, furthermore, similar abstractions can be seen to operate in much of Western music as well, outside of Romanticism and wherever its influence continues. Religion does play an important role on music throughout Western history, however, and both Islam and the Catholic Church have idependently debated music's very admissibility in light of their worship of God. References al Faruqi, Isma'il R. and Lois Lamya al Faruqi (1986), The Cultural Atlas of Islam . Macmillan Publishing Company: New York, NY. 512 pp. Andriessen, Louis (1992), Marx and Janet Jackson: Louis Andriessen. [A "composer to composer" interview; source unknown.] Burckhardt, Titus (1987), Mirror of the Intellect: Essays on Traditional Science and Sacred Art . Trans. and ed. William Stoddart. University of New York Press: Albany, NY. 268 pp. Jost, Ekkehard (1994), Free Jazz . 1st Da Capo Press edition. Da Capo Press: New York. 220 pp. Messiaen, Olivier (1979), Quartet for the End of Time . (recording.) Liner notes by Paul Griffiths. Polydor International GmbH: Hamburg, Germany. Shiloah, Amnon (1995), Music in the World of Islam: A Socio-cultural Study . Scolar Press: England. 262 pp. Touma, Habib Hassan (1996), The Music of the Arabs . Amadeus Press: Portland, Oregon. 238 pp. top of page ©1998, john a. maurer iv

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10 ‘ Nashīd’ Between Islamic Chanting And Jihadi Hymns: Continuities and Transformations

• Published: December 2020
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Nashīd in its English spelling nasheed and mediatised on the internet is a relatively new phenomenon. Nashīd as a musical practice, by contrast, is old. This chapter analyses nashīd as both a technical term and as a vocal genre. Today, the term nashīd may denote quite different sonic manifestations, ranging from traditional praise songs to the prophet Muḥammad and prayers to religious pop songs and military marches. The chapter focuses on the developments since the early twentieth century and examines the musical roots and styles of the different types of nashīd that are known today. It offers a brief glimpse into traditional practices of nashīd (i.e. inshād ) and suggests a categorisation for the different manifestations of modern nashīd , based on musical characteristics and functions. These are (1) political hymns, (2) traditional inshād , (3) popularised nasheed and, finally, (4) the Jihadi anāshīd (sg. nashīd ), which musically draw from all three preceding categories.

Introduction

Music is one of the most powerful means of stirring up emotions and changing or deepening the mood of listeners. Throughout history, societies have used, but have also feared, the affective power of music, and have developed systems to channel and control it. 1 Jihadi groups are no exception regarding their use of music, be it for recreation, for mobilisation, to strengthen the spirit, to fight fear or to recruit new members. 2 They use the community-building effect of music and, last but not least, they use it as a means of distinction, to keep ‘right’ from ‘wrong’: they define what people should listen to and what they should not listen to.

It is almost commonplace knowledge that jihadi groups do not term the vocal genres they use as music or song but as nashīd . From an ethnomusicologist perspective, the question of what people define as ‘music’ is part of the research design. On a meta-level, however, all organised vocal and instrumental sound can be analysed as ‘music’, that is, according to pitch and time organisation. Hence, when I use the terms ‘music’ and ‘singing’ throughout this chapter–meaning deliberately created sound–it is part of the metalanguage and does not reflect the attitude of most performers. Nashīd (pl. anāshīd ) is a term that is commonly used today to keep the religious repertory separate from secular music and singing as a profane act without any further spiritual or ethical impetus. On a musico-technical level, however, nashīd shares the rhythmic and tonal structures and performance techniques of music, and much of the musical material builds on the Arab musical culture. In this chapter, I will map the field of the different musical domains that use the term nashīd and that chiefly form the musical sources of jihadi hymns.

By ‘jihadi hymns’, I simply mean those hymns that are used by jihadi groups, since there is no other distinct demarcation line where ‘jihadi’ as an attribute starts. First, not all munshids belong to a jihadi organisation; second, not all songs by a munshid or all hymns used in jihadi culture address military jihad or its related political aims; and finally, there is no fixed musical scheme for jihadi hymns.

Hitherto, research on jihadi hymns has ascertained a preference for traditional poetic forms, whereas the musical forms are more heterogeneous. 3 Studies have identified forerunners of contemporary singers and have included a historical overview of politically motivated Islamic hymns ( Lahoud 2017 ; Lahoud and Pieslak 2018 ; Pieslak 2015 ; Said 2016 ). What is missing, however, is an evaluation of contemporary anāshīd ’s musical sources and their collation with other domains of Islamic religious music. Pieslak ( 2015 , 2017 ) mainly places the hymns within the ‘Islam-and-Music’ paradigm and only occasionally hints at musical forms employed in general piety. Lahoud and Pieslak (2018: 16, 18) contrast the IS anāshīd with ‘traditional Arabic music‘, which is perceived as a rather static concept. Both categories, ‘allowed forms of music’ and ‘traditional Arab’ as a tertium comparationis , are too broad for specific sonic markers to be identified. The aim of this chapter is to identify confluences and distinctions of jihadi hymns within the field of song that is labelled with the Arabic term ‘ nashīd’ . Moreover, it aims to show that music is not only a vehicle for an ideological content wrapped in a poetic form but itself constitutes a message. The sensual perception is not a merely physiological process. How sounds or images are interpreted is shaped by preexperiences and learned behaviour ( Howes 2015 ). Meaning emerges through an interplay of poetry, religious propositions and well-selected sonic markers.

Terminological Clarifications

The term nashīd is today widely used, yet it may denote quite different sonic manifestations. Historically, the root n-sh-d was not linked to an exclusively religious repertory. Rather, it denoted any activity of text articulation by a performer vis-à-vis a listener, most commonly poetry. This included a raised voice, clear articulation, and possibly a slower tempo than normal speech. 4   N-sh-d most probably described a rendition of poetry that was on a musico-technical level simpler than ghināʾ (singing) as an art form, which is described quite expansively in Arabic sources for the seventh to tenth century, such as in the ‘Great Book of Songs’ ( Kitāb al-aghānī al-kabīr ). 5 It was only in the late twentieth century that the verb anshada (‘to raise the voice’, ‘to recite’, ‘to chant’) and the noun nashīd (hymn) became the marker of an almost exclusively religious repertory. The dualistic distinction reflects the aspiration to create a clear-cut line between ‘Islamic’ and ‘non-Islamic’, owing to the politics of alterity.

Anwar Al Awlaki, the US-Yemeni preacher of jihad who was killed in Yemen in 2011, refers to this early usage of n-sh-d in his call to produce anāshīd as an important tool for mobilisation:

Muslims need to be inspired to practice Jihad. In the time of Rasulullah (saaws) he had poets who would use their poetry to inspire the Muslims and demoralise the disbelievers. Today nasheed can play that role. A good nasheed can spread so widely it can reach to an audience that you could not reach through a lecture or a book. (Al Awlaki n.d.: no. 40, n.p.)

Al Awlaki refers to the pre-Islamic Arab warfare custom of chanting verses in the rajaz metre that extol the strength of the in-group and ridicule the enemy, a practice that was perpetuated in the Islamic era. The emboldening effect of specific rhythms and melodies was later discussed by Muslims within the appropriation of Greek musical philosophy; for Al Awlaki, however, the key issue is to create a link to the Prophetic practice. Having established this link as a legitimising basis, he moves on to recognise the general affective potential of musical sound which amplifies the merely spoken or silently read word. Hence, he affirms the need to use music as an affective tool within the jihadi movements.

In the following, I will briefly present the musical domains in which nashīd (pl. anāshīd ) is the dominant term. These are, first, the field of traditional religious chanting, or inshād ; second, the patriotic and political hymns, termed anāshīd waṭanīya ; third, a body of religious songs subsumed under the English spelling of the term, ‘nasheed’; and fourth, the jihadi hymns. Jihadi hymns, I will show, draw musically from the three other domains and use specific sonic strategies which signify their general message.

Mapping the Field: The Musical Domains of n-sh-d

Traditional inshād (chanting).

In this domain, inshād is the generic term for a repertory that consists of praise poetry for the prophet, supplications, benedictions, rogation and doxology. 6 It is performed by a small ensemble ( firqa ) formed by a lead vocalist ( munshid ) and a chorus of four to eight persons. The ensembles are either all-male or all-female. Mostly, one or two frame drums of different sizes are added. In some regions, such as Egypt or Morocco, melody instruments are added ( Frishkopf 2000 ; ter Laan 2016 ). Inshād comprises solo and group singing and rhythmic songs as well as the metrically free solo performance of poetry ( qaṣīda ).

Inshād happens mainly offline. It takes place as a live event and features a high degree of interaction between performers and listeners. The audience engages in singing along or clapping their hands during selected parts. Often, they perform alternately with the ensemble in the form of refrains or call–response sequences ( Abdel-Malek 1995 ; Frishkopf 2000 ; Weinrich 2016 ). During the soloist recitations, the audience participates through verbal and non-verbal responses such as exclamations, shouted comments or sighing. These are articulated between the single musical phrases and may inspire the performer to intensify emotions by repeating the phrase with subtle modifications–a technique of mutual engagement termed tafāʿul ( Racy 2003 ; Weinrich 2018 ).

Performers and participants view inshād as a supererogatory act of devotion, and its performance is often linked to other supererogatory acts, such as the commemoration of the Prophet’s birthday ( mawlid ) or meetings to invoke blessings for the Prophet ( majlis aṣ-ṣalāt ʿalā n-nabī ). Although inshād gets broadcast in radio and television and audio files are exchanged, its milieu is chiefly non-commercial. Munshids may get payed, but festivities and meetings are sponsored with free access for everybody. Audio and video footage of such events are given away as a gift, sold informally, or uploaded on the internet.

To be clear, the characterisation ‘traditional’ relates to the performance context and performance practices and not necessarily to the musical material, which can be quite volatile. It builds on an older repertory that is stylistically rooted in Arab art music ( qaṣīda , muwashshaḥ ), Quran cantillation, and local folk music and incorporates contemporary stylistic currents. A lead vocalist compiles his or her repertory from what he or she has learned, heard and liked. Besides, the composition of the audience, that is, what styles listeners respond to, affects the selection. Inshād is a flexible and fluid system which is rooted in tradition and responds to individual preferences and shifting tastes. The performance practice, however, builds on participation and interaction, independently of the concrete musical material. Although performances often blur socialising, entertainment and religious devotion, one main function of inshād is to praise God and the Prophet, express gratitude, ask for forgiveness and thereby provide for the Hereafter.

Whereas many genres and practices within this type of inshād –though not the exact musical sound–can be traced well back in history, the second category of songs termed anāshīd is a rather recent phenomenon. These are the patriotic and political hymns, called anāshīd waṭanīya .

Patriotic and political hymns (anāshīd waṭanīya)

Political hymns such as national anthems or the hymns of single organisations and parties form the few non-religious hymns that are termed nashīd . This type of composition started at the beginning of the twentieth century in the wake of Arab nationalism. Its musical features had, however, been prepared well before that time. In the 1820s, the first military music schools were founded in Egypt to educate musicians for the military bands ( El Shawan 1985 ). Students learned the basic rules of European music theory and a European and adopted Arab repertory. Alongside other European experts, music experts were recruited who worked in schools, as private tutors, in music institutions, and later in the radio stations. The ‘modernisation programme’ of rulers such as Khedive Ismāʿīl (r.1867–79) promoted Europeanstyle concerts, concert venues and performing troupes. With the inauguration of the Cairene Opera House in 1869, staging Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto , an annual opera season started. Economic and social changes resulted in a re-organisation of music education: it shifted from guilds to private clubs and institutes, and from there to formal school education. European music pedagogy including staff notation and solmisation was introduced into the Egyptian school curriculum as early as the 1930s. Similar developments followed in other Arab countries.

Patriotic hymns, anti-colonial hymns and hymns promoting different types of nationalism were present in early twentieth-century official festivities, demonstrations, paramilitary youth organisations of political parties, and schools. Many of these shared the characteristics of military music such as a straight beat and a marching tempo, frequent upbeats, dotted notes, fanfares, and, often, a melodic line that was suited for multi-part arrangement. Allusion to harmonic schemes–singing/playing in fifths, thirds, or sixths–and the oscillation between the Arab modal system of maqām and European functional harmony can be traced back to this period. 7 Since the late 1930s, the newly-founded radio stations in the Middle East, often owned by the colonial powers, contributed considerably to the dissemination of European music, and henceforth tonality. This never replaced Arab music’s tonal system, but was nonetheless continuously present and, in many cases, constituted a model that shaped developments in Arab music, especially those in orchestrated music of the 1950s and 1960s ( El Shawan 1985 ; Poché, Shiloah, and Wright 2001 ; Weinrich 2006 ). This brief overview shows that composition techniques based on European tonality are not a recent phenomenon but date back well into the nineteenth century; the issue of the asymmetrical power relations that shaped that appropriation cannot adequately be discussed here.

International nasheed

Nashīd ’s English spelling, ‘nasheed’, became an international term, used also by non-Arabic speakers and Arab Muslims writing in English. It denotes religious songs in Arabic and many other languages. It could also be termed ‘pop nasheed ’, although most of its protagonists would dislike the term. One successful player in this domain, Sami Yusuf (b. 1980), remarks in an interview: ‘They’ve called it Nasheed […], rock and even Islamic pop, which I absolutely hate’ (quoted in Tusing 2010 ). But, in fact, many productions share the characteristics of a pop song: they are up to five minutes long, and have a clear, often strophic structure and a duple metre. Many songs come with a music video. The songs feature syllabic singing and only occasional melisma. The vocal line forms the centre of the musical texture, and the musical accompaniment ranges from only a background chorus to percussion or drum machine (or both) and more instruments. The electronic sound production, both of vocals and of musical instruments, has become an important trait in this field. We find allusions to European-style harmony, but rarely fully-fledged harmonic chords throughout the complete song. For instance, the dominant in the minor or the parallel key is used instead of the dominant in the major.

Initially denoting a single vocally-performed piece, ‘ nasheed ’ became a generic term, illustrated by statements like ‘It’s not music, it’s nasheed ’ and titles for song compilations online. In this context, ‘ nasheed ’ stands for a ‘religiously licit repertory’, and performers often also call themselves munshid . Nevertheless, a great part of the music production is market-driven and commercial: singers sell their records and tickets and make a living by singing, although they are often engaged in charity projects as well. Catering to the different demands of their audience, many offer different versions of a song: ‘with/without music’, or, more elegantly put, ‘acoustic/instrumental’ ( Otterbeck and Skjelbo 2019 ; Weinrich 2020a ).

Texts and music videos focus on personal piety, ethics, praise of the prophet Muḥammad, images of contemporary Muslim lifestyle, and Muslim solidarity. The sonic and visual language of videos stresses images of a middleclass lifestyle, which was formerly occupied by pop music videos and is now claimed as Islamic sphere ( Barendregt 2012 ; Weinrich 2020a ). Besides, videos use graphic patterns or natural landscapes as backgrounds. Many performers see their songs as a means of developing one’s own spirituality, and the field developed its own global market structures ( Barendregt 2012 ; Karahasanoğlu 2016 ; Morris 2017 ; Otterbeck and Skjelbo 2019 ; Weinrich 2020a ).

Despite the above-mentioned commonalities, ‘ nasheed ’ is a heterogeneous field with different local foci. It is part of a broader consumer culture of religiously conscious and faith-inspired products, such as in Western Europe ( Herding 2013 ; Morris 2017 ), South Asia ( Barendregt 2012 ), Lebanon ( Deeb and Harb 2013 ) or Egypt, from where the impetus of the much older concept of ‘art with a mission ( al-fann al-hadīf )’ began in the 1990s (van Nieuwkerk 2013 ). ‘ Nasheed ’ is international in the sense that some actors, especially those performing in English and Arabic, have a global audience, and it is international in the sense that it simultaneously developed different local aesthetics.

Overlapping spheres of politically and religiously motivated anāshīd

Pieslak and Lahoud set the 1960s as the starting-point for songs that address military fight ( Pieslak 2015 : 23–4; Pieslak 2017 : 67; Lahoud and Pieslak 2018 : 1–2). It is true that the fidāʾī , the Palestinian fighter who started military operations, became the superhero of Palestinian resistance poetry and popular culture from the early 1960s onwards. One should add, however, that the fidāʾī culture of the 1960s was a secular culture. In fact, politically and religiously motivated anāshīd emerged in several political contexts and followed different, though partly overlapping, paths, both politically and aesthetically. The following remarks can offer only a glimpse of these different paths.

Alongside political hymns, hymns with Islamic themes were launched by the Egyptian Muslim Brothers in the 1930s ( Tammam and Haenni 2004 : 93). Secular political hymns formed an important part of the musical production in Nasserist Egypt. The political hymns disseminated by the PLO in the 1960s added to the already existing repertory of resistance songs that were inspired by Palestinian folk genres ( McDonald 2013 : 78–103). During the 1970s, university students in Egypt and Morocco started to perform and consume religious hymns as a protest attitude towards state politics (Haenni and Tammam 2004 ; ter Laan 2016 : 88). The popularity of such hymns increased rapidly, resulting in the demand for performing ensembles for the so-called ‘Islamic weddings’, a new form of wedding celebration that emerged around 1990. These developments constitute the roots of what is today known as ‘ nasheed ’ or Islamic pop ( Tammam and Haenni 2004 ). The 1970s were likewise the time when the first jihadi hymns within the Islamic opposition in Syria and Egypt started to be written ( Said 2016 : 45–63; Pieslak 2015 ). The 1980s witnessed the further regional diversification of such hymns in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, followed by Palestine ( Said 2016 : 63–84). Finally, many influential leftist political singers and bands made their debut in the 1970s in several Arab countries. These were musically inspired by folk songs and the international civic protest movements ( Weinrich 2006 : 412–13; not all songs in the latter category were termed nashīd ).

The first Palestinian Intifada, starting in 1987, worked as a catalyst for Palestinian productions as well as for Islamic hymns in other countries. The Palestinian repertory was threefold: next to the politically leftist mass hymns, Palestinian artists inside the Occupied Territories further developed the folkbased repertory, and Hamas entered the scene with a religious musical repertory ( McDonald 2013 : 116–43). In Turkey, genres like jihad song ( cihad ezgi ) and march ( marş ) emerged in the late 1980s, in the beginning often modelled on the leftist marches of a decade earlier ( Karahasanoğlu 2016 ).

