Why don't Western nations allow mosques to broadcast the call to prayer over loudspeakers?

The Azan or Prayer Calling is a fundamental part of Islam and needs to be performed 5 times a day aloud. Yet, most Western nations do not allow mosques to practice Azan over loudspeakers. Why is this? How is this not an infringement on the right to religious practice?

Show me the hadith or the verse in the Quran where it stipulates the Azan needs to be called over loudspeakers. Can’t find it? Funny, neither can I.

The Azan is no longer called out the way it should, in Mohammed’s time, by a man called the muezzin standing on top of the minaret, belting out his verses.

Source picture: Google Images

I experienced a beautiful rendition of the Azan once, with a fantastic view of the gingerbread houses of San’aa glowing pink and gold in the evening sun. I was at a party on the roof of the house, where everyone had first enjoyed a copious buffet of Yemeni goodies, and had now moved on to the qat-chewing part of the evening. The party was a mixed deal, men and women, Yemeni and Europeans both.

The roof terrace had a crisp view of the minaret. The muezzin, a dark, wiry man with a little beard came out with an earthen ware pitcher with water. He administered a small ablution, looked out to the sinking sun, briefly embracing the air, drawing breath, and sang with all his soul the following words:

Allah Akbar Allah Akbar Allah Akber Allah Akber
Ashaduanllah Illaha Ill Allah
Ashaduanllah Illaha Ill Allah
Ashaduanllah Muhammad Ur Rassol Allah
Ashaduanllah Muhammad Ur Rassol Allah
Haiya alass Salah. Haiya alass salah. Haiya alal Falah. Haiya alal Falah.

Allah Akber Allah Akbar
La Illaha Illah

It was beautiful and touching, because it was sincere and from the heart. It was real.

Since the invention of recording and loud speaking equipment by infidel engineers, most mosques have eagerly made the transition to blasting out a canned recording of the Holy Text 5 times a day. Most likely, a few muezzins were given the sack, too.

Sadly, many of the mosques’ sound equipment is not quite up to scratch, and there fore the call to prayer scratches, hisses, booms, cracks, hiccups and abruptly the recording stops half sentence. The speakers are often damaged from being blasted beyond their capabilities. And more than often the volume is just skull-shattering loud.

Oh, I remember waking up a morning in a little apartment across a mosque in a popular neighborhood in Casablanca. A thundering blast in the early morning hours, like a furious Thor himself was cracking the heavens open with his mighty hammer, AAAAAALLLLLLLAAAAAAAH AAAAAKBAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr by the rrrrr the whole apartment started shaking, the windows and crockery were ominously rattling and Allah’s own creatures (cockroaches and humans, in this case) were hiding for cover where ever they could. Babes and small children started crying. I nearly had a heart attack. Almost nobody got up to pray or go to the mosque. I do not speak Arabic well, but I believe what I heard from the neighbors were more curses than prayers at being this brutally torn from their sleep. This form of Chinese torture went on an eternity of minutes and then mercifully stopped, while I was lying with a beating heart on the pile of blankets on the floor. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I do not need to endure this every morning where I live.

Forget the loudspeakers. Move on, that was so 20th century.

Now, in the 21st century, there is another infidel invention which the Muslim world has eagerly adopted and I urge you to use to solve your prayer problems: the smartphone. There are call to prayer apps, which call you out to you whenever the prayer time is in your established timezone, wherever you go. Without waking up the neighborhood.

Or bring back the muezzin, go back to the roots of the ritual, with a real human voice calling out to the Almighty.

Countries like the UK also restrict church bell ringing in order to prevent noise pollution. Legal cases have been brought successfully against churches for bell ringing for over 250 years. Churches are often restricted to one practice bell ringing session a week, and are pretty much always prohibited from bell ringing from the middle of the evening to the start of the working day.

Any call to prayer that met the goal of being audible to a large mass of worshippers at the times required by Islam would undoubtedly break the threshold of constituting a statutory nuisance.

Rights to practise religion do not trump rights to a peaceful domestic or work life.

I suggest setting up a smartphone app that distributes the call to prayer to subscribers as a more effective modern solution.

Let’s start with the premise of the question: a call to prayer over loudspeaker is not per se banned anywhere in the United States (such a law would violate the First Amendment), and some mosques do in fact have such calls to prayer. What is banned in some locations is noises in excess of certain levels, which in practice prevents calls to prayer loud enough to be heard from great distances. I can’t speak to the laws of every Western country, but I suspect that most have general laws against excessive noise, not specific laws against the Islamic call to prayer. Where there are no noise pollution laws or the mosque sends out a call to prayer at permitted levels of loudness, there is no issue with the Azan.

Now, let’s go in reverse. Does prohibiting the call to prayer over loudspeakers arguably infringe upon Muslims’ practice of their religion? Yes, it does. But it’s important to note that even in nations such as the United States that have guarantees of religious freedom, the right to believe in the faith of your choice (or none) and the right to practice your faith in the manner of your choosing (or not at all) does not mean that your rights trump the rights of others, or that your rights overrule the government’s ability to enforce neutral laws of general applicability. In other words, saying “it’s for my religion” does not, in the ordinary case, give people the ability to do things that they wouldn’t be able to do in non-religious settings. The American First Amendment (and related concepts in other Western nations) typically operate as “shields” against religious discrimination/persecution by the state, not “swords” to allow people to exempt themselves from general laws. As the laws in most municipalities in the US (and presumably, much of the Western world) prohibit excessive noise, it is therefore unsurprising that loud calls to prayer are often prohibited.

