The call to prayer in Muslim-ruled areas used to be “a joy” but has since turned into a “thunderous cacophony” as mosques adopted loudspeakers and put their muezzins (announcers) on the mic at the same time, leading to such intrusive noise it has some faithful calling it “daily torture to the ears.” Some mosques even amplify the entire service, and “what should be an announcement lasting at most two minutes goes on for 45 minutes, keeping the entire neighbourhood in a state of high alert.” Sadly, this entirely familiar problem to Americans – with our Supreme Court’s “time, place and manner” restrictions that curb speech for non-content reasons (e.g., loud noise at night) – is a very delicate issue in the Muslim world, specifically Cairo, where this BBC story focuses:
Last September, the Ministry of Religious Endowments decided to bring Cairo’s 4,000-odd mosques and prayer halls into line by broadcasting a live, centralised call to prayer to replace the current ear-splitting cacophony.
But since Religious Endowment Minister Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq made the announcement, there has been a huge outcry of public anger at his proposed reforms. …
The conspiracy theorists prophesied that the centralised sound system was just a test case for the real goal: to disseminate a single Friday prayer sermon, approved beforehand by the government.
The outcry reached such a pitch that the minister felt obliged to hold a news conference to quell doomsayers and to explain that the move was just a practical modern solution to combat one contributor to noise pollution. …
“Everyone hears them. Every day I receive bitter [anonymous] complaints from people from all walks of life about the loudspeakers. When I ask them to register official complaints, they say they fear others will accuse them of being infidels.”
The irony is that Muslim communities, often stereotyped as speaking with one voice – the “street” – are reacting against supposed restrictions on their individuality, which would otherwise be a good sign: “The wording of the calls is set, but the way each is sung – melodious or strident – sets a tone for the mosque and it is this individuality that is seen as being under attack.” And as you might guess, the proposed Cairo reforms are seen by some as coming from Washington in an attempt to control religious expression for Western aims. That won’t change the feelings of Muslims around the world, expressing themselves in the BBC story’s comments section, from protesting the call to prayer’s morphing into “a threatening call shot through with violence”:
I agree that lately in my city, Aleppo, the number of amplifiers have increased and it seems as though the mosques are competing among each other on who can be the loudest. I no longer wake up with a smile when Azan [call to prayer] starts; instead I wake up startled and shocked. … The irony is that so much funding goes into these mosques instead of going to charity organizations or orphanages. …
We have a central azan here in Abu Dhabi, people are happy and no-one is complaining. They use different voices in every prayer and it is all just beautiful… a real ‘call’ to prayer. This is what the azan should do to you and this is the aim that we should try and achieve. …
Damascus has the same problem. We have marathon calls to prayer in the middle of the night. The loudspeakers are so loud that can hear the muezzins sniffle! …
I think the call to prayer should be changed back to the muezzins using their own voices. These sound so much better than the really poor amplifiers and crackly speakers they currently use and gives a feel of more towards traditional worship. These people who think this is influenced by America but if you use the proposal of using voices then what can the Egyptian government or America complain about?
The consensus on this page seems to be at least to lower the decibel level of all these simultaneous announcements, if not remove the speakers completely. It’s a shame these voices are mostly anonymous, and a sign of just how paranoid the leaders in these communities seem to be.
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