In the 1990s, the popularisation of Islamic hymns started, in the sense both of becoming a broad movement and of borrowing musical styles from popular music, from both ‘ shaʿbī and shabābī (folk and pop)’, as Tammam and Haenni (2004: 96) put it. In South Asia, male performing groups modernised, popularised and recorded Islamic chants, such as nasyed in Malaysia ( Arps 1996 ; Barendregt 2012 ), singir in Java ( Wieringa 2006 ) or the qasida modéren in Indonesia ( Arps 1996 ). Much of this repertory had been performed formerly by women. ‘Art with a mission’ revived as an alternative entertainment form and a means of propagating Islamic values. With the rise of private TV and radio stations, the aesthetic forms of religion became further mediatised, using music videos, TV shows or podcasts. In short, contemporary nasheed and jihadi hymns are strongly mediatised forms of what had started in the 1970s as ‘cassette cultures’ (Peter Manuel).

Jihadi hymns

Jihadi hymns that have become highly visible and audible on the internet in the twenty-first century include forerunners from the 1970s and 1980s that are re-used by contemporary performers. Many of these performers are from Saudi Arabia, Yemen or Egypt and were born in the 1970s and 1980s ( Said 2016 : 123–39). The early repertory used musical material from the patriotic and political hymns ( anāshīd waṭanīya ), from traditional inshād , folk genres, and then popular styles. Whereas the early repertory was distributed through music cassettes with sporadic live performances, jihadi groups nowadays use specialised media companies, websites, and technically well-equipped– but not overly expensive–studios ( Lahoud and Pieslak 2018 : 19), and distribution mainly takes place via the internet. In many cases, the visual element is added to the auditive consumption, since hymns are available as stand-alone audio and as video soundtracks.

Lahoud and Pieslak (2018) have shown that a substantial change took place in 2012/2013, when IS, through hymns, prepared for a situation which was achieved in early summer 2014, namely the seizure of a territory that was to become the caliphate. The shift from an abstract idea to concrete territorial manifestation of that idea is addressed in a number of anāshīd produced and disseminated by IS’s media wings. At the same time, these media wings refrained from using songs from munshids that did not belong to IS. Hymns developed into a site of competition between militarist groups and thus had to contribute to shape an IS-specific identity. In the following, I will present a sample of individual single pieces and demonstrate different musical sources and styles.

Battle Songs and Military Music Features

Songs which describe or call to fighting commonly feature a marching tempo, syllabic singing, duple metre and a strong, palpable beat. Often, the melodic line is marked by upbeat, dotted notes, stylised fanfares and sequences, that is, the restatement of a motif or melodic passage in a higher or lower pitch. Many of these musical characteristics have been established by the earlier anāshīd waṭanīya . One prominent example is Bi-jihādinā (Through Our Jihad).

Bi-jihādinā exists in numerous versions online. The singer of the analysed recording is Mūsā ibn ʿAlī al-ʿUmayra aka Abū ʿAlī (b. 1978), a well-known figure in the jihadi milieu. The song itself is much older; its text is included in the poetry collection belonging to the music cassettes by the Syrian munshid Abū Māzin, published in 1984. 8 Next to rhyme and metre, the poem employs the rhythmic device of syntactic parallelism, which I have also tried to render in my translation:

(1) Through our jihad we let rocks crumble and tear up the oppressor and unbelief. (2) Through powerful and great determination and a willingness that does not accept any compulsion. (3) We mobilise emotions and intellect, with our blood, we will colour the dawn. (4) We arrive there [at the dawn] with victory, oh my Ummah, with our fight, we will change fate. (5) Through our jihad, through the blazing torch, the night of polytheism and heresy will vanish. (6) We embark with determination and endurance and break the oppression of chains and bonds. 9

In the musical composition, each half-line forms a musical phrase, and the melodic development of a line is chiefly shaped by sequences. This technique gives the song a clear structure and a distinct rhythm which reflects the rhyme and partly also the parallelism. In addition, the poem has been turned into a strophic song, with the first two verses taken as a refrain. The articulation is syllabic; only on the last syllable of each hemistich does the performer execute a short melisma or vocal turn, which almost forms a triad. The melody moves in small steps, with tone repetitions and occasional leaps.

In its musical structure, Bi-jihādinā is similar to Mawṭinī (My Homeland), a well-known patriotic and non-religious hymn. Mawṭinī is based on a poem by the Palestinian poet Ibrāhīm Ṭūqān (d. 1941) and was set to music by the Lebanese Fulayfil Brothers, Aḥmad and Muḥammad Fulayfil, who conducted the first Lebanese national military band founded in 1942. 10   Mawṭinī is considered the unofficial Palestinian anthem and is often sung during protests. Since 2004, it has been the national anthem of post-war Iraq:

My homeland, Glory and beauty, sublimity and splendour are in your hills. Life and deliverance, bliss and hope are in your air. Will I see you Safe and blessed with prosperity, successful and revered? Will I see you in your grandeur Reaching to the stars?

As becomes clear from the visual form of the text, the poem is in free verse, like most of the secular nationalist and resistance poetry of the twentieth century.

Both compositions feature duple metre, upbeat, dotted notes, and sequences as a melodic figure. They furthermore exhibit a regular structure, based on four-bar blocks, fill-ins as a ‘fanfare’ and hints of functional

Musical transcription of Bi-jihādinā (© Ines Weinrich 2020).

Page from a school hymn book edited by Wadād al-Maqdisī Qurṭās, principal of a Beiruti girl’s school in the 1940s.

harmony. It might not even be by chance that both pieces are in the same maqām , that is maqām kurd . 11 In music arranged for a military band or a larger orchestra, there is a preference for maqāmāt that do not involve microtonal steps and thus are easier to combine with harmonic chords. Selective harmonisation, while at the same time retaining melodic movements characteristic of maqām -related music, is the main marker of oscillation between both tonal systems, maqām and European tonality.

Patriotic hymns are commonly performed with the accompaniment of brass and percussion. This version of Bi-jihādinā is a purely vocal studio recording. Occasionally, a counter-voice to the main melody, humming, and vocal fill-ins are added. 12 Throughout the song, reverberation is used. The reverberation effect has been immensely popular for a couple of decades. It is also used in live performances of inshād , regardless of the size of the room or the size of the audience. I experienced it during fieldwork on various occasions, including performances in a small living room where the performer brought in a huge box with an amplifying system and reverb technique. Michael Frishkopf (2009) ascribes this aesthetic feature to the rising aesthetics of the Saudi style of Quran recitation, where it is often added in the studio. He reads the reverb as a strategy for imitating the soundspheres of the huge mosques in Mecca and Medina: ‘Reverberating in their cavernous spaces, the reciter’s voice becomes an index of the mosques themselves, sounding sacred space’ ( Frishkopf 2009 : 101). Reverb and delay seem to have transgressed styles and musical domains rapidly. John Baily observed these features in Taliban tarana recordings from Afghanistan and describes them as techniques that are very popular in the secular music of the region ( Baily 2009 : 157). Whether the reverb technique originated in the Saudi-style recitation or not, it is certainly no longer a distinct feature of Saudi-shaped religious ideology, nor of jihadi hymns, since it is common in many inshād performances and in nasheed .

Similar musical structures and more sound effects are employed in a song which likewise encourages fighting, Usūdu l-ḥarb (Lions of War). Usūdu l-ḥarb is available in different versions on the internet, too. It is used in several videos produced by jihadi groups, for instance a production by al-Qāʿida in the Maghrib in 2011, and is classed as one of the ‘Top 5 Jihadi Songs’ of 2014, referring to a version by the munshid and Afghanistan veteran Abū Usayd. 13 The song has been uploaded onto many websites either as an audio file or as a video, independent of official media productions. Many of the videos show only one photograph or a designed image as a still throughout the song. One video illustrates the poetic text by photographs. Against a green background, the song’s text and various pictures are shown: men riding on horses, men with a flag, a fighter with a machine pistol, the corpse of a martyr, a photo of Usama bin Laden: 14

In war, we are lions; we are never afraid and [we are] falcons, ascended into the sky.

The backs of our horses were our cradle on them, we inherited our pride.

We are knights, horses are our cradles when we are called, we answer the call.

In the path of God we live and die a life of glory or a death of sacrifice.

If somebody calls us to support Islam, we follow the call.

The next verses describe battle scenes, promise the immortal life for martyrs, and address a fighter’s mother and sister. The final verse reads:

If he [the son/brother] dies as a martyr, be proud of him if he returns, it will be with a clear victory ( an-na‚r al-mubīn ).

The poem’s rhythm, enacted through rhyme and parallelism, finds its match in the short musical phrases, which cover a half-line each, and the repetitive melodic schema that features narrow steps and pitch repetition. The syllabic singing alternates between a solo voice and a chorus. To enhance the sonic structure, various sounds effects are added, such as the hooves of horses, the roaring of lions, and a hissing sound that could be interpreted as either bullets or arrows. Arrows would go with the poetic imagery, which evokes battle scenes as described in early Arabic poetry. Military sound effects are already reported by Baily (2009: 152) for hymns used in the 1980s. Furthermore, vocal fill-ins, counter-voices, and the singing of the same melodic line in a different register are occasionally added.

Both Bi-jihādinā and Usūdu l-ḥarb share similar musical features combined with the ethos of early Arabic poetry: the ethos of the knight, the brave and noble fighter, the well-versed rider and warrior. ‘We arrive there [at the dawn] with victory, oh my Ummah’ evokes the image of an early morning raid ( ghazwa ), which was a typical Bedouin warfare technique and is also used as a poetic simile in the Quran (100: 1–5). Guns and canons are repeatedly juxtaposed with swords and arrows. Horses figure prominently in the poetic, visual and sonic language: they are directly named or metonymically referred to in poetry; they feature in numerous pictures, as well as in the sounds of hooves and neighing. 15 Given the fact that early Arabic poetry constitutes a large part of the school curriculum in many Arab states, there is reason to think that not only sound and image but also the poetry resonates with native Arabic speakers.

With Al Awlaki’s reference to poetry chanting as an ancient tradition in mind, the musical features of battle songs and the poetic imagery form a strategy to appeal by evoking the heroic ethos of the early Islamic era, when Islam was still young, strong and uncorrupted. Further illustrated by visual images of horses, swords, and men in long garments riding on horses, the heroic ethos becomes poetically, sonically and visually present.

‘Be Steadfast, O My Soul’ ( Ṣabran yā nafsī )

Another group of songs can be subsumed under the term ‘contemplative songs’. They feature also a regular beat, but exhibit occasional rhythmic liberties and a slower pace. A soft, often breathy voice is preferred, and a higher vocal register. The melodic idiom is calmer, though elements like vocal fill-ins and selective multi-part singing remain in many studio versions. Such songs do not directly incite to fighting. They serve to release emotional tension and often address visions of paradise and female family members. The hymn Ṣabran yā nafsī (Be Steadfast, O My Soul) is a prominent example.

Judging by its numerous different versions, Ṣabran yā nafsī turns out to be an exceptionally popular song. It is included in the joint album Lan nansākum (‘We Will Never Forget You’, released in 2008) by Abū Fāris and Ghālib Aḥmad Bāquʿīṭī aka Abū Hājir (b. 1986), where the lyrics are ascribed to Abū Hājir. 16 A simple search on YouTube showed approximately a hundred different videos of this song, ranging from professionally produced ones to home-made mash-up videos. 17 Unfortunately, the singer is not always mentioned by name. It seems, however, that the performances by Abū Fāris and Abū Hājir and by Nāyif Sharhān are the most popular, since their voices feature in most videos. Besides, videos show lay performers, such as armed fighters in the field or a man in a mosque, who sing live. The poem/song is used by different, also opposing groups, featuring different cities, war situations and armies in text and image. 18

In the poem, a fighter addresses his soul and reflects on his situation. The intimate dialogue with the soul is a common trope in Arabic poetry. What makes the poem interesting is the description of struggling emotions, or mixed feelings, namely the conflict that arises through the memory of the fighter’s mother (verse 5) and his subsequent reassurance that he took the right decision, ending with visions of paradise:

(1) Be steadfast, o my soul, be steadfast, o my soul be steadfast, oh my soul, God is with us. (2) Jerusalem calls, Jerusalem calls Jerusalem calls and cries out: ah! (3) Be steadfast, because my path, be steadfast, because my path be steadfast, because my path is [made of] fire. (4) The Huris call, the Huris call the Huris call to delight. (5) I remember, when I said farewell to you [f.] that day you cried for me out of compassion. (6) You said: O son, don’t break my heart! The memory and yearning kills me. (7) And I went, because I realise that in my time unbelief dominates everywhere. (8) I took my weapon and lifted my banner and went to kill the enemies (9) In Paradise, I sing and trill and chant and recite verses of the Quran (10) There, I will meet my wife and children and embrace my family and brothers

The version from the 2008 album is slow, featuring long notes and solo singing, enhanced by pad sounds. The text repetitions correspond to melodic repetitions; only occasionally does the singer slightly modify the melody. The version by Nāyif Sharhān skips one repetition, sacrificing the poetic form for easier listening. His version is further emotionalised through a humming chorus, gunfire that starts as early as verse 2, and heavy explosions illustrating the ‘fire’ mentioned in verse 3. Additionally, a ‘mother’s voice’ is cut into the song: after verse 6, we hear a woman saying ‘allāh yirḍā ʿalayk (may God be pleased with you)’, a common phrase in daily parlance, especially between a mother and her child. Verses 5–8, depicting the inner struggle of the fighter, are distinct from the rest of the song through a different textual and melodic structure and a higher voice register. When these verses are repeated by the chorus, the soloist increases the musical texture by adding fill-ins. When the ‘inner fight’ is over and the lyrical subject convinced about his actions (again), having persuaded himself, the song gradually returns to its musical regularity. Composition and arrangement ( tawzīʿ ) of this song show strong affiliation with contemporary nasheed .

Though contemplative, elegies seem to form a separate musical category within jihadi hymns. Most of them are solo performances and feature improvisatorial passages without an underlying metrical beat. Elegies seem to be inspired by musical forms that are traditionally performed in the context of funerals, such as rithāʾ , the solo performance of a poem eulogising the deceased, nadb (lament), short verses sung alternatingly between soloist and chorus, or more general forms of lamenting and contemplating that use melismatic singing ( nawḥa , mawwāl ).

It should be mentioned in this context that jihadi hymns have appropriated not only musical aesthetics but, especially within the field of elegy, the fidāʾī culture of the 1960s, when the figure of the fidāʾī who devotes his life to the cause became almost omnipresent in poetry, song and cinema. Most striking is the parallel between the fidāʾī and jihadi culture in funeral songs that are at the same time wedding songs. The wedding has become both a site of and a topos in Palestinian resistance songs ( McDonald 2013 : 4, 109–11, 177–88). But whereas the religious martyr is wedded to the houris in Paradise, in the resistance poetry the homeland is turned into the bride and the wedding into revolution. 19 In addition, there is a considerable difference in the poetic form: whereas a great part of the jihadi poetry is composed in forms of the early poetic heritage, the nationalist fidāʾī poetry is predominantly in free verse ( ash-shiʿr al-ḥurr ), a poetic style that most poets in the jihadi milieu seem to avoid.

Conclusion: Appropriations and Strategies of Authentification

This chapter has introduced the musical domains that are governed by the term nashīd : traditional inshād , patriotic political hymns ( anāshīd waṭanīya ), international nasheed , and jihadi hymns. Musically, jihadi hymns draw from the three other domains. The greatest communality with inshād is the missing of musical instruments, which are often employed in nasheed and in the patriotic hymns. Otherwise, there are significant differences between both domains. Inshād comprises different genres, including the melismatic, metrically free qaṣīda , and different themes, such as human insufficiencies, the plea for forgiveness, and God’s mercy. Most importantly, in traditional inshād , the munshid interacts with his listeners in a live performance, whereas jihadi munshids often lack live listeners. 20   Inshād builds on a participatory culture, where the roles of performer and listener merge. The processes of performance and composition often overlap, especially in the qaṣīda style, which is significantly missing in jihadi hymns. Like nasheed and most of the political hymns, the jihadi hymn is a pre-composed fixed product. Jihadi hymns are marked–and recently also marketed–by a top-down process; only after the fixed product is offered to the public, individual choices of listening and reappropriation can start. 21

Hymns exhibit sonic strategies which are based on listening as a learned practice. The effect thus may vary individually, but there are several strands which are designed to impact listeners on a more general level. I term these strategies to attract people as ‘strategies of authentification’, that is, presenting the own cause as genuinely ‘Islamic’. Many hymns, especially from the later period of jihadi hymns, employ sonic reminiscences to the kernel of religion and its sonic atmosphere. The primacy of the voice is indexical of Quran cantillation and related musical techniques. These comprise also the call to prayer and prayers pf supplication ( duʿāʾ ), which have several musico-technical restrictions in contrast to the singing of poetry. The a cappella singing has an ideological background–music instruments are to be avoided–but at the same time it links songs to the ‘most pure’ religious musical genres. Certain voice techniques add to the atmosphere of genuineness: performers are knowledgeable in Quran recitation and apply rules of tajwīd (orthoepy), such as the technique of qalqala , that is, producing an echoing sound if a syllable ends with the letters q, ṭ, b, j, or d of the Arabic alphabet. Executed at the end of a word, it leads to a palpable echo which gives Quran recitation its distinct flavour.

In Ummatī qad lāḥat fajrun (My Ummah, Dawn Has Appeared), 22 the expression rabb al-ʿālamīn resonates numerous prayers ( duʿāʾ ) and of course the Quran, where it features most prominently in the fātiḥa (first Surah) which is recited in every prostration sequence of the ritual prayer ( ‚alāt ) and is therefore familiar also to Muslims whose native tongue is not Arabic. Together with ‚ādiqīn and other rhyme words, the song text is in its sound reminiscent of duʿāʾ and thus gives the content an aura of not only authenticity but rightness, truth, and legitimation. Importantly, this effect is not created by the content alone (‘God wants it like this’), but by the sound that is itself a reference to professed sacred sources.

Sound comprises more than the musical composition; rather, the deliberate choice of vocabulary re-sounds religious propositions and the Quran. For instance, references to immortal life and the garden of eternity in Usūdu l-ḥarb are evoked through Quranic vocabulary (Q 3:169, 25:15). For listeners familiar with the Quran, the phrase an-na‚r al-mubīn (the clear victory) in Usūdu l-ḥarb and Ummatī qad lāḥat fajrun works as a sonic trigger. an-Na‚r features prominently in the Quran (Q 3:126, 8:10), and the almost synonymous al-fatḥ al-mubīn (Q 48:1) comes into the mind. Moreover, the adjective mubīn semantically feeds into the Quranic link, since it is part of the self-referential al-kitāb al-mubīn (the clear book). Hence, mubīn stresses the reference to the Quran, without direct citation. Finally, keywords of poetic imagery constitute sonic markers of authenticity that build on learned forms of meaning ascription. The recurrence of early poetic forms and imagery blends well with the re-actualisation of heroism and the greatness of a glorious past.

