Naming a ruler in Friday sermons encoded submission or independence

Evidence

Mention in the khutfiba is the rec­ ognized way of accepting and submitting to the sovereignty or suzerainty of a ruler. Omitting the name from the khutfiba is the recognized way of declaring one’s independence from a suzerain. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 472

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Islam-West representation cluster: the khutba as a pre-modern, ritual-bound form of political communication contrasts with modern Western mass propaganda — useful for qualifying claims that propaganda is uniquely modern/Western.
• DEFINE: Defines the khutba as one of two standard tokens of sovereignty in Islamic political practice.