A proposal to make mosques reduce the loudspeaker volume of their call to prayer has sparked an uproar among Israel’s Muslims, underscoring their fraught relationship with the country’s Jewish majority.
Supporters of the bill, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have painted it as a matter of quality of life. But it has deepened a sense among the Arab minority that it is being increasingly marginalized by his hard-line government.
“The call to prayer came before the racists. The call to prayer will remain after the racists,” said Ayman Odeh, head of a joint list of Arab parties in parliament.
The bill, which received initial support from a committee of Israeli ministers this week, proposes to limit the volume of public address systems of all houses of prayer in Israel.
But the bill’s sponsor, a lawmaker from a nationalist Jewish religious party, made clear the target is mosque loudspeakers, and it has been dubbed the “muezzin bill,” referring to the man who delivers the call to prayer.
Devout Muslims pray five times a day, beginning around 5 a.m. In Israel, the call to prayer is often loud enough to wake up residents in Jewish neighborhoods or towns who live in close proximity to Muslim communities.
“I cannot count the times, they are simply too numerous, that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet this week.
“Israel is a country that respects freedom of religion for all faiths. Israel is also committed to defending those who suffer from the loudness of the excessive noise of the announcements,” he added.
But Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel see the initiative as yet another affront by an increasingly hostile Israeli society and leadership.[...]
Some detractors have said the bill is unnecessary, since Israel already has rules regulating excessive noise. Still, it has garnered support from many secular liberals who normally are at odds with Netanyahu’s conservative government.[...]
A planned vote on Wednesday was blocked after ultra-Orthodox Jewish lawmakers raised concerns that it could also affect the sirens that announce the start of the Jewish Sabbath and holidays in many communities.
“I think the whole law is unnecessary,” Health Minister Yaakov Litzman told Israeli Army Radio Wednesday, adding that he would support an amended bill that made an exception for Jewish sirens. A ministerial committee will revisit the bill.
Netanyahu has claimed that many European cities and Muslim countries place limits on loudspeaker volume.
In Ireland, Muslims seeking to build mosques must agree that there will be no public call to prayer. Local Muslim leaders have accepted the restriction, citing religious teachings on showing respect for neighbors, and more than a dozen mosques have been built since 1996.
In Germany, only about 30 of the 160 official mosques have a call to prayer, according to the DPA news agency. While residents often complain, authorities say it is covered by the right to religious freedom, though still subject to general laws against making excessive noise.
The nationalist Alternative for Germany and various far-right parties have tried to exploit the issue, so far to little avail. Yet the party has done very well in local elections by campaigning against Islam and is surging as the country heads into a major election year in 2017.
In Britain, local city and town councils mediate occasional disputes over early morning prayer calls. There is an online petition in support of allowing areas with high Muslim populations to have “a loud call for prayer” at least three times a day, but it has not yet generated the 100,000 electronic signatures required to put it before Parliament.
While France has no ban, French mosques don’t sound public calls to prayer, apparently out of respect to the country’s secular traditions.
Likewise, very few mosques in the U.S. blast a call to prayer. Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said most American mosques are not located in the heart of Muslim communities. “Even if they broadcast it, the likelihood is that people are not close enough to hear it,” he said.
Dawud Walid, director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, said the call to prayer rings out from some mosques in Detroit and the suburbs of Hamtramck and Dearborn, all with large Muslim populations. In a 1979 decision, a Detroit judge ruled a mosque had a constitutional right to broadcast its prayer call.
Loud calls to prayer are ubiquitous across the Middle East.
Pakistan bans its Ahmadiyya community, who are reviled by mainstream Muslims as heretics, from broadcasting the call to prayer. It also prevents religious leaders from blaring their sermons, fearing incitement.
Egypt has attempted to install a system where mosques would use a simultaneous, recorded call to prayer. But the proposal has struggled to get off the ground. Officials say the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which looks after mosques, is negotiating the purchase of equipment for the plan.
================================================
Update: Incredibly dumb - Arutz 7 Chareidim protest law because it might prohibit sirens announcing Shabbos
Artuz 7
Palestinian Authority furious over proposed law, threatens Israel with 'disaster' if law passes.
The Palestinian Authority is furious over a proposed law that would prohibit places of worship from using a loudspeaker system, and threatened to take Israel to the UN Security Council.
A Hamas representative called the bill "a dangerous and provocative development. Any interference on the part of the Israelis will be met with disaster. No one is allowed to interfere with our religious rituals."
On Sunday, the "Muezzin Law" was approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation. The law was initiated by MK Motti Yogev (Jewish Home) and other Knesset members, and came after Israeli citizens complained about the disruption to their quality of life and daily activities that the muezzins blasting on loudspeakers in neighboring towns and adjacent neighborhoods were causing them. The proposal still has to pass the legislative procedure before it becomes law.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas warned Israel of the "consequences" of passing the law, and told Israel the law would cause a "disaster."
Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Roudina, said the PA would turn to the UN Security Council, as well as other international bodies.
PA "property minister" Yousef Adeais also spoke about the law, saying it would threaten the entire region with a religious war, since the law "infringed" on "religious rights."
"This is a decision saturated with extremism against the Muslim religion in Jerusalem," he said.
He also said the law would not change the religious status quo in Jerusalem or religious rights there, but would only make the Muslims more committed to their holy places and cause them to redefine themselves culturally, nationally, and politically.
Former Fatah spokesperson Rafat Alian, who lives in Jerusalem, said Israel's intention to forbid loudspeaker systems in mosques would cause a religious war with the Palestinian Authority and that he would join the fight.
Hamas, too, responded to the law with calls to pray in Jerusalem mosques, including Al-Aqsa, saying the new development was dangerous and changed both Jerusalem's situation and that of its mosques, and erased the Islamic identity from Jerusalem.
"This is a forbidden interference in our culture and provokes Muslims' emotions," they said. "This law goes against laws and international art rights, which protect Muslims' holy places and the religious rights of the Palestinians, as they were expressed in UNESCO's latest decision."
On Sunday, a preacher at Al-Aqsa said "anyone angered by the call of the muezzin noise should leave" the country.[...]
A Jerusalem resident who spoke to Arutz Sheva about the piercing noise pollution of loud calls to prayer at midnight and 4 a.m.remarked that Muslims have been praying since Islam appeared in the 7th century without the aid of electronic loudspeakers at full volume calling them to prayer.
