Gnawa rituals in trance. Between pietism and halalization

Abstract This work analyzes the responses of the Gnawa of northern Morocco to criticism from more orthodox agents that considers their rituals to be non-Muslim in the context of a diverse Moroccan religious landscape. Based on fieldwork involving interviews and observation of rituals, as well as comparisons between different generations of Gnawa, the results of the research challenge dichotomous discourses of orthodoxy and heterodoxy and reveal a plurality of views among Gnawa musicians who affirm the Muslim nature of their practices and those who engage in a supposed halalization of the ritual. My hypothesis is that even the Gnawa themselves may have incorporated a growing ethos based on religious puritanism. While Gnawa ceremonies contain aspects that demonstrate the Islamic nature of the practitioners, such as the declaration of faith or praise of the Prophet, various elements indicate that in recent years internal debates have emerged about prayer, the control of images, and the intention of sacrifice. The result is a pragmatic ethos that combines and reconciles elements that the ideological dichotomies of social actors or even the analytical categories of the social sciences seem to have separated.