Daily Archive

The Daily Mail:

Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a “Muslim ghetto”.

Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells…

…Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford hospice Helen House, told the Oxford Mail: “The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford…

…He added: “If an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry…

The Oxford Mail tells us also:

…Sardar Rana, a spokesman for the Central Mosque, said he would be happy to clarify any issues and invited anyone to come to the mosque so he could satisfy their concerns.

He said: “The call is going on in so many places in the UK, and we must get the same right as everybody else.

“When they ring the bells in church, we respect it but that is also a call to prayer…

And therein lies the biggest misunderstanding; but one that is actually solvable in a neighborly manner. Mr Rana misses the point. For generally overlooked whenever this issue arises, is the fundamental social and public difference between church bells vs. amplified vocals.

However, if any Western mosque would truly like to adapt to its Western environment (in which even excessive yelling at home often brings forth a police response), instead of a muezzin it could look to find a pleasant, non-amplified instrumental alternative that seeks to make the same request in an innocuous, multiculturally sensitive manner? Which hardly seems multireligiously unreasonable, given we’d already been helpfully reassured back in 2004 that Islam does not seek “to conquer the world“.

Therefore, that done, as with church bells, there would be no words offered that could possibly “offend” non-believers. After all, many are bound to be offended by these loudspeaker-assisted, preached words (in an officially Christian country, let us not forget) imposed on everyone within earshot of any mosque, three times each day (Caution: careful about opening at work, if your desktop’s speakers are on):

Yet if the local Oxford council proves unable to hear of matters in quite that way and sees fit to grant the mosque’s amplified muezzin request, and also failing in any attempt perhaps to find some banal instrumental substitute for the caller, maybe the area overall could look to adopt another multireligious approach to the issue?  For instance, at the precise moment each day that the muezzin cries out for Muslims to pray, ALL of the area’s church bells could simultaneously also be rung and amplified, as a helpful reminder of the multireligious nature of the city?:

Incidentally, while were on the subject of summoning faithful to prayer, the BBC reports:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has talked about the importance of protecting the environment in a New Year message to be placed on video-sharing site YouTube.

Dr Rowan Williams’ message which says God “does not do waste”, was filmed in Canterbury Cathedral and at a nearby recycling centre…

Or, just in case chiming church bells no longer quite epitomize Christianity as it is envisaged within the developing dogma of the Church of England, Oxford parishes could always look to organize three times’ daily, area-wide poundings on recycling bins?

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Relatedly, from the Department of Lazy Journalism, this Daily Hysteria Mail report — “Mohammed now second most popular boys’ name in Britain” — is as wrongheaded and badly misleading this year as the same stupid reportage was last year . . . and for exactly the same reason as it was, last year.