It might not be by chance that, in the IS repertory analysed by Lahoud and Pieslak (2018) , the forms which are based on soloistic, melismatic performance are largely absent. Elegies are built on this form, and might be avoided in favour of an optimistic self-referential repertory. The individualistic impulse of improvised forms is generally decreasing in the repertoire. This includes the subtleties of the voice that show in microtonal nuances ( ʿurab ), which become eliminated in favour of a strong, compact sound. Finally, folk styles, too, build on individual creativity and exhibit subtle markers such as timbre, tessitura, or wordplay based on ambiguity (homonyms, puns). Moreover, folk styles index local cultures, whereas the ideology aims at merging with a universal Muslim culture. Thus, we can discern a focus on military and group-specific themes that demand sounds of rhythm, beat and chorussinging to signify power and communality. Markers of ambiguity and individuality are effaced in favour of uniformity.

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This pertains to the definitions of what is music and what it is not, to attitudes towards music’s effect and usage, or to the ban of particular instruments or musical techniques. Only a few examples from the Muslim context will be mentioned: on the overlapping of Quran recitation and the Arab secular music system and the demarcation of both domains, see Nelson (2001) ; on the appropriation of Greek musical philosophy on the effect of music on the human soul and the body, see Blum (2013) , Weinrich (2020b) and Wright (2008) . For a general introduction to Arab music, evaluating a wide range of treatises on both musical theory and Muslim theology, see Poché et al. (2001) . A rich overview of diverse styles, functions and practices of Middle Eastern music is offered by Danielson et al. (2002) .

Bailey (2009): 151–2, 157; Lahoud and Pieslak (2018) ; Said (2016): 140–59 ; Seidensticker (2006) .

Seidensticker (2006) ; Said ( 2012 , 2016 ); Gråtrud (2016) ; Creswell and Haykel (2017) , on poetry by jihadi leaders that was not set to music. On music, see especially Pieslak ( 2015 , 2017 ) and Lahoud and Pieslak (2018; a shorter version of their paper appeared as ‘Music of the Islamic State’, Survival 60: 1 (2018), 153–68 ).

This is how the verb anshada is used in chronicles, biographical lexica and anthologies, and how the Arab lexicographers explain it. See also van Gelder (2012): 159–62 .

al-I‚fahānī (1955–7).

The following remarks are based on fieldwork on contemporary religious chanting in Syria and Lebanon, conducted in 2007 and 2009–13. On inshād culture, see also Maktabī (2000) .

Cf. the samples included in ʿAytānī and Fākhūrī (1995): 184–97 and Qurṭās (1983) ; for a brief analysis of some hymns that circulated in the 1940s, see Weinrich (2006): 75–80 .

Nashīd al-katāʾib (1986), 3rd edn: 181. On Abū ʿAlī, see Said (2016): 123–5 ; on the poem/song, see Said (2016): 81, 164, 166–8 and Lahoud and Pieslak (2018): 4 . Note that the stanza’s melodic line in Abū ʿAlī’s version differs slightly from Abū Māzin.

Since the last two verses of the poem are not sung, they are not included into the translation. All translations from Arabic are mine.

Ṭūqān (1988): 511–13 ; Aytānī and Fākhūrī (1995): 184–6.

Maqām (pl. maqāmāt ) designates the modes in Arab and neighbouring music cultures. A maqām is defined by a specific succession of intervals, characteristic melodic movements and its relation to other maqāmāt .

In traditional Arab music, instrumental fill-ins between two musical phrases take up the last tones of a phrase, often by imitating the rhythmic or melodic structure.

Mohammad D., ‘Top 5 Jihadi Songs of 2014’, posted 18 November 2014. < https://syrianewsupdate.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/top-5-jihadi-songs/ > (last accessed 24 October 2018). On the poem/song, see Said (2016): 172–86 ; on Abū Usayd, Said (2016): 128–30 .

Available at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WN2vkane0E > (last accessed 24 October 2018).

Cf., furthermore, poems and recordings such as Yā ʿābida l-ḥaramayni , Risālatunā katabnāhā bi-damʿin , Sa-nanzaʿu qalba , or Ṣawt azīzi l-midfaʿ , and visual illustrations of various anāshīd compilations.

< https://archive.org/details/AbuHajaralHadramiAbuFarisLanNansakum/10+-+Sabrn.mp3 > (last accessed 23 October 2018). On Abū Fāris, see Said (2016): 127–8 , on Abū Hājir, Said (2016): 130–3 ; on the poem/song, Said (2016): 234–7 .

Available at < https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sabran+ya+nafsi > (last accessed 23 October 2018).

In recent versions, Jerusalem is often replaced by Damascus.

On ‘the wedding of the martyr’ in Palestinian resistance poetry, see Embaló et al. (2001): 14–122 ; on the ‘revolutionary wedding’ in song, theatre, and film, see Weinrich (2006): 241–3, 256–65 .

For occasional live performances, see Said (2016): 125, 135–6 .

On anāshīd as a fixed and controlled product, see Berg, Chapter 11 ; Dick and Fuhrmann, Chapter 12 , analyse appropriations of jihadi hymns.

On this song, see Lahoud and Pieslak (2018): 12–13 .

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Rhythmic Chanting and Mystical States across Traditions

Gemma perry.

1 Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia; [email protected]

Vince Polito

2 Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia; [email protected]

William Forde Thompson

3 ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and Its Disorders, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia

Associated Data

The data presented in this study are openly available in [OSF] at doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/VFY8C.

Chanting is a form of rhythmic, repetitive vocalization practiced in a wide range of cultures. It is used in spiritual practice to strengthen community, heal illness, and overcome psychological and emotional difficulties. In many traditions, chanting is used to induce mystical states, an altered state of consciousness characterised by a profound sense of peace. Despite the global prevalence of chanting, its psychological effects are poorly understood. This investigation examined the psychological and contextual factors associated with mystical states during chanting. Data were analyzed from 464 participants across 33 countries who regularly engaged in chanting. Results showed that 60% of participants experienced mystical states during chanting. Absorption, altruism, and religiosity were higher among people who reported mystical states while chanting compared to those who did not report mystical states. There was no difference in mystical experience scores between vocal, silent, group or individual chanting and no difference in the prevalence of mystical states across chanting traditions. However, an analysis of subscales suggested that mystical experiences were especially characterised by positive mood and feelings of ineffability. The research sheds new light on factors that impact upon chanting experiences. A framework for understanding mystical states during chanting is proposed.

1. Introduction

Chanting involves rhythmic, repetitive singing or speaking of sounds and phrases either vocally or mentally [ 1 ]. It is practiced globally in many different cultures and for a multitude of functions such as strengthening communities, healing illness, or overcoming psychological and emotional difficulties [ 2 , 3 ]. Although chanting rituals take various forms, they are often used to induce altered states of consciousness [ 4 ]. Shamanic traditions use chanting in order to enter altered states believed to be vital for healing and modifying behaviour [ 5 ]; Indigenous Australians use chanting to connect with the Ancestral world [ 6 ]; Sufism uses chanting, dance and breathing to connect to God and enter into states of trance [ 7 ]; and Yogic traditions believe that chanting practices are a way of reaching states of consciousness beyond the disturbances of the mind [ 8 ].

Altered states of consciousness associated with rituals such as chanting can take many forms that range from the relatively mundane, such as being absorbed in a task, to intense experiences of complete loss of individual identity [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Here, we focus on mystical experience, an altered state of consciousness characterised by a profound sense of peace and feelings of unity with objects or persons perceived in one’s surroundings [ 12 , 13 ]. Mystical experiences often involve overwhelming positive emotions, distortion of time and space, and a loss of boundaries between oneself, others and nature [ 4 , 14 , 15 ]. These experiences can be sustained for hours, days, or weeks, and sometimes include a complete revelation that permanently transforms how an individual behaves in the world [ 16 ]. Such states are frequently reported as being the most meaningful event in someone’s life and are often associated with positive outcomes such as prosocial behaviour, increased self-awareness, health and well-being [ 4 , 17 ]. Therefore, chanting rituals may go beyond the widely reported psychosocial benefits of other music practices [ 18 , 19 ] and trigger significant transformation in an individual’s life.

Despite the worldwide prevalence of chanting and its apparent transformative effects, there is surprisingly little empirical research on its psychosocial impact. Preliminary evidence suggests that chanting practices lead to decreased anxiety and depression, and increased positive mood, focused attention and relaxation [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. However, important questions remain. How reliably does chanting induce altered states of consciousness? What are the characteristics of altered states of consciousness induced by chanting? What are the mechanisms underlying these changes? It is unknown whether certain traditions or techniques have different psychological effects, or whether certain individual traits and belief systems enhance the experiential impact of chanting. The goal of this investigation was to examine how different characteristics and beliefs associated with chanting relate to psychological outcomes and altered states of consciousness such as mystical states.

Although research suggests that altered states can have important medical and psychological benefits, most of this research has focused on the use of serotonergic psychedelics [ 4 , 17 ]. It is therefore important to investigate other means of obtaining altered states that avoid the risks associated with psychedelics. In a survey performed on mystical states, 75% of participants reported their mystical experience as being one of the most spiritually significant events in their life regardless of whether the altered state was pharmacologically induced or not [ 14 ]. The same participants also reported that the experience had moderate to strong persisting positive changes to their mental health.

The goal of chanting in many traditions is to promote healing, social connection, and go beyond mundane states of awareness by altering states of consciousness [ 17 , 23 , 24 ]. There are two broad aspects of chanting that may contribute to promoting these states. Psychological processes could be triggered by (1) the mechanics of chanting, such as rhythm, repetition, focused attention, and synchrony; (2) the deep contemplation of the meaning, intention, or belief systems of the sounds being chanted. These two broad aspects of chanting may contribute to various outcomes of the practice, individually and jointly, as both have been found to have effects on the psyche independently [ 25 ].

There is a body of literature on altered states of consciousness [ 4 , 17 , 26 , 27 ], but the unique connection between chanting practices and such states is still poorly understood. One way of inducing an altered state is by increasing the intensity and variability of sensory input [ 11 , 28 ]. Accordingly, effortful chanting practices with complex rhythmic patterns may be particularly adapted to consciousness change. For example, Taketina, a practice described as an “active rhythm meditation,” developed by composer Reinhard Flescher, requires that participants maintain three separate rhythms while chanting, clapping, and stepping. Sufism also features rhythmic movements, where repetitive actions such as whirling and dancing accompany chanting [ 29 ]. Such complex movements are known to produce anxiolytic effects by stimulating the endocannabinoid system [ 30 ]. Combining rhythmic entrainment with other physiological effects of chanting might promote altered states to a greater extent than simple chanting practices such as repeating the syllable om, as used in Buddhist, Hindu and Yogic traditions [ 31 ].

Another possibility is that strong belief systems interact with rhythmic attending and vocalizing to produce altered states of consciousness. In that case, Taketina would not necessarily induce such states, because belief systems are not central to this practice. Other traditions, however, are associated with powerful belief systems surrounding a universal ‘oneness’ and could promote altered states through the use of these ritualistic intentions [ 25 , 32 ].

Chanting traditions are often imbued in a set of traditions or belief systems. For example, Indigenous Australians chant about how mythical creatures formed the land [ 6 ], Hindus chant to worship deities [ 33 ], and Muslims chant as a way of surrendering to God and showing their devotion [ 34 ]. Strong belief systems are not merely comforting; they can enhance people’s ability to recover and heal from trauma or physical injury [ 35 ]. The prevalence of strong belief systems in most chanting practices implies that such beliefs may play an important role in altered states of consciousness, implicating the possible involvement of brain regions and changes associated with religion and spirituality [ 12 ].

Despite variability in chanting traditions and associated beliefs, certain characteristics are common across chanting practices. Chanting can be performed silently or vocally, and individually or in a group, but most chanting practices involve the use of a predictable, repetitive rhythm, focused attention and, if practiced in groups, synchrony [ 36 ]. Both the unique and shared features of chanting traditions may be relevant to the psychosocial benefits of chanting. For example, silent individual chanting requires a high level of focus and discipline. Conversely, vocal group chanting has the additional features of coordinated vocalization, breath control and interpersonal synchrony which may strengthen social connections and community identity.

Interpersonal synchrony, one of the features involved in chanting, may also mediate the effect of chanting on mystical states. Chanting in a group promotes social connection and cooperation through synchronized rhythmic vocalization and movements. These coordinated temporal predictions have been found to increase social connection and promote oscillatory entrainment, in which brain rhythms and external rhythms synchronize [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ]. Further, rhythmic coordination with others requires divided attention, which is cognitively demanding. Participants must integrate perceptual feedback from multiple sources simultaneously, attending both to their own vocalizations and movements and to those of others [ 41 ]. In the context of chanting, not only is an individual synchronizing to the chanting but is also interacting to the motor responses of others via facial expression, hand gestures, clapping, dancing, or swaying. Perception–action coupling promotes social interaction by combining a cognitively demanding task with high sensory engagement. This rhythmic social interaction often promotes the sense of merging with others and the music, which is a common experience of altered states of consciousness [ 17 , 42 ]

Chanting may promote social connection, leading to mystical states. However, mystical states might also promote social connection. After-effects of altered states of consciousness often include a more positive view of self and others, with a large majority of participants reporting that the experiences had improved their relationships with others [ 16 ]. Consequently, mystical experiences may also promote social cohesion as they are often accompanied by a loss of boundaries between self and others, resulting in strong feelings of connection to others, often described as a reduction in self-centeredness [ 4 ].

Many religions also promote pro-social behaviour by prioritizing others above the self [ 43 ]. For example, in Buddhist traditions, there is a large focus on qualities such as compassion and loving kindness [ 44 ]. Therefore, as well as chanting sounds, individuals may also have intentions during the chanting practice to act compassionately and kindly to others, or to focus attention on the ‘oneness of the universe’, reinforcing community and connection to others. These intentions may enhance the experience of chanting as well as nurturing altered states of consciousness.

Abraham Maslow was one of the first to investigate and define an altered state of consciousness referred to as a ‘peak experience’ [ 45 ]. He noted peak experiences can often occur during music listening, because music triggers a number of mechanisms that induce significant changes in mood, arousal and emotional experience [ 46 ]. Chanting may operate in a similar way, but with a strong emphasis on focused attention, synchronization, and often overlaid with powerful belief systems. This combination of psychological elements may be ideally suited for promoting well-being, social connection and altered states of consciousness [ 47 ]. Shared predictable, repetitive rhythms allow interpersonal synchrony between people and may contribute to the release of neurohormones involved in social connection [ 48 ]. Shifts in tempo are also used strategically in chanting practices to nurture feelings of bliss or ecstasy that may be accompanied by dancing and clapping. In kirtan, a style of call and response chanting originating in India, there is often a progression of the music that begins with a slow tempo, increases to a peak tempo that may be double or triple the original tempo, and then gradually returns to a meditative pace towards the end of the chant. Temporal repetition has been found to shift attention from local levels of music organisation in the brain to more global levels of organisation such that the music is ‘felt rather than thought’ [ 48 ].

Figure 1 depicts the most common characteristics of chanting, illustrating how structural features of music, belief systems, focused attention, and behavioural aspects of chanting converge to induce mystical states.

Convergence of features that may promote mystical experience during chanting.

Little is known about skills or personality traits associated with mystical states. Absorption—the extent to which someone tends to become immersed in an experience—may be an important component of mystical and other altered states of consciousness [ 49 ]. As some people are more prone than others to absorption, it is considered a disposition or personality trait. Individuals that are high in absorption may experience total attentional engagement in an activity providing an immersion in the experience [ 50 ]. Absorption also includes the openness to being deeply affected by art or music and has been found to be associated with feelings of self-transcendence and distortions in time perception [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 ]. Taken together, these findings suggest that high levels of absorption may contribute to mystical states during chanting practices.

The current study set out to determine the prevalence and nature of mystical experiences in a wide range of chanting practices. An online survey was used to determine whether specific traits (absorption, altruism, religiosity) are associated with mystical experiences during chanting. The survey also examined whether types of practices (vocal, silent, group, individual) are associated with mystical experiences. Lastly, this study investigated whether mystical experiences differed across chanting practices and traditions.

In view of existing theory and evidence, several predictions were made. Firstly, absorption, altruism, and religiosity should be higher among participants who report mystical experiences compared to participants who do not report these experiences while chanting. Secondly, because vocal chanting allows for synchronization and direct physiological effects, it should be associated with mystical states more than silent chanting. Thirdly, group chanting provides a more complex process of rhythmic synchronization than individual chanting and therefore is more likely to be associated with mystical states. Although there is insufficient literature to make clear predictions about differences between chanting traditions, those associated with strong belief systems or complex rhythmic patterns should give rise to mystical states.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. participants, 2.1.1. recruitment.

Participants who were engaged in regular chanting practices, between the age of 18 and 80 years, and proficient in English were recruited via social media platforms, community newsletters and notice boards. There were two methods of recruitment: the survey was distributed through contacts embedded in chanting communities and posted in online forums connected to chanting groups. Participants were offered the chance to go into a prize draw to win one of five AUD$100 Amazon vouchers. Ethics approval was given by the Macquarie University Ethics committee and each participant provided electronic consent.

2.1.2. Survey Responses

A total of 707 people opened the survey, and 456 completed it. An additional 8 participants completed at least 85% of the survey and all measures examined in the current investigation, so were also included in the analyses. All 464 participants in the final sample had engaged in chanting at least twice in the last month, so met our inclusion criteria.

Ages in the sample ranged from 18 to 78 years ( M = 48.28, SD = 12.67). Participants were 75.4% female and 24.6% male. Chanters from 33 countries around the world participated in the survey. The most represented countries included Australia (45.7%), the United States (26.9%), the United Kingdom (5%), Canada (4.7%), India (3.2%), Germany (2.4%), the Netherlands (1.7%), Austria (1.7%), and New Zealand (1.1%), with the remainder (7.6%) from countries with less than 1% of participants.

2.2. Materials

Advertisements were posted on social media, chanting community notice boards and newsletters with a link to the online survey. After providing consent, participants first answered demographic questions and reported their style of chanting practice, before completing a series of psychometric scales, which were presented in counterbalanced order. Results from the following scales will be reported. Other measures were obtained but concerned different issues so will be reported in a separate manuscript.

2.2.1. The Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale

Absorption was measured with The Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale (MODTAS) [ 55 ] which is a 34-item measure with a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (very often). Example items include “when listening to organ music or other powerful music, I feel as if I am being lifted into the air” and “I am deeply moved by a sunset” and “I feel as though my mind could envelope the whole world.” Total scores range from 0 to 136 with higher scores reflecting higher absorption. The MODTAS has been reported to have an internal reliability of α = 0.96 [ 55 , 56 ].

