There are, however, local laws blaring amplified anything, especially at certain times of the day.
Typically, at least two of the calls to prayer will happen at times where such noise restrictions will be in effect in most US communities.
While many communities will still have church bells that ring, they often are only rung once per week, as opposed to 35 times, and almost always are rung at times when noise restrictions are not in effect, or at least are less restrictive. Further, many of those bells are actual bells, unamplified, and hence not falling into restrictions on amplified sound.
Some communities (likely those that are majority muslim) may craft laws to allow for an amplified call to prayer, but such a law must be religion neutral, which is going to be tricky to implement.
None of this infringes on religious practice. There is nothing preventing you from praying whenever you choose. You do not, however, have a right to disturb others in an announcement of that time.
Noise pollution. It’s a safe bet that most people don’t want to hear a call to prayer, or anything else for that matter, from loudspeakers loud enough to be heard across town, 5 times a day.
I remember being a kid in the Middle East, enjoying the deepest of sleeps, only to get jarred awake around 4AM by loudspeakers from a nearby mosque blaring the day’s first call to prayer. Followed by loudspeakers from another mosque a few moments later. Then another. And another. And another. Like the mosques were competing to out-decibel one another, until they all blended into a city wide discordant cacophony of loudspeakers echoing and reechoing the call to prayer.
It just went on, and on, and on - seemingly forever, until the last one finally trailed off into silence. Then I’d try to get back to my interrupted sleep, knowing I’d have to wake up in a couple hours to get ready for school.
I. Was. So. Livid.
3 decades later, and the memory still gets me mad.
I’m an atheist today, and those jarring 4AM high decibel calls to prayer are a good chunk of the reason why.
So let whoever wants to practice prayer go ahead and practice prayer. Just do it without disturbing others and negatively impacting their quality of life by subjecting them to loud noises above the legal limits at all times of day and night.
Noise pollution.
In France, Christian church bell ringing is still quite common, in particular in the countryside, but it’s a practice that has been attacked in court during the recent years.
The jurisprudence may vary, but these legal procedures will likely become more and more common. It’s very unlikely that Muslim prayer callings would be allowed in such a context.
Most of the time, it’s not the nation that prohibits this practice, it’s communities (towns, cities, neighborhoods) that do.
Some degree of peace and quiet is considered a fundamental prerequisite for or necessity of life. Allowing people to consistently and regularly disturb it, needs a very special reason. The particular practices of a minority religion, aren’t considered a sufficiently special reason in most places.
Like it or not, in democratic countries the majority generally creates the rules. There is no majority Muslim country in the west so you see things like burkini bans and call to prayer bans. When I was in Turkey, I rather enjoyed the midday calls but rather disliked the first one of the day, which was louder and earlier than my alarm clock. In my home town, the city council would have simply voted to ban it.
I do not remember church bells in Istanbul.
I do remember that the Sunday morning church bells in the Italian town where I spent spent months were all too insistent. But in that Catholic town, Pietrasanta, the majority was not going to oppose the Church.
Democracy is not necessarily a bad thing when it establishes principles based on the will of a majority — just as long as those decisions do not impact the basic rights of the minority.
No comments:
Post a Comment