I don’t usually cite to my previous answers, but I wrote a long response to Is it reasonable to force business owners to serve homosexuals even it is against their religious beliefs? that discusses the intersection between one’s personal faith and the right of the state to enforce valid and neutral laws. Much of the response applies here. An important legal case on this point is Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993), which concerned a Santeria group that performed animal sacrifice as part of its religious practices. In response to complaints, the local government passed a law broadly prohibiting the killing of animals for purposes other than consumption, plainly in the hope of making the Santeria practices illegal. The church sued, and the Supreme Court eventually sided with it, holding that it was unconstitutional to have such a broad law without a compelling state interest to support it. However, the takeaway from Lukumi Babalu is not that if I do something in connection with the practice of my religion, the government is powerless to take action against me. Rather, Lukumi Babalu stands for the proposition that the state must justify its infringements on religious practice, and that such infringements must be neutral (i.e., not targeting anyone), necessary, and no broader than needed to implement the law. The animal-killing law was plainly targeting an unpopular religious minority, and moreover, there was no compelling justification in prohibiting limited animal sacrifices performed on private property, so the law was struck down. However, if the government had passed a narrower law prohibiting, say, the killing of animals in government buildings, such a law almost certainly would have been constitutional in light of general sanitation concerns, etc.

In the United States (and much of the West), communities tend to have laws restricting excessive noise. How much noise is considered excessive is going to vary from location to location (and often, based on time of day), but suffice it to say that sounds that are loud enough to be heard throughout a city or large area are going to be illegal in most jurisdictions other than to alert people to emergencies/natural disasters, etc. Such laws are neutral (they do not favor/disfavor one group or another) and apply generally (i.e., every source of excessive noise is considered illegal). The logic behind such laws is simple: most people don’t want to be disturbed by loud noises, regardless of source, and there is long history in American law that people have the right to the “quiet enjoyment” of their homes. As keeping down excessive noise is a legitimate function for government, enforcement of these rules is not legally problematic so long as the rules are enforced equally (e.g., prohibitions apply to mosques, churches, the Verizon store, the Chevy dealership, etc.).

Having been in the Middle East for nearly 12+ years, I’ve heard the prayers quite often. I actually like hearing them. Have no idea what they are saying, but it sounds nice and some of them have really good voices. At least until you get to an area with a Mosque on every street corner, bad speaker systems, and dueling prayers being blasted. Then it’s just funny.

As far as an infringement on religious freedom, without going into books of detail, the United States is not a religious government, it is secular, which basically boils down to it not specifically telling you what religion you have to be. However, it will and can tell you whether your religious practice is a violation of the secular laws that have been passed to protect everyone. With this, you’re not even getting to the state or federal level, but more likely running up against local city ordinances. Specifically you now have noise pollution versus spiritual beliefs.

It’s not that we don’t allow it to be practiced, but that it cannot because it will run up against a city’s noise control policy that helps ensure “quiet enjoyment” for people in their homes and businesses. What is “quite enjoyment?” In a nutshell it is a belief that you have the freedom to live without unreasonable or recurring disturbances. If you want to see specific example of a city ordinance, here is Jersey City, NJ (Municode Library).

Take religion out of the question for a second. Would you want a business hooking up loudspeakers to blast out advertisements? Would you like hired cars to drive around with loudspeakers blasting out campaign slogans for Trump or Hillary?

So for everyone to live peaceably, city's make ordinances to control how much, when, and where noise can be produced (well as much as possible). For the most part we accept certain infringements on some freedoms in order to live peaceably with each other.

On a last note; church bells were already being phased out for anything more than special occasions, and had both religious and secular reasons for being rung. From what I understand now, in any larger city you need to apply for a permit to ring them for special occasions, (but I may be wrong). Here are a couple of links about church bells being denied permits and such (Church Is Denied Waiver of Noise Restriction, Church-bell ‘noise’ under attack – in America )

There have been good answers to this by almost everyone here. however as they have not been to any mosque of my sect in the west. I would like to answer from an insider's point of view. To be frank I highly resent the insinuation that “west” is destroying the “rights” of muslims and to be honest muslim countries have done a lot more “infringement” of rights right down to killing and beheading, then the west ever could.

You asked “Why don't Western nations allow mosques to practice prayer calling over loudspeakers?”

The simple answer is that they DO ALLOW THIS. What? They do? Well yes they do. But, But why don’t we hear the call for prayer all through the neighbourhood five times a day? Well because the loudspeakers are set to a certain level so that only a small area is covered.

The basic rights of everyone are therefore taken care of and the Muslims can pray as per thier religion. However when muslims are in an open area with no other people nearby, they can “increase” the effective area of the prayer manifold. For example recently more than 30 thousand of Ahmadi Muslims gathered together for thier annual peaceful congregation in order to promote “love for all hatred for none” , Over 30,000 Muslims at annual meeting to reject violence and extremism. The Ahmadi Muslim Community owns a very large tract of farmland in the area and there are no other people around. So they raised the volume of the speakers and the voice carried over the entire tract. You can see in the video below that it is quite a large area and the voice is quite loud, but they were allowed to do so because no one was bothered.