2.2.2. The Adapted Self-Report Altruism Scale

Altruism was measured with The Adapted Self-Report Altruism Scale (SRA) [ 57 ] which is a 14-item measure where participants rate the frequency that they engage in various altruistic behaviours. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). Example items include “I would give money to a charity” and “I would offer my seat on a train or bus to someone who was standing.” Total scores range from 14 to 70 with higher scores indicating more altruistic behaviour. This scale has been assessed by comparing it with an omnibus personality inventory and discriminant validity has been found to be good [ 58 ]. Further, the correlation between social desirability and the SRA ( r = 0.05) indicates that scores on this measure are not influenced by socially desirable responding.

2.2.3. The Centrality of Religiosity Scale

Religiosity was measured using The Centrality of Religiosity Scale (CRS) [ 33 ], which is a 15-item measure with the option of an additional 5 items for research across multiple religions (used here), consisting of questions regarding people’s religiosity. When using the CRS in surveys with Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus (as in the current study), it is recommended to use phrasing that reflects openness for polytheistic and other spiritual practices. This includes using the phrase “God, deities or something divine” rather than simply “God or something divine” in questions 2, 5, 10 and 15 [ 33 ]. There are 8 questions on the importance of religion which are rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). Example statements include “How often do you experience situations in which you have the feeling that you are touched by a divine power?” and “How often do you pray spontaneously when inspired by daily situations?” There are 12 questions on the frequency of certain religious behaviours which are rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much so). Example statements include “How important is meditation for you?” and “To what extent do you believe that God, deities or something divine exists?” Scores range from 20 to 100 with higher scores reflecting higher religiosity or stronger religious beliefs. The 15-item CRS is the version that allows for highest reliability and accuracy ranging from 0.92 to 0.96. Validity of the CRS has also been confirmed through high correlations of religious identity and the CRS ranging from 0.73 to 0.83 [ 33 ].

2.2.4. The Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire

Altered states of consciousness in the context of chanting were measured using the revised mystical experience questionnaire (MEQ30) [ 59 ] which is a 30-item measure constructed from the MEQ43 [ 26 ] and measures complete mystical experiences as an extreme altered state of consciousness. It includes 4 factors: mystical, positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability. Each statement is rated on a 6-point scale ranging from 0 (none, not at all) to 5 (extreme). Example items include “Experience of oneness or unity with objects and/or persons perceived in your surroundings.” and “Feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred and holy.” Scores range from 0 to 150, with higher scores reflecting higher mystical experiences. The criterion for a ‘complete mystical state’ is a score over 60% on each of the 4 factors [ 59 ]. The MEQ30 has been found to show excellent reliability and validity as well as good reliability for the factor subscales [ 26 , 59 ]. It has also been found to be robust to differences in sample demographics such as gender and education level [ 59 ].

3.1. Descriptive Statistics

3.1.1. chanting traditions.

Participants were asked to indicate what tradition of chanting they practice most. The final sample included practitioners of Vedic chanting (23.1%), Hindu (14%), Buddhist (10.3%), Yoga (Kundalini Yoga, Satyananda Yoga, Sivananda Yoga; 9.7%), Hare Krishna (6.9%), Taketina (5.8%), Tantra (5.6%), Transcendental Meditation (Transcendental Meditation (TM), Primordial Sound Meditation, Vedic Meditation; 5.6%), Kirtan (Kirtan, Bhakti; 5.4%), and other (13.6%). Participants who did not indicate a category or indicated a chanting tradition with fewer than 20 participants were included in the ‘other’ category. Although participants were obliged to nominate just one chanting practice, it should be noted that many of these chanting traditions are not mutually exclusive, and have overlapping practices, themes and complex intertwined histories.

3.1.2. Chanting Experience

Participants reported to have been chanting from 1 to 725 months ( M = 129.03, SD = 134.627). When asked how regularly they had been chanting in the last 12 months, 62.7% reported chanting once or more every day, 24.1% once per week, 9.5% one to two times per month, and 3.7% less than once per month. When asked about the length of each chanting session, 53.7% reported chanting between ten minutes and one hour, 25.4% one hour or more and 20.9% ten minutes or less.

3.1.3. Chanting Contexts

When asked what method of chanting they most often engaged in, most participants reported ‘call and response’ chanting (33%), followed by repetitive prayer (31.3%), repetitive prayer with beads (25.9%) and other (9.9%). More participants reported to be chanting vocally (75.9%) than silently (24.1%). Most participants reported chanting individually (67.5%) compared with chanting in groups (32.5%). Finally, most participants reported chanting at home (67.2%), with less reporting chanting in a temple, church or yoga studio (18.8%), at social events (3.2%), at work (0.9%), and other (9.9%).

3.1.4. Prevalence of Mystical Experiences

A total of 60% of participants scored over 60% on all factors of the MEQ30 and therefore met the criterion for a complete mystical experience associated with their chanting practice [ 56 , 58 ]. Figure 2 displays the percentage of participants within the main reported traditions who reported having a complete mystical experience.

Proportion of participants in each tradition who reported a complete mystical experience.

3.2. Inferential Statistics

3.2.1. mystical experience.

Three independent-sample t-tests were conducted to determine whether absorption, altruism, and religiosity scores differed between individuals who met the criterion for a mystical experience, compared to those that did not. Levene’s test indicated unequal variances for religiosity, so degrees of freedom were adjusted from 462 to 327. Participants who experienced complete mystical states were higher on absorption scores ( M = 88.20, SD = 19.47) than participants who did not report these experiences ( M = 67.48, SD = 20.52; t (462) = 10.910, p < 0.0001, d = 1.03). Participants who experienced complete mystical states were higher on altruism scores ( M = 55.23, SD = 7.72) than participants who did not report these experiences ( M = 52.40, SD = 7.68; t (462) = 3.889 p < 0.0001, d = 0.37). Participants who experienced complete mystical states were higher on religiosity scores ( M = 79.24, SD = 17.91) than participants who did not report these experiences ( M = 70.97, SD = 13.63; t (327) = 5.395, p < 0.0001, d = 0.52).

A multiple regression was used to establish whether absorption, altruism and religiosity predicted mystical experience scores as measured by the MEQ30. All three predictors accounted for a significant unique percentage of variance in mystical experience, with the overall model explaining 35.4% of the variance in mystical experience scores, F (3460) = 83.946, p < 0.001. Regression coefficients, confidence intervals, and standard errors can be found in Table 1 .

Regression results for mystical experience scores.

Note: B = unstandardized regression coefficient; CI = confidence interval; LL = lower limit; UL = upper limit; SE B = standard error of the coefficient. * p < 0.01 ** p < 0.001.

3.2.2. Mystical Experience and Type of Chanting

A two-way ANOVA was used to determine whether mystical experience scores differed between vocalization (vocal or silent), and social context (group or individual) chanting preferences. The ANOVA revealed no effect of vocalization, F (1463) = 0.222, p = 0.637, η p 2 = 0.000, and no effect of social context, F (1463) = 0.384, p = 0.536, η p 2 = 0.001. There was also no interaction of vocalization and social context on mystical experience, F (1463) = 0.245, p = 0.621, η p 2 = 0.001.

3.2.3. Mystical Experience and Traditions

A chi square test for association was conducted between chanting traditions (Vedic chanting, Hindu, Buddhist, Yoga, Hare Krishna, Taketina, Tantra, TM, and Kirtan) and complete mystical experience (yes or no). All expected cell frequencies were greater than five. There was no significant association between mystical experience and tradition, χ 2 (8) = 12.573, p = 0.127.

A one-way ANOVA was used (excluding participants in the ‘other’ category) to determine whether mean mystical experience scores differed across traditions. The ANOVA revealed no main effect, F (8392) = 1.367, p = 0.209. Although there was no significant difference found between chanting traditions’ mystical experience scores, Figure 3 shows that there was a high variability of total mystical experience scores for most traditions, and Hindu participants had the highest scores overall. Table 2 reports the means and standard deviations for the four subscales of the mystical experience questionnaire.

Total mystical experience scores by tradition.

Revised mystical experience questionnaire (MEQ30) subscale mean and standard deviation (in parentheses) scores by tradition.

A two-way mixed ANOVA (excluding participants in the ‘other’ category) was used to determine whether mean scores differed on the four mystical experience questionnaire subscales as a function of tradition. The ANOVA revealed a main effect of subscales, F (3,1176) = 85.870, p < 0.0001, η p 2 = 0.180. Chanting leads to high ratings of positive mood ( M = 3.773, SD = 0.045) and ineffability ( M = 3.765, SD = 0.054), followed by mysticism ( M = 3.470, SD = 0.052), and then finally transcendence ( M = 3.248, SD = 0.056).

The ANOVA also revealed an interaction between mystical experience subscale scores and tradition, F (24,1176) = 1.828, p = 0.009, η p 2 = 0.036. For mysticism, the tradition that scored the highest was Hindu, whereas TM was lowest on mysticism. For positive mood, the traditions associated with the highest scores included Hare Krishna, Hindu and Kirtan. For ineffability and transcendence subscales, Taketina had the highest scores while Buddhism and TM were comparatively low on ineffability and Hare Krishna was relatively low on transcendence.

4. Discussion

The current study set out to shed light on the prevalence and nature of mystical experiences across chanting traditions. In this study, 60% of participants were found to have a ‘complete mystical experience’ during chanting. It should be acknowledged that recruitment by self-selection could give rise to bias, with higher participation rates by individuals who have profound experiences than by individuals who do not. However, the incidence of mystical states observed in our investigation is compatible with the incidence reported in previous research on psychedelics and meditation [ 14 , 27 , 60 ]. As predicted, participants high in absorption, altruism and religiosity were more likely to have a mystical experience, compared with participants low on these traits. Unexpectedly, mystical experiences were not induced more often by vocal and group chanting than by silent or individual chanting. Also contrary to predictions, chanting traditions with strong beliefs or complex rhythmic patterns were not more likely than other traditions to give rise to mystical states. However, there were significant differences found across the mystical experience subscale scores, suggesting nuanced variations in mystical experiences or interpretations in different chanting traditions. The current findings inform a framework for understanding the universality of chanting practices and the potential of chanting to lead to mystical states.

Having a mystical experience is frequently reported as being among the most meaningful events in a person’s life, and these occurrences are often associated with positive outcomes such as prosocial behaviour, increased self-awareness, health and well-being [ 4 , 17 , 61 ]. The consistently high percentage of participants reporting mystical experiences across traditions suggests that chanting might induce mystical experiences through features that are common in most traditions, such as focused attention, repetition, rhythm, synchrony, and belief. This interpretation aligns with Stace’s [ 13 ] characterisation of the universality of mystical experiences, which claims that all mystical experiences have a common core of phenomenological features, independent from the interpretation of the experiences. In this view, even mystical experiences triggered by psychoactive substances should have a subjective phenomenology and persisting transformative effects that are indistinguishable from experiences that occur in religious contexts.

4.1. Traits Influencing Mystical Experience

We found evidence that levels of absorption, altruism, and religiosity distinguished participants who did and did not experience mystical states. Absorption is associated with abilities to focus attention on a specific object and monitor one’s internal state [ 49 , 62 ]. This capacity for heightened internal focus and increased attention may enhance the effects of chanting, making it more likely that an individual will have profoundly moving, or even mystical experiences. The finding of higher absorption amongst chanters who had mystical experiences aligns with previous research that has found absorption to be related to self-regulation, hypnotic susceptibility, meditation, and responsiveness to psychedelics [ 52 , 53 , 54 ]. It appears that individuals higher in absorption are more predisposed to experiencing altered states in general, and this may manifest as greater rates of mystical experiences in the context of chanting [ 50 ].

Altruism was higher among participants reporting mystical experiences. This could be because increased interpersonal skills, particularly when accompanied by rhythmic stimuli, encourages synchronization. For example, children with higher social capacities were found to synchronize better in a dyadic drumming task than children low on social skills [ 63 ]. Similarly, high empathy has been linked to rhythmic coordination with people high on trait empathy found to entrain movements quicker to a rhythmic stimulus than those low on trait empathy [ 64 ]. Enhanced sensitivity for synchronous aspects of chanting practice is likely to facilitate the experience of altered states by increasing the salience and intensity of repetitive rhythmic stimuli [ 28 ].

Finally, individuals who reported mystical states were higher in religiosity, highlighting the role of intentions and beliefs in generating mystical experiences. Previous research has shown that individuals’ beliefs and expectations can influence the degree to which they experience altered states in the contexts of hypnosis [ 65 ], religious rituals [ 66 ], and group sessions where participants believe they have taken psychedelics [ 67 ]. Additionally, a survey comparing naturally occurring mystical experiences to those occasioned by psychoactive substances found that more than two-thirds of participants who identified as atheist prior to a mystical experience no longer identified as atheist afterwards [ 14 ]. This change in belief systems suggests the relationship between mystical experience and religiosity may go both ways, with people perhaps becoming higher on religiosity after having such experiences. The current findings suggest that beliefs and expectations may have a role in generating alterations of consciousness in the context of chanting or that mystical experiences may have a role in generating belief systems.

4.2. Traditions and Mystical Experience

Taketina, one of the more rhythmically challenging and highly synchronized group chanting practices, had the highest proportion of participants reporting mystical experiences. Further, Taketina practitioners consistently scored in the higher range of the mystical experience questionnaire whereas most of the other traditions had greater variation in mystical experience scores. This is surprising as Taketina is not associated with specific belief systems. We must conclude from this that although particular beliefs may facilitate altered states, they are not a necessary requirement (at least in the context of chanting). There are likely multiple pathways to experience a mystical state. For example, such states might be achieved through complex rhythmic chanting in groups, or through devotional practices. In one case, it may be rhythm that is the primary trigger for the altered state, and in the other, it may be meaning, devotion or surrender associated with a strong belief system. Taketina requires participants to incorporate three contrasting rhythms. This complex polyrhythm not only promotes full-body engagement with clapping, stepping, and chanting, but creates novel, unpredictable emergent patterns that encourage sustained attention. These variable rhythmic structures are more likely to promote concentration in comparison to predictable rhythms that, once known, are no longer salient stimuli [ 68 ]. Therefore, it may be both the musical capacity and belief systems that contribute to mystical experiences either individually or together.

4.3. Mystical Subscales

Although there was no significant difference between chanting traditions on the total mystical experience score, there were some differences found across the subscales of the mystical experience questionnaire: mystical, positive mood, transcendence of time and space, and ineffability. The mysticism subscale is related to feelings of oneness, fusion of personal self into a larger whole, and experiencing something profoundly sacred and holy. Hindu chanting had the highest scores on this subscale. This could be because Hindu chanting has a relatively esoteric belief system and a strong ceremonial component. Meaningful rituals can promote feelings of transcendence and are enhanced through repetition of the ritual [ 25 , 69 ]. By contrast, TM and Buddhist practices were low on the mysticism subscale. TM is the repetition of a sound or phrase while disregarding everyday thoughts and does not encourage belief systems of merging with something greater [ 70 , 71 , 72 ] while Buddhist practices are often focused on maintaining awareness of bodily sensations and thoughts [ 73 , 74 ]. TM and Buddhist practices may also require more discipline and attention skills, being practices that are performed mostly alone and silently. Therefore, these differences in ritual and beliefs could be the resulting difference in experiences of oneness or merging with a larger whole.

Positive mood in mystical experiences includes a range of emotions such as ecstasy, joy, peace, and tranquility. Hare Krishna, Hindu and Kirtan traditions had the highest scores on the positive mood subscale. These chanting practices promote a conversational style of chanting that is not only socially interactive but can also become quite ecstatic. This call and response style of chanting could provide a stronger sense of interaction promoting perception–action coupling, the coordination between visual cues and movement [ 75 ]. This social interaction, in turn may promote positive mood. Research has found that actions promote stronger responses in an observer if the movement is interactive rather than imitated [ 41 ]. Furthermore, group music interactions can increase levels of neurohormones such as dopamine (pleasure and reward), serotonin (mood regulation) and oxytocin (social bonding) also likely leading to increased positive mood [ 47 , 76 ]. Conversely, other practices that scored lower on the positive mood scale, such as TM and Buddhist practices, are practices that are often performed alone with no movement or external music [ 77 , 78 , 79 ]. Therefore, these practices are not as highly interactive and may not give rise to the same social aspects that may enhance positive mood.

Transcendence involves a loss of usual sense of time and space, which can evolve through repetition or complex rhythm involving high levels of physical and mental engagement [ 68 , 80 ]. Taketina was considerably higher on the transcendence subscale whereas Hare Krishna and Buddhist traditions were relatively low. These latter practices are not rhythmically complex. Although Hare Krishna practices involve high levels of participation with clapping and stepping, movements are not choreographed and the rhythms are more simplistic, making it less cognitively demanding. Csikszentmihalyi found that intense focus on activities, such as jazz improvisation in expert musicians, inhibited self-referential processing, and was related to states of flow in which an individual was fully immersed in a task, often forgetting about themselves, others and the world around them [ 4 ]. Furthermore, studies have found that self-referential processes are driven by the posterior cingulate cortex, an area of the brain found to decrease under the influence of psychedelic drugs and mindfulness meditation practices [ 17 ]. Taken together, these findings suggest loss of time and space, as experienced in transcendence, may be mediated through complex rhythmic entrainment deactivating self-referential thought processes.

Ineffability refers to a sense that profound experiences cannot be described in words. Taketina and Hindu traditions had the highest ineffability scores. Both of these are relatively complex chanting practices. Taketina involves intricate rhythms and physical entrainment. Hindu chanting involves detailed and multifaceted ceremonial and ritual elements. These factors (complex rhythms and complex ritualistic elements) demand considerable levels of attention and cognitive effort from chanting participants. This high level of cognitive capture likely reduces the capacity for additional mental processes and may lead to reduced levels of self-referential thought. For example, embodied experiences of engaging in rigid, sequenced, repetitive actions requiring motor control make practices more attention grabbing and memorable than non-ritualized practices [ 25 ]. Consequently, participants in these practices likely experience reduced attention toward narratives involving self-experience, which may account for the difficulties describing these experiences.

By contrast, Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Buddhist chanting scored quite low on ineffability. These practices are comparatively straightforward, with well-defined and highly repetitive behaviours required of participants. Additionally, these practices explicitly cultivate high levels of precise concentration on one’s internal mental experience. Consequently, practitioners appear more able to describe their subjective experiences. It appears that practices such as TM and Buddhist chanting may trigger mystical states due to deeply held belief systems or practical attention skills that allow practitioners to transcend mundane awareness without engaging in significant physical activity. On the other hand, Taketina and Hindu traditions are often vocal, including full-body engagement and multitasking which could assist in maintaining focus whether attentional skills and beliefs are present or not [ 81 ]. Mystical states with high levels of embodiment may be more difficult to describe than those with relatively less embodiment.

4.4. How Does Chanting Promote Mystical States?

We propose a model of how chanting may contribute to mystical states, based on previous empirical and theoretical research of music, meditation, and psychedelics. Although components of the model were not directly manipulated in this study, we have based the model on common features of chanting practices. Figure 4 illustrates five core features of chanting; attention, repetition, synchrony, rhythm, and belief, which can lead to changes across a range of neurocognitive mechanisms giving rise to mystical experiences. These mystical states, in turn, may lead to positive psychological, spiritual, and psychosocial outcomes such as decreased anxiety and depression, and increased social connection.

Model of chanting features, mechanisms, traits, and benefits that may arise from mystical states.

Capacities of chanting (attention, repetition, synchrony, rhythm, and belief) work both individually and together, leading to neurocognitive functions that are associated with mystical states. Attention and repetition promote disengagement from automatic thoughts, reduced mind wandering, and can diminish a sense of time through semantic satiation, when a phrase temporarily loses its meaning [ 68 , 82 , 83 ]. Rhythm and synchrony promote perception–action coupling and neural entrainment, as well as inhibit self-referential thought [ 41 , 84 ]. Further, synchronous music activities lead to neurohormonal changes, such as increased dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin [ 47 , 48 ]. The release of these hormones also plays an important role in psychoactive induced altered states and, in the trait, absorption [ 50 ]. Lastly, traits we found to be positively associated with mystical states may enhance some of the capacities of chanting in our model. For example, absorption could promote higher levels of attention; altruism may encourage synchrony and rhythm; and religiosity may enhance both attention and synchrony.

A number of questions remain unanswered, which may guide the direction of future research. First, the correlational nature of this research makes it difficult to infer causation. For example, it is unclear whether someone high in certain traits is more likely to have mystical experiences, or if such traits are enhanced through mystical experiences. Such questions of causation might be clarified in longitudinal studies that include repeated measures on various traits, to assess whether they are changed by long-term chanting practice. Second, our research focused on positive mystical experiences as measured by the MEQ30, but not all mystical states are positive. Thus, it may be useful to investigate unhealthy or pathological mystical experiences during chanting, and the possible connection between psychopathology and mystical states. Individuals prone to psychosis are not more likely to experience mystical states, but there are intriguing points of overlap between mystical states and states of psychosis, delusion and schizophrenia [ 4 , 85 ]. For example, paranormal beliefs have been found to be associated with likelihood of experiencing mystical states [ 86 ]. Finally, it may be valuable to consider a wider range of altered states than the mystical experiences examined here in order to provide greater insight into the mechanisms by which chanting gives rise to such states.

5. Conclusions

The current findings provide a framework for understanding the universality of chanting practices and the potential of chanting to lead to mystical states. This extends previous research on altered states, contemplative practices and psychedelics [ 14 , 27 , 59 ]. We found that practitioners of many styles of chanting reported mystical experiences to varying degrees and identified three individual difference characteristics—absorption, altruism, and religiosity—that were associated with greater levels of mystical experiences in the context of chanting. Whether other traits predict mystical and other states of consciousness, including positive and negative states, remains an important question for future research. Our findings reveal that chanting, whether practiced silently, vocally, individually or in a group, is a reliable method of inducing profound altered states of consciousness. Such states, and the capacity of chanting to achieve them, may have beneficial applications for physical and mental health, and provide a deeper understanding of spiritual beliefs and practices that are an integral part of human culture.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Macquarie University Music, Sound, and Performance Research Group for feedback and support.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, G.P., V.P. and W.F.T.; methodology, G.P., V.P. and W.F.T.; formal analysis, G.P., V.P. and W.F.T.; writing—review and editing, G.P., V.P. and W.F.T.; funding acquisition, W.F.T. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research was supported by a Discovery Project grant awarded to W.F.T. by the Australian Research Council (DP190102978, Social cohesion and resilience through intercultural music engagement).

Institutional Review Board Statement

This study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki, and approved by the Ethics Committee of Macquarie University (protocol code: 5201955839409, 28/06/2019).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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• Published: 12 March 2019

The neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting

• Junling Gao 1 ,
• Hang Kin Leung 1 ,
• Bonnie Wai Yan Wu 1 ,
• Stavros Skouras   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2288-7821 2 &
• Hin Hung Sik 1  

Scientific Reports volume  9 , Article number:  4262 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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• Social neuroscience

Despite extensive research on various types of meditation, research on the neural correlates of religious chanting is in a nascent stage. Using multi-modal electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods, we illustrate that during religious chanting, the posterior cingulate cortex shows the largest decrease in eigenvector centrality, potentially due to regional endogenous generation of delta oscillations. Our data show that these functional effects are not due to peripheral cardiac or respiratory activity, nor due to implicit language processing. Finally, we suggest that the neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting are likely different from those of meditation and prayer, and would possibly induce distinctive psychotherapeutic effects.

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Introduction.

Religious chanting is as common in Eastern cultures as praying is in Western. It is generally presumed that religious chanting can quieten fears and transcend the mind, thereby helping individuals to cope with hardship 1 , 2 . Nonetheless, the scientific studies on religious chanting are surprisingly scarce. The neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning the positive effect that religious chanting has been claimed to exert have not been illustrated by any decisive evidence. To fill this research gap, the present study combined advanced multi-modal electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods to investigate the neural correlates of chanting Amitābha Buddha 2 .

Chanting in faith of the Buddha Amitābha is the most widespread form of religious chanting and one of the oldest documented religious practices that are actively preserved to date 3 , 4 . It can be performed in a number of languages, including the ancient Indic Prakrit and Sanskrit, as well as Chinese and Japanese 5 . Based on the Mahayana Buddhist belief of the Western Paradise, monks and laity from different Mahayana schools traditionally chant the name of Amitābha Buddha as a daily ritual in order to be reborn in the Western Paradise, also referred to as the Pure Land. The chanting consists of repetitively reciting the few syllables comprising the name of Buddha Amitābha, either silently or aloud, as often as possible (typically at least for a few minutes per day) for arbitrary durations 6 . Performing the ritual in a quiet or isolated space is not mandatory and believers may even chant internally in public or while in transit, as long as the chanting is performed with sincere faith and focus. In essence, the philosophy of the Buddha Amitābha is easy and welcoming with a promise that all those who sincerely call upon this name will be reborn in his Pure Land, a philosophy that is reflected in the simplicity and accessibility of its main practice 7 . In Buddhist scripture, Buddha Amitābha is a fantastic figure associated with infinite light and infinite life 5 , as well as the creator of a world of equality and compassion, the Pure land, where all his believers and sentient beings can be reborn and saved in fair conditions that favor attaining enlightenment 6 , 8 . Although chanting regularly suffices for being considered a religious believer, according to prominent Buddhist thinkers, the longer and more intensely a believer engages in chanting Amitābha Buddha, the more probable it becomes to remain in sympathetic resonance with the Buddha’s pure mind and to be reborn in the Pure Land 8 . Chanting Amitābha Buddha faithfully on a long-term basis has been reported to be an effective meditational technique that can elicit blissful sensations and transcendental experiences 9 .

Being a religious meditative practice, religious chanting can be regarded as both meditation and prayer. The majority of relevant neurophysiological studies have focused on mindfulness meditation and have mainly demonstrated increased alpha and theta waves 1 . Very slow delta waves have been observed in a few EEG studies on mindfulness meditation without consistent findings 10 . A previous study on mindfulness meditation has shown that mindful breathing can induce coordination between the brain and heart activity 11 . The cardiac rhythm can be modulated by several factors including the sinus node activity, respiratory rate, and more importantly, the autonomic nervous system. Mindfulness training has been shown to improve cardiac sympatho-vagal balance 12 .

Up to date, very few EEG studies have been performed on the equally relevant practice of religious praying. For example, Doufesh and colleagues conducted a series of EEG studies on Muslim prayer, revealing increased alpha waves in occipital and posterior brain regions, as well as increases in high frequency (HF) of heart rate variability (HRV) 13 . However, the experimental paradigm employed featured resting state instead of a sham-prayer control condition, making it difficult to rule out potential confounding effects due to implicit language processing during prayer. More importantly, the EEG analyses employed did not feature source localization and thereby did not shed any light on specific brain regions involved in the neural processes under investigation.

With relatively recent advances in source localization, high-density EEG combines high temporal resolution with improved spatial resolution 14 . The traditional approach of comparing EEG results averaged across participants for each electrode channel poses potential problems in measuring signals from mixed sources or even different sources, across participants, due to variability in brain anatomy and electrode positioning. The alternative method of computing group statistics based on clusters of independent components of brain activity overcomes such limitations 15 , 16 . Through independent component analysis (ICA) the independent components (ICs; sometimes referred to as factors, latent variables or sources) are identified by minimising the mutual information of signal sources 15 , 16 . These components can then be grouped across participants via independent component clustering and statistical tests can compare the power of different frequency bands across conditions. Frequency bands in signal sources reflect rhythmic brain activity and can be informative of different states of neuronal activity or denote transitions between different mental states 17 . The present study aimed to adopt this methodology to illustrate the neural correlates of religious chanting.

We hypothesized that, similarly to meditation, repetitive religious chanting would lead to significant changes in brain activity and that such changes could be detected in sources of interest using high-density EEG and spectral analysis. Moreover, due to the positive emotions ascribed to Amitābha Buddha we expected affective changes to occur during religious chanting, accompanied by changes in peripheral physiological measurements, including the multi-band HRV indices and respiration rate.

The fMRI analysis suggested that the maximal difference in eigenvector centrality, during religious chanting compared to non-religious chanting, was in an approximately spherical cluster located in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) [volume = 81 mm 3 ; radius ~3 mm; mean = −0.86; SD = 0.01; max = −0.87; peak MNI coordinates = “0 –51 19”; Fig.  1a ]. This result was used to assess and confirm the soundness of the EEG independent component clustering, the results of which also featured a cluster in the PCC. Moreover, because the fMRI finding suggested that the PCC is the area decreasing most in centrality during religious chanting (in a highly trained meditator), the EEG IC cluster in the PCC was the cluster selected for more in-depth investigation.

Multi-modal neuroimaging and electrophysiological results. Eigenvector centrality mapping applied on fMRI data, revealed that the posterior cingulate cortex is the area of the brain that decreased most in centrality, in a highly trained Buddhist meditator, during religious chanting compared to non-religious chanting. ( a ) EEG independent component clustering also revealed a cluster in the posterior cingulate cortex in an independent sample of 21 intermediate Buddhist meditators, during religious chanting. This cluster was selected for further analysis. ( b ) Spectrum analysis in the cluster of interest, followed by a one-way ANOVA and post hoc testing, revealed a significant increase of delta-band power during religious chanting, compared to non-religious chanting. ( c ) Compared to the no chanting resting state, religious chanting induced lower HRV total power (TP), as well as lower power in the high frequency (HF) and very-low-frequency (VLF) components of HRV ( d ).

The EEG independent component clustering analysis generated 7 IC clusters corresponding to sources of EEG activity (Fig.  S1 ). One of these seven clusters was located in the PCC, similarly to the fMRI results. This cluster was chosen for further analysis. A one-way ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of chanting on the power of the delta-band (1–4 Hz) [F (2,93) = 3.25, p = 0.043] (Fig.  1c ). Further post hoc analysis showed significantly higher power (p = 0.011) during religious chanting (mean = 37.30; SD = 5.23) compared to non-religious chanting (mean = 33.45; SD = 7.85). The delta power of the no chanting resting state condition (mean = 35.74; SD = 4.70) did not differ from those of the two chanting conditions. The differences in power were not significant (p > 0.05) for the theta-band (4–8 Hz), alpha-band (8–12 Hz), beta-band (12–30 Hz), and gamma-band (30–45 Hz). The traditional electrode-based spectrum analysis that was computed for comparative purposes did not show any significant differences in EEG power during religious chanting, apart from a marginal trend in the vicinity of the PCC, and sporadically, in some frontal electrodes (Fig.  S2 ).

One-way repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant difference in mean inter-beat interval across the three conditions [F(2, 42) = 0.026; p = 0.975] (religious chanting: mean = 862.9, SD = 115.1; no chanting: mean = 862.8, SD = 108.4; non-religious chanting: mean = 860.9, SD = 111.1). ANOVA revealed significant main effects in HRV total power [TP, F(2,42) = 5.92; p = 0.005], absolute high-frequency power [HF, F(2,42) = 5.90; p = 0.006] and absolute very-low-frequency power  [VLF, F(2,42) = 4.16; p = 0.019]. Post hoc testing with Bonferroni correction revealed that compared to no chanting, religious chanting induced lower total power (p = 0.009), lower absolute high-frequency power (p = 0.014) and lower absolute very-low-frequency power (p = 0.037). Interestingly, non-religious chanting showed no significant HRV difference with the other two conditions, thereby ruling out the possibility that the EEG delta-band difference observed was due to cardiac confounds. HRV findings are summarized in Fig.  1d , and descriptive statistics are detailed in Tables  1 – 3 . ANOVA revealed no significant difference in thoracic respiration [F(2,42) = 1.752; p = 0.186], nor in abdominal respiration [F(2,42) = 3.118; p = 0.055]. Descriptive statistics are detailed in Tables  4 – 5 .

Combining multi-modal data, the present study illustrates neural and physiological mechanisms related to religious chanting. Religious chanting appears to increase endogenous neural oscillations in the low frequency delta-band, especially in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). This brain region shows the largest decrease in centrality during religious chanting in a highly-trained meditator. Such changes are not due to implicit language processes and are not attributable to differences in cardiac activity between religious and non-religious chanting. Nonetheless, religious chanting does influence cardiac activity significantly, compared to resting state.

Strong delta waves have been localized in several brain regions, including the posterior cingulate cortex, during slow-wave sleep 18 . Less strong delta oscillations are present during the awake state and have been suggested to modulate behavioral performance and memory processes 19 . Several EEG studies have found increased delta-band power due to meditation practices such as transcendental meditation 1 and Qigong 20 . Increased delta activity in the medial prefrontal cortex was also found during Zen meditation and this may facilitate detaching from attending to one’s immediate surroundings 21 . Delta waves have also been proposed to act as inhibitory brain oscillations that prevent sources of distraction from interfering with internally focused concentration 22 .

Accumulating evidence suggest that the increased delta wave in posterior regions, especially the PCC, is related to the reduction of self-oriented thoughts 23 and the suspension of sensory monitoring 24 . Because during Amitābha Buddha chanting individuals focus on chanting the Buddha’s name repeatedly, they experience fewer random thoughts and less mind-wandering. The increase of delta-band power in the PCC during religious chanting is a finding with important implications, especially in relation to current research efforts on meditation assisted by real-time neurofeedback 25 and on controlling addiction craving 24 . It is worth noting that, ceteris paribus, endogenous generation of delta waves in the PCC during wakefulness would naturally lead to a de-synchronization of the PCC in relation to the rest of the brain, thereby explaining the decrease in centrality that was observed in the fMRI data. The increased delta-band power observed in the vicinity of the PCC cannot be attributed to peripheral physiological changes, as there was no difference in HRV and respiration between the religious chanting and non-religious chanting. To our knowledge, this is the first study of religious chanting or prayer that has used an active control condition (non-religious chanting), providing stricter control over confounding effects due to implicit language processing.

Religious chanting, as an active faith-based practice, overlaps with both meditation and prayer. Nevertheless, it comprises a unique, special case. Practitioners of religious chanting are encouraged to chant the name of the Buddha Amitābha as an object of meditation, while practicing the development of two equally important mental processes: samatha which corresponds to concentration and vipassana which corresponds to mindful observation 2 . During the chanting of Amitābha Buddha, the practitioner contemplates on the vow and compassion of the Buddha as a practice of vipassana. Such contemplation is meant to induce affective priming that helps the practitioner remain concentrated on the meditation object (the practice of samatha) 26 , 27 . By frequently practicing samatha and vipassana during religious chanting, advanced practitioners become able to combine these two aspects of the practice and reach a state called samadhi, during which both mental processes run in parallel. The present study corroborates evidence suggesting that the neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting are distinct from correlates of the extensively researched mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness enhances alpha and theta power and in our previous EEG study on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), the alpha-band power increased while the delta-band power decreased during MBSR meditation, compared to the resting state 11 . Therefore, it appears that despite certain overlaps between mindfulness and spiritual prayer 28 , different forms of meditative practices are associated with different patterns of brain activity 29 . This implies that different religious or meditative practices may be more effective for the alleviation of specific neuropsychiatric symptoms; e.g. chanting Amitābha Buddha and relevant practices that increase delta-band power are likely to be beneficial to a wide range of patients suffering from sleep disorders. We suggest this to be the case because, apart from being the dominant frequency band during sleep 30 , delta-band power reflects the physiological tendency for sleep, by increasing due to sleep deprivation 31 and decreasing following extended sleep 32 .

Similarly to sleep, delta-band activity has been suggested to comprise a universal response to injury or pathology 33 , due to its role for neural plasticity 30 , 34 as well as for the integration of cerebral activity and homeostatic processes 33 . That is, mental states dominated by delta-band activity are considered as evolutionarily ancient states, in which compensatory and restorative mechanisms replenish biological resources in the brain and peripheral organs, resulting in beneficial effects encompassing biological and cognitive domains 33 . Variations in delta activity originate in the reticular formation 35 , which receives afferent inputs from all sensory systems and can reach the PCC through ascending, efferent connectivity, via the thalamus 36 . The loci of the PCC findings are close to the center of mass of the posterior default mode network (DMN) 37 . Although the fMRI finding is specific to the PCC, it suggests that at least part of the DMN is affected by religious chanting. Previous studies have independently shown that 53% of DMN functional connectivity variance is explained by delta-band power 38 and that DMN activity is related to self-monitoring functions 39 . In this context, through the described mechanisms involving the suspension of modal brain activity, religious chanting appears to provide a streamlined procedure for the modulation of biological processes.

While our study on religious chanting found increased delta-band power during practice, one previous EEG study compared the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation (LKM) with Christian religious prayer and found that LKM practice was associated with increased delta, alpha and beta waves, whereas the practice of religious prayer was associated with increased alpha and gamma waves 40 . Thereby, it seems that the neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting may be different from those of meditation and religious praying. Future studies should address to what extent increased delta-band power in the PCC is common to all religious chanting (e.g. Byzantine chanting) or specific to love-kindness oriented Buddhist mantras. Moreover, it is important to investigate the extent to which specific practices (e.g. chanting, praying, meditating) can transcend cultural differences associated with specific religions.

Practitioners of Buddhist religious chanting concede that chanting Amitābha Buddha is usually accompanied by spiritual feelings of bliss and calmness, as well as visualizations of the ‘splendid Pure Land’ or ‘Land of Bliss’ referenced in the Buddhist scriptures 2 . Positive feelings and calmness nurture relaxation. This is in line with previous studies showing that prayer facilitates relaxation, which is accompanied by lower metabolism, lower breath rate and distinctive slow brain waves 41 . The emerging perspective suggests that praying may indeed counteract the physiological and psychological effects of stress and pain 42 .

In addition to the difference in brain activity, our results also showed that religious chanting can increase the stability of cardiac function, compared to the resting state. The HRV analysis is sensitive to changes in autonomic nervous system activity 43 . The reactivity of the autonomic nervous system, approximated through HRV changes, has been linked to positive and negative moods 44 . The observed decrease in HRV during religious chanting is a very plausible finding in the context of the accompanying feelings of spiritual bliss and emotional tranquility. Indeed, our previous study showed that mindfulness meditation can also induce similar cardiac effects 26 . According to the polyvagal theory, HRV indicates the modulation of cardiac activity by the autonomic nervous system and can reflect affective states, including increased stress 45 .

The different components of the HRV have been proposed to reflect modulatory effects from different sources. The VLF component and TP of the HRV were significantly lower during religious chanting, and more than half of the TP is accounted by the VLF component. The VLF component may partly reflect a fluctuation in activity of the renin-angiotensin system, which regulates the cardiovascular tone. The VLF component also reflects the peripheral chemoreceptors and the thermoregulatory mechanism 46 . The decreased VLF power during religious chanting may indicate a reduction of the cardiac defensive response and general systemic stress level. It is worth noting that the relation of HRV to cardiac vagal effects is not linear. Respiratory activity can also influence the VLF component of HRV, especially in patients with chronic heart failure 47 . However, in the present study we did not find that religious chanting had any effect on respiration.

The power of the HF component of HRV decreased during religious chanting compared to the resting state, while the HF power during non-religious chanting showed a similar trend but did not differ significantly from the HF power of the resting state. HF power is associated with respiratory sinus arrhythmia which is mainly modulated by the nucleus ambiguus activity. In fact, the HF component of the HRV reflects the magnitude of fluctuation in the modulation of cardiac activity by the parasympathetic nervous system 48 . May and colleagues have shown that a mindfulness meditation intervention can also positively modulate cardiovascular function by decreasing cardiac sympathovagal tone, ventricular workload and vascular resistance 49 .

Due to the monotonous repetition of the brief chant and the ability of experienced meditators to effectively enter the meditational mental state at will, the associated brain activation is assumed to be relatively homogeneous across a meditative session, especially when lasting only a few minutes. Therefore, the EEG and fMRI versions of the paradigm can be considered equivalent, despite minor differences in the length of experimental trials between the fMRI conditions and between the two neuroimaging modalities. A possible limitation of the present study is that the fMRI and EEG data were acquired from different subjects, with considerable differences in religious chanting experience. For future research, we hypothesize that replicating the present study with a sample comprised of Buddhist monastics would yield similar results with stronger effect sizes, whereas replicating the present study with a sample comprised of non-believers would result in no significant difference between chanting conditions.

The lack of cognitive and affective ratings, with regards to either the effect of each experimental condition or the overall psychometric evaluation of each participant, is another potential shortcoming of the present study. Future studies should include the acquisition of such data, with regards to which we hypothesize that the effects reported herein would correlate positively with positive affect and negatively with the level of self-referential cognition. Further, we recommend that future studies acquire EEG data in an electromagnetically shielded EEG cabin, with a high sampling rate (e.g. 5000 Hz), to enable analysis of high gamma band activity as well.

In conclusion, compared to non-religious chanting, the PCC decreases in centrality due to a regional increase in endogenous generation of delta oscillations. These functional effects are not due to peripheral cardiac or respiratory activity, nor due to implicit language processing, and are associated to feelings of transcendental bliss and decreased self-oriented cognition. Compared to the resting state, religious chanting increases the stability of cardiac activity, reflecting enhanced stability in the regulation of cardiovascular tone and the parasympathetic modulation of cardiac function. Such physiological changes illustrate the mechanisms through which relaxing meditative practices exert positive stress-reducing effects. The neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting are somewhat different from those of mindfulness meditation and those of other types of religious prayer and future research should address the replicability and specificity of the neurophysiological effects of different religious and meditative practices, as well as their differential suitability as psychological interventions. Research in this field is still in a nascent stage and the tentative interpretations offered here can serve to provide several hypotheses for future research.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

Twenty-two participants with at least one year of meditative experience in religiously chanting Amitābha Buddha, for at least 15 minutes per day, participated in the EEG/ECG study. The age range was 40 to 52 years old (mean = 46.5; SD = 2.6; 12 females). One participant’s ECG data were usable but his EEG data were dropped due to operational error. One additional 43-year old female participant, who was a highly trained meditator by virtue of being a Bhikṣuṇī Buddhist monastic, participated in an fMRI case study measurement using the same paradigm. All participants were free from any neurological, psychiatric or other mental disorder. Ethical approval was granted by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the University of Hong Kong, and this research was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines/regulations. All participants signed an informed consent form prior to participation in the experiment.

The experimental paradigm consisted of two parts. The first part featured a perceptual task that was published elsewhere 26 , and only the second part is described herein. All participants underwent three conditions in random order. The experimental condition consisted of mentally chanting Amitābha Buddha (religious chanting condition); that is participants chanted internally, silently and without any movement of the lips. It is worth noting that this type of internal, silent chanting is also a relatively common Buddhist practice, particularly when meditative moments are sought while being in public places (e.g. while waiting at an airport or train station). Resting state without chanting was used as a control condition (no chanting condition), similarly to a previous study 13 . During resting state, subjects maintained their eyes closed, similarly as during chanting. Additionally, to control for the potential effect of implicit language processes, a second control condition was employed, featuring mental chanting of the Santa Claus (non-religious chanting condition). Both chants comprised of four Chinese characters (阿彌陀佛 and 聖誕老人) and were comparable in terms of linguistic complexity. Approximate phonological representations of the two chants were [æ mʃ tæ fæ], corresponding to “Amitābha (Buddha)” and [ɪɛn dæn laʊ rɛn] corresponding to “Santa Claus old man”. Both figures referred to in the chants are generally considered as supernatural and carry solely positive connotations, even for atheists, in popular culture, thereby controlling the objective affective content across the two conditions. EEG data analysis featured standard preprocessing, independent component analysis, and independent component clustering. FMRI data were used for eigenvector centrality mapping 50 . ECG and respiratory data were subjected to heart rate variability analysis.

EEG data were acquired during all conditions in a quiet EEG laboratory room, in the presence of one researcher, using a 128-channel EGI TM system (Electrical Geodesics, Inc. USA). The impedances of all electrodes remained below 30 KΩ, in accordance with the requirements of the EGI system. The sampling rate of the EEG data was 1000 Hz. Each EEG condition, including the resting-state lasted 10 minutes. EEG data were processed and analyzed using the EEGLAB toolbox 51 ( https://sccn.ucsd.edu/eeglab/ ) and Matlab 11.0 (MathWorks Inc. USA). In the preprocessing stage, the EEG data were resampled to 250 Hz and band-pass filtered by a finite impulse response filter between 0.1–100 Hz. To reduce artifacts caused by alternating current, data were additionally notch filtered by a short nonlinear infinite impulse response filter with a band-stop range between 47–53 Hz. Following visual inspection, segments of low data quality due to artifacts were deleted, while bad channels were reconstructed using spherical interpolation of the signals. Independent Component Analysis (ICA) was used to remove components due to eye movement, blinking, and other artifacts. Data were reconstructed from the retained components.

Using EEGLAB, the similarity of independent components (ICs) was estimated and similar components were grouped together into functionally equivalent clusters. Comparisons between conditions were based on major clusters rather than single channels. First, for each subject, ICA was performed on the data from each condition to generate ICs. Then, the dipole locations of each IC were generated using the DIPFIT2 (EEGLAB plug-in) function. IC clusters were generated by k -means clustering based on similar dipole location (weight: 2/3) and power spectrum (weight: 1/3). The weight distribution was chosen based on the assumption that functionally similar components should have similar spatial location and power activity. The outlier threshold was set at 2.5 standard deviations (SD). The clustering procedure was repeated more than 10 times, each time with a different k parameter setting. Six to twenty clusters were generated and the k parameter setting that generated the most distinctive clusters was identified, ensuring that the clusters were consistently generated under different k parameter settings. This procedure finally resulted in seven IC clusters. Spectrum analysis and a one-way ANOVA were performed on all major frequency bands, using the ICs from a specific cluster of interest (as well as using the traditional electrode channel approach, for comparative purposes).

To identify ICs that are most influential, the same paradigm was used to acquire fMRI data from an additional participant with long-term experience of religious chanting by virtue of being an experienced Buddhist monastic. Scanning was performed with a 3.0 T Philips MRI scanner. First, a T1-weighted scanning sequence was acquired, featuring the following parameters: FoV = 256 × 150 × 240 mm, acquisition matrix = 256 × 256, TR = 15 ms, TE = 3.26 ms, flip angle = 25°, slice thickness = 1.5 mm, number of slices = 100, voxel resolution (x,y,z,) = 0.94 × 1 × 1.5 mm. FMRI images were obtained with gradient echo-planar imaging (EPI), with an 8-channel SENSE head coil, featuring FoV = 230 × 140 × 230 mm, acquisition matrix = 64 × 64, TR = 2000 ms, TE = 30 ms, flip angle = 90°, number of slices = 32, slice thickness = 3 mm, and slice gap = 1.5 mm. In total, 688 dynamic volumes were acquired, comprising the 3 conditions: religious chanting (243 dynamic volumes; duration 8.1 minutes), non-religious chanting (243 dynamic volumes; duration of 8.1 minutes) and resting state (202 dynamic volumes; duration 6.7 minutes). The resting-state acquisition was shorter due to scanning time constraints and because the resting-state condition was only meant to be used as a neutral baseline, to establish the directionality of any potentially ambiguous findings.

FMRI data were processed using the Leipzig Image Processing and Statistical Inference Algorithms 52 (LIPSIA; version 2.2.7 – released in May 2011). Pre-processing consisted of slice time correction, movement correction, spatial smoothing with FWHM = 6 mm, affine non-linear normalization to MNI space, and regression of covariates of no interest (global mean and movement parameters). Eigenvector centrality mapping (ECM) was used to investigate whole-brain functional connectomics. ECM is a graph theory method, which can identify the most influential nodes of a network 50 . The long and continuous conditions of the paradigm were particularly suited for ECM, which was applied similarly to a previous study on the neural correlates of emotion elicited through continuous musical stimulation 53 . One ECM map was computed for each of the two chanting conditions (i.e. religious chanting and non-religious chanting) and the two conditions were compared via a 1 st -level contrast. The resulting ECM difference map was incrementally thresholded until only the region with the greatest difference in ECM between the two conditions remained (|z| > 0.85). The explorative results of the fMRI analysis were used to confirm the validity of the Independent Component Clustering results, as well as to guide the selection of a specific IC cluster for more detailed investigation.

ECG and respiratory data

Physiological data of cardiac and respiratory activity were collected using the ADInstrument’s PowerLab system ( www.adinstruments.com/products/powerlab ). Breath intervals, representing thoracic and abdominal respiratory activity, were computed for each participant and each condition, using Matlab. Raw ECG data were cleaned via a Butterworth band pass filter and the inter-beat-interval (IBI) was extracted following the replacement of outliers (3 standard deviation away from the mean) via spline interpolation. Using the HRVAS toolbox ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/hrvas ), the IBI data were detrended and the time/frequency domain features of the HRV were computed. Frequency ranges for the VLF, LF, and HF bands were set to 0–0.04 Hz, 0.04–0.15 Hz, and 0.15-0.4 Hz respectively. The power of these frequency bands was estimated using the Lomb-Scargle periodogram. Derived HRV metrics were subjected to statistical testing using SPSS 24.0. One-way repeated measures ANOVA and post hoc tests (where applicable) were used to assess differences between conditions. The alpha level of significance was set at 0.05.

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank the participants and the funder. The research is supported by the Small Project Funding in the University of Hong Kong. The award number is SPF201209176152.

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Junling Gao, Hang Kin Leung, Bonnie Wai Yan Wu & Hin Hung Sik

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J.G. designed and executed the study, analyzed and interpreted the data, collaborated in manuscript writing. H.K.L. analyzed and interpreted the E.E.G. and H.R.V. data, collaborated in manuscript writing. B.W.Y.W. assisted design and manuscript writing. S.S. analyzed and interpreted the fMRI data, collaborated in manuscript writing. H.H.S. collaborated on design and direction of the study.

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Gao, J., Leung, H.K., Wu, B.W.Y. et al. The neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting. Sci Rep 9 , 4262 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40200-w

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Arab-christian chants embody middle east's shared cultural heritage.

In the music of Arab Christians lies an indelible footprint of the past; a rich cultural capital accumulated through centuries of diverse civilisations and traditions in the Middle East. From the Coptic monasteries of Egypt to the Maronite churches of Lebanon - with Greek Orthodox Palestinians nestled in-between in Christianity's birthplace -ancient chanting traditions reflect the diversity, and interconnectedness of Arab culture. Yet they are rarely heard outside of the region. Usually reserved for intimate communal prayers or liturgical celebrations, their spiritual melodies reverberated across London in January, as Orthodox and Coptic communities celebrated Christmas, in a candle-lit event showcasing the songs of Aramaic and Byzantine chanting music. Performed by Coptic Egyptian-German singer Merit Ariane Stephanos and Reverend Shafiq Abouzayd - the senior Melkite priest in Britain - along with Lebanese-born singer and oud player Najib Coutya, with Hala Arsalan, a Syrian-British soprano, such traditions embody the pluralism of Arab culture. "Arab communities are really proud of their diverse heritage, whether Muslim or Christian. For the Arab community, it is really important to be represented in a multifaceted way,"Stephanos told The New Arab . "These chants are really crucial because they are this bridge, a symbol, which shows that we are much more united than the world makes us out to be."

Trained in western classical music, Stephanos' interest in Arab-Christian chants developed after living in Bosnia for a year, where she became fascinated by the blend of traditions in local Sevdah , or "yearning", music. Combining Turkish and local Bosnian folk rhythms, the music is centered on the maqam, a modal structure defining Arabic music which utilises quarter tones and relies on improvisation techniques. After studying Arab-Christian chants in Lebanon, whose history has certain parallels with the civil war and political divisions which plagued Bosnia, Stephanos became fascinated by the historical thread, and dialogue, tying together the tapestry of musical traditions in the Middle East. "The chants have an almost healing, spiritual power, they capture a yearning. It has ancient roots but is still a living tradition,"she says.

Arab-Christian chants can be divided into three main branches - Coptic, Byzantine (including both Greek Catholics and Greek Orthodox) and the Syriac-Aramaic church. Even within these traditions, there is much variety. Maronite chants in Lebanon have a distinct tonal melody, for example, likely due to the community's historic isolation in mountainous terrain, whereas Syriac chants have been influenced by the ornate musical traditions of the Byzantine Empire. The shared geographical history of different communities in the Levant region has produced a symbiosis between musical traditions in prayer and worship, challenging the prevalent stereotype of the region as steeped in primordial sectarianism. "Politicians try to divide and rule. They try and make you afraid of each other. This music is breaking the narrative that we are different,"Stephanos says. Sharing the maqam system of melodies to recite the Quran , Arab Christian Orthodox chants are reminiscent in their tone and melodies to the Azaan, or call to prayer. Stephanos recounts waking up on Easter morning in Beirut to what she thought was the call of the muezzin, only to discover Greek Orthodox priests chanting from the rooftops in worship. "It's all maqam ," says Richard Dumbrill, a leading expert in the archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near and Middle East. "The chanting of the Islamic call to prayer is sung in five different maqams, each day, at each prayer, and the music of Christianity, which is well-preserved in Lebanon, uses the maqam for different services. "There is no difference between their music, the instruments are the same."

Dumbrill says there is a link between all of the musical traditions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the Middle East - with the exception of Jewish Ashkenazi music, which formed in central and Eastern Europe. Lived traditions, ancient roots Despite being lived musical traditions, Arab-Christian chants have deep historical roots. Research shows that some chants date back to the pre-Christian Babylonian Empire, which originated around 1800 BC. With the advent of Christianity in the region, newly created churches simply adopted local melodies, most likely based on the maqam structure, and applied relevant religious lyrics used throughout the liturgical year. "It's a tradition which is at least 4,000 years old. We can even trace it back to ancient Babylonian texts and music, in which we find the sources for maqam music," Dumbrill says.

In the south-eastern Turkish city of Mardin, near the Syrian border, Syriac priests were found to be chanting in a form of Aramaic that is near-identical linguistically to that spoken during the time of Jesus. Indeed, a similar musical structure based on the maqam was used in European music, which was heavily influenced by the church, for several hundred years. After the separation of the western and Eastern Churches in the 6th century, the intonation of musical scales was changed to gradually eliminate any eastern influence and remain diatonic, Dumbrill says. Partly in ode to this historical Babylonian legacy, one of Stephanos' performance groups is named Zanubia, a tribute to the queen who ruled over the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, now a war-torn UNESCO heritage site, when Christianity first arrived in the city in the 3rd century. Understanding this musical heritage helps disrupt the binary narrative of a Christian Europe and a Muslim Arab world.

Culture and music was once shared, with both regions much more culturally intertwined than contemporary political and epistemological discourse would reflect. "Christian Europe wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the Middle East,"Stephanos says. "These chants link the past and the present, they are a bridge between east and west. It's really important to get out there, so this narrative of us-and-them is not able to stand." Ultimately, beyond its beauty and diversity, the music of Arab Christians embodies the critical notion that identities are always fluid. At a time in the Middle East, and globally, when identity markers are being entrenched for political gain, the rich culture that diversity produces should be cherished, and gratefully embraced. "Music doesn't solve anything, but it's a celebration, a memory, a symbol - it is art. Music is just a beautiful part of who people are. It is part of their fabric, part of their language, part of their traditions," Stephanos says. "It shows you who they are." Charlie Hoyle is a freelance journalist specialising in issues of Middle East culture and politics. Follow him on Twitter:   @CharlieCHoyle

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As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu and welcome. This is a resource primarily aimed at anyone English-speaking interested in reading, understanding, and listening to performances of Islamic hymns in Arabic also known as nasheed (s.) or anasheed (pl.).

The English meaning of our website’s Arabic title, INSHAAD, is “to raise one’s voice in singing or reading”.

Our aim is to present as many translated, transliterated (when available) traditional hymns as we can gather. If you would like to contribute missing hymns or make suggestions, corrections, etc., please submit a message via our Contact page.

We hope you benefit from this compilation as a means to draw you closer to your Lord and His Blessed Messenger ﷺ. Kindly remember us in your duaas!

Acknowledgments: We wish to thank our dear friends around the world for contributing content to this website.

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Music and Singing from an Islamic Jurisprudence Perspective

A mixed methods survey of views held within the Muslim community by clerics and practicing Muslims from Ibadi, Shi’i and Sunni backgrounds, as well as a hermeneutical study compared seven Madhahib (denominations), the Ibadi, Ja'fari, Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali and Nizari Ismaili Schools, in terms of their initial and prevailing attitudes and current rulings on the subject. This took the form of an online questionnaire to determine attitudes of Muslim laity across cultures and schools of thought, and semi-structured interviews of Ibadi, Shi’i and Sunni scholars. This was to ascertain from where the ideas originated, how they have evolved in various contexts, how they are applied now and how they affect the community and its relationship with them, in diverse environments and with neighbouring and overlapping communities. This may open further research on how future generations are likely to be affected, as well as possible effects on Islamic Arts and Sciences.

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A Modi Win Will Only Mean More Trouble for Indian Muslims

M ore than two years have passed since a picture of me, picked up from my personal social media handles, was put up with a price tag for auction on the internet. It was part of a website called Bulli Bai , a religious slur used for Muslim women in India. 

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This 2006 statement by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emphasizing that minorities, particularly Muslims , should have the first claim on resources to help uplift their socio-economic status, has been often quoted out of context in political rhetoric, distorting its original intent to uplift marginalized communities.

The reemergence of conspiracy theories like “Love Jihad,” alleging a covert agenda by Muslim men to ensnare and convert Hindu women, by Modi, has surged back into public attention, prominently surfacing at an election rally on May 28, days before the seventh and last phase of the ongoing elections, in the Eastern state of Jharkhand . 

The alarming rhetoric about Muslim population growth too have dominated the election discourse, fueled by the BJP's top leader, Modi, who has been criticized for his Islamophobic remarks, evoking memories of Gujarat's 2002 riots. While he later denied singling out Muslims in an interview with an Indian news channel, his history of linking them to population growth fuels a Hindu-majoritarian conspiracy theory.

Following the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat during his tenure as chief minister, Modi faced scrutiny regarding his administration's lack of assistance to relief camps, predominantly established by non-profit organizations and Muslim communities. During a campaign rally, Modi then insinuated that these camps might transform into "baby factories," implying that Muslims could potentially have families as large as 25 children.

In his Jharkhand rally in May of this year, Modi spoke of "unseen enemies" working to divide society and claimed that the opposition parties were playing into the hands of “infiltrators”. He warned against "Zalim (cruel) love," alluding to Love Jihad. 

As the elections progressed, Modi’s speeches transformed slowly from issues such as “development” to anti-Muslim rhetoric. Unlike previous elections, Modi's campaign strategy this time has shifted towards overt Hindu-Muslim politics, drawing attention to his past record and raising concerns among Indian Muslims, as evidenced by the Election Commission's intervention in a campaign video by the BJP inciting hatred against Muslims. 

The video, shared by BJP Karnataka wing with a cautionary message in Kannada, depicted a cartoon version of Congress’s Rahul Gandhi placing an egg marked "Muslims" into a nest alongside smaller eggs labeled with categories such as "Scheduled Castes," "Scheduled Tribes," and "Other Backward Castes.” The narrative unfolds as the "Muslim" hatchling is shown being nourished with financial resources, eventually growing larger and displacing the other hatchlings from the nest—implying that a Congress government will give away all resources to Muslims. 

This came days after another animated video shared by the BJP’s official Instagram handle was removed on May 1 after a large number of users of the platform reported the video for “false information” and “hate speech.” The video repeats the BJP’s rhetoric on the Congress party, who they allege are“empowering people who belong to the very same community [of] invaders, terrorists, robbers and thieves [who] used to loot all our treasures” while the voice-over says, “If Congress comes to power, it will snatch all the money and wealth from non-Muslims and distribute them among Muslims, their favorite community.” 

Despite its controversial content, the video amassed over 100 thousand likes before being removed.

Both videos come after claims by Modi during his campaign speeches that Congress was planning to “steal” reservations in educational institutes and government jobs among other benefits from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Castes and redistribute them to Muslims.

Modi may be the foremost leader, but he's not alone in setting the tone; other top-tier BJP leaders are also walking in his footsteps. Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah's remarks linking voting for the Congress party to "jihad" in the South Indian state of Telangana have also stirred controversy.

Read More: The Modi-fication of India Is Almost Complete

The India Hate Lab, a Washington D.C.-based group that documents hate speech against India’s religious minorities, in its report of 2023 paints a grim picture of rising hate speech incidents against Muslims, totaling 668 documented cases. 

These incidents, often featuring calls for violence and spreading divisive theories, were predominantly concentrated in regions governed by the BJP, particularly during key election periods like in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh. Additionally, the report highlighted stark differences in hate speech content between BJP and non-BJP-governed areas, with BJP leaders more frequently involved in non-BJP territories as they strive to expand political footholds.

When leaders resort to fear-mongering, it legitimizes the dehumanization of minorities, creating a fertile ground for extremists. This often isn’t just about one app or incident. It’s about the pervasive atmosphere of intolerance that such rhetoric by the BJP leaders breeds. And those who oppose this type of hate speech want to ensure that no one—regardless of their faith, gender, or caste—has to live in fear of being targeted for who they are. 

Modi’s statement received widespread criticism from the opposition, the intelligentsia community including authors, writers, scholars, academics, and the minority Muslim population of India. The Congress party even filed a complaint with the Election Commission, alleging that Modi's remarks violate electoral laws that prohibit appeals to religious sentiments. Despite public outcry and demands from activists and citizens for action, the Election Commission has so far taken no appropriate action. 

Modi's Islamophobic statements, which have fueled fears over and over again among India's Muslim population, must be viewed within the broader context of his party's strategies—which often invoke religious and communal sentiments to galvanize their voter base. And this time, the aim is to break all previous records by securing 400 plus seats in the 543 seat parliament.

If the BJP is able to secure such a huge majority in the parliament, Hindu majoritarianism will remain unchecked. The hostility towards the minorities could escalate even more, and opposition parties may bear the brunt of state agencies and crackdowns if they ask questions. 

During Modi’s previous terms, Muslims have seen an increased marginalization and discrimination fueled by Hindu nationalist agendas—ranging from difficulty in securing a rented accommodation in urban cities, erasure of Muslim names from roads, cities and railway stations, to the underrepresentation in government jobs and discrimination and vandalism of shops of small Muslim vendors. 

Today, India, a country which once took pride in its ganga-jamuni tehzeeb —a term used to refer to the fusion of Hindu-Muslim cultures—has become a global epicenter of divisive politics. While elections will come and go, the impact of the irresponsible words of Modi and the BJP will stay with the 200 million plus Muslims in the country.

These words have real and dangerous implications for the safety and security of India's Muslim population. Muslims in India currently face increased social ostracism, economic boycotts, and even physical violence. And another victory with an overwhelming majority will only mean more trouble.

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Tommy Robinson marchers lead Anti-Muslim chant in London demo

Police said intoxicated individuals with a history of violent disorder have been spotted at the event, article bookmarked.

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Raf-right Tommy Robinson supporters were filmed chanting anti-Muslim slogans at a protest where police were on high alert by the presence of marchers involved with previous disorder.

Marchers chanted “who the f*** is Allah” and other hateful slogans at the protest in central London.

The Metropolitan Police said it had spotted attendees “previously well known for involvement in anti-lockdown protests during the pandemic and associated disorder.”

Groups from across the UK linked to football disorder were seen at the event, the Metropolitan Police said.

The protest set off from the Victoria station area at about 1pm, heading to Parliament Square, where speeches will take place and a film will be shown.

Laurence Fox was pictured alongside Tommy Robinson at the front of the protest as the throngs behind them chanted “we want our country back”. The banner they marched behind read ‘This is London, not Londonistan’.

Robinson took to the stage where he was applauded and cheered by supporters as Laurence Fox smoked a rolled-up cigarette behind him.

He said: “This is what London should look like. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Why does it feel like I’m winning?” as he thanked the thousands who turned out. “We’re not going to be silenced any longer.”

After a singer finished a rendition of Emeli Sandé’s Read All About It, Robinson told the crowd chanting his name: “Wow that’s beautiful mate. The lyrics to that song were ‘We’re not afraid, ok? We’re no longer afraid’.”

Towards the end of his documentary about what claims is a two-tier policing system in the UK, the crowd had started to dissipate, according to observers.

Robinson finished the 4-hour event by thanking the Met Police for “staying out of our way” and holding up some Fiat car keys found on the floor in the crowd of supporters.

It came as nine Pro-Palestinian activists from Youth Demand, holding a static counter-protest nearby, were arrested for leaving the pavement.

A Scotland Yard spokesperson posted on X: “Nine Youth Demand protesters were arrested for breaching Public Order Act conditions not to leave the pavement.

“The remainder of the group has largely dispersed but officers continue to monitor those still in the area.”

Earlier, nationalists gathered at Parliament Square to view Tommy Robinson’s film ‘Lawfare’ a documentary about what he sees as a two-tier policing system.

Robinson mistakenly claimed that more than 700,000 people were watching events live but X displays the total view counts - which can be as little as 2 seconds - rather than the number of people watching simultaneously.

Hard rock songs were played to entertain the crowds with lyrics like “I want my country back/ Our culture we must save/ Where Harmony Once Stood/ Before the Migrant Wave”.

In a speech to a sea of Union Jacks, far-right YouTuber Carl Benjamin addressed the controversy of interviewing Liz Truss last week.

He said: “We are guilty of interviewing the former Prime Minister, that was my crime.

“That’s why I’m in trouble. But I stand today as a husband, a father, an Englishman. And I can see today that we are still alive. But by god, we wouldn’t know it if we looked at the TV would you? Where is your representation?”

He finished: “We have real problems none of the mainstream parties are going to solve these problems. We have to do it ourselves and we will.”

The Met Police said of the screening: “Officers have identified individuals within the crowd who have a history of being involved in violent disorder.

“A number have football banning orders and are associated with hooligan groups from London and across the UK. There is also an element of the crowd previously well known for involvement in anti-lockdown protests during the pandemic and associated disorder.

“While there have not been any offences so far, a number of people in the crowd are intoxicated. The event still has a number of hours left to go.”

Nick Lowles, CEO at HOPE not hate, said ahead of the protest: “Today’s demonstration is set to be the biggest gathering of far-right activists, football hooligans and Tommy Robinson supporters in years.

“There is a strong likelihood of violence as we have unearthed shocking messages from hooligan chat groups where people are threatening to attack people of colour, pro-Palestine demonstrators and even the police.”

More than 2,000 police officers are policing the protests as well as the Champions League Final at Wembley, the force said.

Commander Louise Puddefoot said: “Officers have been in discussion with the organisers of both protests in recent weeks. Our priority is to ensure those exercising their right to lawful protest, both in the main march and as part of the counter protest, can do so safely.

“Officers will police these demonstrations, as they always do, without fear or favour – keeping participants and the wider public safe, and responding decisively to criminal offences and any attempt to cause serious disruption.

“While we are grateful to the main organiser of the protest for comments he has made publicly discouraging violence on Saturday, we do have concerns about the number of those believed to be attending who have links to football disorder.

“When these groups have come together at previous protests we have regrettably seen violence directed at officers. This precedent unavoidably plays a part in shaping the policing approach, including the number and nature of resources allocated to police this particular protest.

“We also understand why the concern goes beyond the potential for officers to be targeted. For some in London, in particular our Muslim communities, comments made by those associated with this event will also cause fear and uncertainty.

“All Londoners have a right to feel and be safe in their city, and we will take a zero tolerance approach to any racially or religiously motivated hate crime we become aware of.”

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Tommy Robinson supporters shout out ‘hate chant’ at far-Right London demo

S upporters of Tommy Robinson led an offensive chant as thousands of Met officers worked to maintain the peace across the capital on Saturday.

Protesters supporting Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, shouted “who the f--- is Allah” and other anti-Muslim chants as they marched through central London in their thousands.

The Metropolitan Police said they were on high alert having identified numerous individuals in the crowd “associated with violent disorder”.

The protest, organised by the far-Right activist, marched from Victoria Station, down Vauxhall Bridge Road and along the embankment to Parliament Square.

Meanwhile, a number of pro-Palestinian activists were arrested after breaching police conditions not to leave the pavement where they had gathered around Jubilee Gardens on London’s South Bank.

Police had earlier banned the group of around 50 protesters from entering the borough of Westminster, “to prevent the serious disruption they have said they want to achieve”.

The protesters from the group Youth Demand were also told they could not go onto any bridge over the Thames or leave the pavement after they told police they intended to block roads and bridges.

London also played host to thousands of football fans on Saturday, as Borussia Dortmund prepared to play Real Madrid in Wembley in the evening.

Outside the Tate Britain gallery, far-Right demonstrators issued loud boos and offensive hand gestures at the gallery-goers sitting on the steps nearby.

Chants of “we want our country back” rippled through the crowd, which was led on its march by Robinson and the former actor Laurence Fox.

Robinson was surrounded by numerous security guards wearing earpieces, although the nearest counter-protesters were always at least 200 metres away. A red smoke flare was released during the march, but police did not intervene.

The crowd was festooned with Union flags and the flag of St George, as well as one supporting Donald Trump’s presidential bid.

Some of the flags had “enough is enough” written on them.

Numerous protesters wore “Make America Great Again” red caps, while a smaller number wore a variation saying “Make Britain Great Again”.

The police issued a statement saying: “Officers have identified individuals within the crowd who have a history of being involved in violent disorder.

“A number have football banning orders and are associated with hooligan groups from London and across the UK.

“There is also an element of the crowd previously well known for involvement in anti-lockdown protests during the pandemic and associated disorder.

“While there have not been any offences so far, a number of people in the crowd are intoxicated. The event still has a number of hours left to go.”

In Parliament Square, Mr Fox made a five-minute speech to the crowd in which he accused Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, as well as the Met, of being corrupt.

He attacked trans ideology and “open door” immigration, ending by shouting “I want my country back”.

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The Battle Over College Speech Will Outlive the Encampments

For the first time since the Vietnam War, university demonstrations have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia.

A pro-Palestinian protest on Columbia University’s campus this spring. Credit... Mark Peterson/Redux

Supported by

By Emily Bazelon and Charles Homans

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for the magazine who also teaches at Yale Law School. Charles Homans covers politics for The Times. He visited the Columbia campus repeatedly during the demonstrations, counter-demonstrations and police actions in April.

• Published May 29, 2024 Updated May 31, 2024

Early on the afternoon of Nov. 10, Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, was on his way into a meeting in Low Library, the domed neoclassical building at the center of campus, when an administrator pulled him aside. The school, the administrator said, was about to announce the suspensions of the campus chapters of the organizations Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, an allied anti-Zionist organization — a move that alarmed Jaffer given the fraught politics of the moment.

Listen to this article, read by Gabra Zackman

The day after Hamas’s brazen Oct. 7 attack on military and civilian targets in Israel, the S.J.P. and J.V.P. chapters co-signed an open letter declaring “full solidarity with Palestinian resistance.” The letter described the attacks as “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza” and a “counteroffensive against their settler-colonial oppressor.” It would be tantamount to “asking for quiet submission to systemic violence” for anyone to call for peace now, after years of Israeli violence and military campaigns against Palestinians. The groups issued a list of demands to the university — divestment from companies doing business with the Israeli government, the end of Columbia’s affiliation with Tel Aviv University and a recognition of Palestinian “existence and humanity” — and announced a demonstration on Oct. 12 on the steps of Low Library. They signed off: “See you Thursday.”

The Oct. 12 demonstration appeared to be in violation of campus rules, which required student groups to give 10 days’ notice for gatherings in public spaces, but Columbia had not been enforcing such requirements amid the emotional responses to the Hamas attacks and Israel’s retaliatory bombing in the Gaza Strip. “We got some pushback from the university,” recalled Cameron Jones, an organizer of the J.V.P. chapter, “but not insane pushback.”

As the sit-ins, teach-ins and die-ins continued, however, that began to change. Pro-Israel groups held counterdemonstrations, and tensions built on Columbia’s small, enclosed central campus. “In the past, demonstrations were basically students protesting against the establishment, and that was, you know, unidirectional and fairly straightforward,” the president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, said in late May, in her first interview since December. “In this crisis,” she went on, “students are opposed to other students, faculty opposed to other faculty. And those internal dynamics and tensions have made this much more difficult than past episodes.” Outside Columbia’s library, several Israeli students were physically attacked after they confronted another student tearing down posters of Israelis held hostage by Hamas. Students wearing hijabs and kaffiyehs reported being called “Jew killers” and terrorists.

By Oct. 25, when S.J.P. and J.V.P. staged a walkout of college classes, “our relationship with the administration was really crumbling,” Jones recalled. Two days later, Israel’s invasion of Gaza began. On the night of Nov. 8, with another demonstration planned for the next day on the steps outside Low, a faculty adviser told the organizers that they were out of compliance with school rules and asked them to postpone the event. They did not , and the university suspended them.

When Jaffer heard the news, “I said, ‘Suspending the groups seems like a very draconian penalty for that offense,’” he recalled. When the administration in a public statement also cited the groups’ “threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” Jaffer grew more concerned: What speech crossed that line? In an open letter, he asked Columbia for an explanation.

The university didn’t publicly provide one, and the organizations received mixed messages from the administration. In a meeting with the student groups at the end of November, one administrator said that while the groups had not violated speech rules, Israeli students could hear accusations that Israel was committing genocide or was an apartheid state as an incitement to violence. “I left that meeting extremely confused,” said Maryam Alwan, an organizer of the S.J.P. chapter.

Shafik said this month that the suspensions of S.J.P. and J.V.P. were “content neutral” — they were about breaking the rules regarding demonstrations, not political views. Regardless, the university’s decision lit a fuse. In the months that followed, as the invasion of Gaza continued and civilian casualties mounted, dozens of student groups rallied in solidarity with S.J.P. and J.V.P. On April 18, Shafik asked the New York City Police to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the Columbia lawn. That move, which included dozens of arrests, in turn sparked a wave of demonstrations at universities across the country. Columbia protesters rebuilt their encampment and, on the night of April 29, some of them stormed the school’s Hamilton Hall, occupying the building and locking and barricading the doors. At Shafik’s request, a large deployment of police returned to campus the following night, raiding the building and arresting its occupiers .

When private universities set rules for what speech they allow, including when, where and how students can protest, they can impose more restrictions than the First Amendment allows in public spaces. But for decades, they have claimed free speech as a central value, and that promise has a particular history at Columbia. In 1968, the administration called in the police to evict student demonstrators from Hamilton Hall, which they had occupied in protest of the university’s involvement in military research and a new neighborhood-dividing gymnasium project in Morningside Park.

The occupation and its violent end, the images of bloodied students dragged away in handcuffs, was a seminal moment for the Vietnam-era left; the following year, several Columbia demonstrators helped found the Weather Underground, the radical organization that bombed government buildings in the 1970s. The clash also occasioned an on-campus reckoning with long-lasting institutional consequences. The university senate, which includes faculty and students, was given a hand in disciplinary matters to check administrative power — a system the administration bypassed in suspending the pro-Palestinian groups.

For more than half a century now, campus activism and universities’ responses to it have mostly occurred within the paradigm shaped by 1968. Activists have used fights over investments, curriculums and development projects as platforms for radical politics and for a kind of revolutionary experimentation in the form of building occupations and other direct actions. Administrations have more often than not responded tolerantly or at least cautiously, out of a mix of principle and pragmatism. The building occupiers and tent-camp residents may be breaking laws or at least campus policies, but they’re also the university’s consumers.

But the upheavals on campuses across the country this spring were different. The campus war over the real war in Gaza did something no issue since Vietnam had done. It seemed to have prompted an abrupt rethinking of free-speech principles that many in academia assumed to be foundational.

In reality, though, this shift was not so abrupt. It reflected broader changes in the institutional structures and power balances within American universities and disagreements over free speech that have gradually redrawn the battle lines inside and outside academia. That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would prove the catalyst, too, was not surprising. Few conflicts had so directly centered on the power of language and who sets its terms.

In 2019, Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president before Shafik, wrote an essay for The Atlantic called “Free Speech on Campus Is Doing Just Fine, Thank You.” The occasion was an executive order President Trump issued that March, proclaiming that colleges and universities that received federal funding were required to “promote free inquiry” — a mostly symbolic measure that reflected several years of alarm on the right over what Fox News and others had declared a “free-speech crisis” on American campuses.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, college activists tried to block various appearances by speakers whose views they found repellent. At Middlebury College, they derailed a talk by the conservative social scientist Charles Murray and at William & Mary shouted down a speaker from the state A.C.L.U. chapter. Schools like the University of California, Berkeley , and Grand Canyon University , a Christian institution in Arizona, canceled or disinvited right-wing media figures for fear of demonstrations.

If Columbia managed to steer through this period with a minimum of turbulence, it was in large part thanks to Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar who defended the right of people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on campus. “I am of the view that one such disinvitation is one too many,” he wrote in The Atlantic essay, while noting that, in fact, disinvitations had been far rarer than the pundits and politicians suggested. But Bollinger cast the debate over the limits of campus speech as itself a part of the tradition of campus speech, and he concluded that “universities are, today, more hospitable venues for open debate than the nation as a whole.”

Five years later, this picture lay in tatters. Bollinger’s own university — he left office last June — was once again synonymous with building occupations and police crackdowns, and Columbia was facing legal action from both Jewish and Muslim students alleging harassing speech, among other complaints. In an interview in late April, Bollinger, who has not otherwise spoken publicly about the Columbia clashes, said that his own optimism was dimming. “There was a fair consensus that private universities,” he said, like public ones, “should embrace free-speech principles and set an example for the country in how free speech applies to a public forum. And now I think that’s breaking down.”

Other schools were also stumbling. In December, testifying before a House committee hearing on antisemitism on college campuses , three elite-university presidents equivocated when Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman from New York, asked them whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the rules on their campuses. One of them, the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, was out of her job within days ; a second, Claudine Gay of Harvard, resigned amid accusations of plagiarism that surfaced amid post-testimony scrutiny .

Shafik, testifying before a similar panel in April, fared better in the hearing room but worse back on campus. Under repeated questioning, she said that she found pro-Palestinian chants like “From the river to the sea” and “Long live intifada” antisemitic but added that “some people don’t.” Columbia also turned over documents to the committee about faculty members accused of antisemitic speech whom Shafik named in her testimony — disclosures the administration says that it was obligated to make but that infuriated professors, hundreds of whom signed open letters declaring it a breach of academic freedom. “She threw some of us under the bus,” said Katherine Franke, a Columbia Law School professor, who was among those criticized in the hearing. “But to me, that’s less important than her inability to make a defense of the university.”

To free-speech advocates, it was ominous that these presidents weren’t arguing for the university as a forum for fostering free speech, however controversial. “That commitment is really at the center of universities’ missions,” Jaffer said. “It is disappointing that so many university leaders failed to make that case.”

In the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations, however, universities confronted a dilemma far more complex than any Bollinger faced during his tenure. The invasion of Gaza has drawn students with a range of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the protests, but S.J.P. and other groups at the vanguard have been clear on their own lines : They reject the idea of a two-state solution and consider the existence of a Zionist state in Israel to be illegitimate and immoral. This is a change from the early 1990s when Edward Said, the Jerusalem-born literary theorist and pro-Palestinian activist who made Columbia a leading bastion of Palestinian scholarship, championed a two-state outcome (though he rejected the idea in the last years of his life). The movement’s politics have hardened, and so have the facts on the ground. Hopes for a two-state solution have receded amid the increasingly extreme politics of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and attacks on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah .

Historically, when “Zionist” becomes a pejorative, persecution of Jews has followed, and many American Jews see the rise in reported incidents of antisemitism as evidence of this once again. Some protesters crossed the line from rejecting Israel to using antisemitic imagery on posters and making threats. For example, Khymani James , a student leader of the protests at Columbia, said “Zionists don’t deserve to live” in a video of a school disciplinary hearing that he posted on social media. (James later apologized.) Chants like “We don’t want no Zionists here,” which continued at Columbia and elsewhere, made many Jewish students, including critics of Israel’s occupation, feel there was no longer a space for supporting a Jewish homeland in any sense.

But pro-Palestinian activists now often view the rejection of Zionism as an irreducible part of the cause — and are aware of how accusations of antisemitism have been wielded in the past to the detriment of that cause. When Columbia deans called for acknowledging the “genuine hurt” of both sides of the conflict in December, noting some of the language of the protests, Rashid Khalidi, a historian of Palestine at Columbia, accused them of having decided that “the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression.”

The clash over politics and language has created a rare point of real political vulnerability for universities. Several face the threat of House Republican investigations of their federal funding, which at Columbia amounts to $1.2 billion in annual grants and contracts, accounting for 20 percent of its budget. And Republicans, who have long criticized universities as fortresses of liberalism and leftism, now have allies among the many congressional Democrats who remain supportive of Israel, as well as many of the universities’ own donors, administrators and trustees. (Columbia’s board includes only one academic and no Muslims or Arabs other than Shafik.) In May, a bipartisan majority in the House passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require schools to potentially risk their federal funding if they don’t restrict speech that, for example, denies “the Jewish people their right to self-determination” — a suppression of views that would run headlong into the First Amendment.

Back on campus, the conflict about antisemitism versus anti-Zionism has landed in the middle of a decades-long, unresolved argument over speech itself. Today’s students have grown up with the idea that speech can be restricted if it causes harm — but also believe that restricting their speech can be its own kind of harm. “I can’t think of another case,” says David Pozen, a Columbia law professor, “where a group not only refuses to stop using language it’s told is harassing and intimidating and demeaning but also flips it around to say, ‘Your very demand is a tool of oppression.’”

Debates over free speech on college campuses have invariably been debates about power. This became clear in 1964, when students at the University of California, Berkeley, handed out leaflets organizing demonstrations against the Republican National Convention, held in San Francisco that year. The dean of students barred them from using a campus-owned plaza. Months of protests and hundreds of arrests followed, until the university finally capitulated.

The Berkeley movement proved a useful foil for conservative politicians fighting the early skirmishes of the culture wars — Ronald Reagan successfully ran against it in his 1966 campaign for governor. But the Supreme Court upheld campus speech protections in 1967 and onward. And when a more enduring critique of campus speech emerged years later, it came not from the right, but from the left.

In an influential 1989 law-review article, Mari Matsuda, a law professor at the University of Hawaii and an early critical-race theorist, argued that the significance of speech and its acceptability on a university campus turned on who was speaking and who was being spoken to. Racist speech, in particular, could be more than offensive. When it reflected historic imbalances of power — when a white student hurled a racial slur at a Black student, for instance — it reinforced and perpetuated those imbalances in ways that shut down discussion, debilitating students’ academic lives. That meant that schools should treat it not as a matter of expression but as a real-world harm and sanction it. “Racist speech is particularly harmful because it is a mechanism of subordination,” she wrote.

By the early 1990s, more than 350 colleges and universities had adopted hate-speech codes imposing sanctions on students who demeaned someone’s race, sex or religion. But the codes collided with the First Amendment. Every court that considered a university speech code between 1989 and 1995 reached the same conclusion: The rules were vague, overbroad or discriminated against speakers because of their points of view and were thus unconstitutional.

Many First Amendment scholars agreed. They recognized that hate speech causes real harm but thought that banning it caused its own problems. Geoffrey Stone, a law professor and frequent collaborator of Bollinger’s, led a committee at the University of Chicago that issued a landmark 2015 report on free speech. It proposed “the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn” while allowing for limits on the time, place and manner of protests and on genuine threats and harassment.

The Chicago principles, as they are called, have since been adopted by more than 100 other schools. But this view of free speech never achieved a consensus. Within many humanities departments, Matsuda’s theories have retained currency. Ideas about identity and power have suffused progressive politics more broadly in recent decades. And in the Trump era, incursions of white nationalists and right-wing extremists into the political mainstream caused many liberals to rethink tolerating hate speech. Such speech no longer seemed confined to the far edge of American politics, and the death of a counterdemonstrator at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 reinforced the argument that hate speech was inherently violent and should be stopped at all costs.

But as progressive students extended this justification to even conventional conservatives and some civil liberties advocates, a more generalized intolerance took hold. In a 2022 survey of college students, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil liberties organization, found that liberal students were far more likely to say that preventing speech through protest was acceptable. Fifty-three percent of students who identified as “very liberal” said it was always or sometimes acceptable to shout down a speaker to block their appearance on campus. Only 13 percent of “very conservative” students did.

Three and a half decades ago, when Matsuda first laid out her case for sanctioning hate speech, based on the identity of the speaker, one of the most challenging tests of her framework was Zionism. Were Zionists persecutors, as pro-Palestinian activists contended? Or, given the history of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust, were they victims? Matsuda’s answer, in effect, was: It depends. She rejected the charge that Zionism was, by definition, racism. Zionists would receive a “victim’s privilege,” she said, if they spoke in “reaction to historical persecution” but not if they allied themselves with a dominant group.

Her response captured the duality of modern Jewish identity — vulnerable on a global scale, as only 0.2 percent of the world population and the subject of centuries of prejudice but wielding significant power in some contexts, most obviously the Israeli state. It also showed the difficulty of putting Matsuda’s analytical framework into practice. Doing so depended on a shared understanding of where power lay and who possessed it.

The lack of such a shared understanding is on display in dueling legal complaints Columbia now faces over the campus clashes , from Jewish and Israeli students and their supporters in one case and Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their allies in another. Each document incidents of face-to-face harassment, and each claim to be on the wrong side of power or social clout. The Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students say in their legal filing that they were “treated differently by high-ranking administrators,” citing the S.J.P. suspension. Jewish and Israeli students, by contrast, report being excluded from student organizations (an L.G.B.T.Q. group, a dance club, a group representing public-school students at suspension hearings) that either condemned Israel or said Zionists were unwelcome, forcing them to forfeit a core part of their identity to stay in the group.

Both complaints claim Columbia is violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires universities to respond when discriminatory harassment is “so severe or pervasive” that it limits or prevents students from participating in their education. The federal Department of Education has in recent years interpreted the law to apply to religious minorities like Jews and Muslims with “shared ancestry,” and to say that speech is a form of conduct that can violate the law.

The tension with free-speech principles is evident. In mid-December, the dean of U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky, and the chancellor of U.C. Irvine, Howard Gillman, expressed concern about briefings for universities in which the Department of Education suggested that slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” likely created a hostile environment for Jewish students. “We know that some Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students similarly feel threatened by protesters who chant, ‘We stand with Israel,’” Chemerinksy and Gillman wrote in an essay in The Sacramento Bee. “Do they also require investigations and mitigation efforts?”

The day before Shafik called the police to Columbia for a second time, she issued a public statement suggesting that Title VI was forcing her hand. Calling the encampment a “noisy distraction,” she said it “has created an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty.”

David Schizer, a former dean of Columbia’s law school and a chairman of the antisemitism task force the university convened in the wake of Oct. 7, said in an email that “after the occupation of Hamilton Hall, the police were preventing trespassing and vandalism, protecting the ability of all students to do their work, sleep and prepare for finals, and were also preventing discriminatory harassment against Jewish and Israeli students.” But Jaffer, the Knight Institute director, took issue with invoking Title VI as a rationale for the police action.

“Of course we want universities to protect students from discrimination,” he said. “But whatever federal anti-discrimination law means, it doesn’t mean universities are obligated to call in hundreds of riot-clad police to suppress mostly peaceful protests.”

In 2021, Shafik wrote a book called “What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society.” Before Oct. 7, she said, she hoped that her presidency might be dedicated to a similar theme, of strengthening the frayed social contract between universities and the country and within their own on-campus communities. That was still the challenge ahead, she believed. “I think we’re all thinking very hard,” she said, “about, you know, what we’ve learned.”

While the school’s board remains behind Shafik, on May 16 members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which among the school’s professors had been the most vocal in their criticism of her, passed a resolution of no confidence in the president by a margin of 65 percent to 29 percent. In an email to her colleagues, Virginia Page Fortna, a political-science professor, pointedly noted the title of Shafik’s book. “If we are to heal,” she wrote, “then Shafik owes Columbia: an apology, a strong and credible commitment to completely change course in how decisions are made, and an independent investigation of what has gone wrong.”

At the same time, few schools could credibly claim to have gotten things right in April. Institutions across the country, from large state schools to small liberal-arts colleges, struggled as the protests escalated, crossing into the terrain of encampments and building occupations, which aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Some schools that permitted encampments for a time also wound up in crisis. At the University of California, Los Angeles, on April 30, pro-Israel counterprotesters violently attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment while the campus police force mostly stood by. Even at the University of Chicago, the administration’s decision to tolerate an encampment ended when negotiations with the demonstrators broke down and the president called in police in riot gear . The several schools that did persuade students to end their encampments mostly did so by promising to consider divestment in Israel at a later date, punting on rather than resolving the underlying issue.

In the logic of protest politics, police crackdowns and the attention they generate are their own kind of victory. The campus clashes forced the war in Gaza into the center of American public life in a way that seven months of headlines about Israeli bombing campaigns, aid-shipment blockades and thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths did not. They drew attention to American dissent over the war and the United States government’s role in supporting it. Khalidi, the Columbia historian, speaks of the campus clashes as a turning point for younger Americans. “The protests have highlighted the fact that majorities of Americans oppose Israel’s war on Gaza and the Biden administration’s support of it, a fact that elites, politicians and the mainstream media systematically ignore,” he wrote in an email.

Universities now face the challenge of rebuilding their communities even as the debate over speech limits that divided them, to say nothing of the war in Gaza itself, remains unsettled — and the incentives of some interested parties, like congressional Republicans and pro-Palestinian organizers, seem to run in the opposite direction. The most realistic aspiration, perhaps, is that many students will tire of division and police deployments and make a path toward recovering a sense of empathy for one another — taking a step back and seeing their own political positions, however irreconcilable, as others might see them.

Matsuda, who did as much as anyone to shape the interpretation of language through the prism of power, had been thinking, too. “I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable on campus,” she said. “But stopping a protest movement, I don’t think it’s the way to make Zionist students feel comfortable.” At the same time, “it’s also really important for universities to help students move beyond slogans and see what might be hurtful or impactful about them,” she said.

At the height of the spring conflict, there were signs this was possible. At some schools, pro-Palestinian protesters modulated their own speech in deference to the requests of other students, even avoiding the common chant, “From the river to the sea,” which others have defended as peaceful. The protesters who made these choices didn’t do so because of a law or rule. They were sensitive to the nudge of peer relationships and social norms.

Bringing students together to hash out community standards about language is “the only way I can think of for there to be a set of norms about what speech goes too far that students on all sides would accept as legitimate,” David Pozen, the Columbia law professor, said. He felt the tumult of this spring, which at Columbia resulted in early student departures and scrambled graduation plans, aggravated and exhausted many students who did not themselves participate in the demonstrations and counterdemonstrations. “Students are feeling anguished and alienated, and maybe that’s an opening,” Pozen said.

Clémence Boulouque, a religion professor who serves on the university’s antisemitism task force, hoped Columbia could recover a sense of itself as a “place where people can coexist” and where mediation and discussion might forestall endless grievance and grief. If the divisions opened up by the protests were litigated in an endless back-and-forth of Title VI complaints, fought in the zero-sum realm of the law, then the school would fail at one of the oldest concepts in education: the moral development of its students. “Denying the pain of others, it’s not a great way of conflict resolution,” she said. “It’s also self-inflicted moral injury.”

On one level, this focus on de-escalation avoided the deep unresolved disagreements over where the political ended and the personal began. On another, it was its own kind of blunt realism. “We have to heal together and live together,” Boulouque said. “It’s just like Israel-Palestine. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

Read by Gabra Zackman

Narration produced by Anna Diamond

Engineered by Quinton Kamara

An earlier version of this article misstated the date that Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, asked the New York City Police Department to clear a pro-Palestinian student encampment on the university’s lawn. It was April 18, not April 17. The article also misstated the position of the literary theorist and activist Edward Said on a two-state solution. He supported the proposal in the early 1990s but changed his public stance to support a one-state solution later in that decade.

How we handle corrections

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. More about Emily Bazelon

Charles Homans is a reporter for The Times and The Times Magazine, covering national politics. More about Charles Homans

The Campus Protests Over the Gaza War

News and Analysis

​Harvard said that it will no longer take positions on matters outside of the university , accepting the recommendations of a faculty committee that urged the school to reduce its messages on issues of the day.

​Weeks after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, the university police have made the first arrest related to the attack .

​​A union for academic workers in the University of California system announced that an ongoing strike challenging the system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations would extend to two more campuses , U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis.

The Battle Over College Speech:  ​University demonstrations over the war in Gaza have reignited the debate over campus speech, and have led to a rethinking of who sets the terms for language in academia .

Making Sense of the Protests:  In the weeks leading up to graduation, our reporter spoke with more than a dozen students at Columbia University and Barnard College about how the campus protests had shaped them .

A Complex Summer:  Many university leaders and officials may be confronting federal investigations, disputes over student discipline  — and the prospect that the protests start all over again in the fall.

A New Litmus Test:  Some Jewish students say their views on Zionism — which are sometimes assumed — have affected their social life on campus .

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