“You know what the call is? The call is to come and pray to God,” he said. “The Jews don’t want to hear this? Tell me why.”One answer is: "In tense times, the call feels threatening... It’s like they’re trying to get inside your head."
Another is the high amplification, especially in the early morning: "The mosques would put their speakers right up near the homes of Jewish people and wake them up." That quote is from Motti Yogev, a member of parliament from the pro-settler Jewish Home party, who observes that in the old days there was only unamplified singing from the minarets (or knocking on doors): If it's okay to use modern equipment in the call to prayer, why not use phone apps and alarm clocks?
Posts
50 comments:
Or they could send out a group email call to prayer.
Oh, wait....
Kill very large numbers of them and they'll stop asking stupid questions.
The Muslisms don't complain when the Christians ring their church bells... right up until the point that the Muslims have a large enough population, and can wield - or credibly threaten to wield - enough violence that they can enforce a ban.
The loudspeaker call from the Mosques is to all in town that they must prostrate in submission and chant allah supremacy chants 5 times a day, or else. It is not a call to pray. It is a threat to obey.
Are ram horns still a thing?
The iPhone app is a good suggestion. I know a Muslim who has one on his phone. I know because I have heard it go off during a meeting when it was time for prayer.
Would Muslim countries permit Jews to do the same?
The issue is that at least one of these calls is around 4-5 am. If the calls were "only" at 10am or 1pm - then it would not be much of an issue.
And the calls are not 10-15 second calls - they go on for minutes at a time.
Jews blow the rams horn twice a year.
Christian church bells ring once a week for the most part and during the day.
It's not as if they were scratching their ass on a sacred rock or something.
"This is religion. No one should interfere."
Religion as a get-out-of-jail-free-card.
"If it's okay to use modern equipment in the call to prayer, why not us[e] phone apps and alarm clocks?"
Because the aim of Islam is to be an aggressor. In all aspects. If there's a means of getting in the face of the unbeliever, the Muslim will use it.
Islam does not respect the Golden Rule.
Funny, during the British mandate period, Jews were forbidden to blow the rams horn at the Western Wall because the Arabs would riot.
"This is religion. No one should interfere."
Decapitations. Burning people alive. Throwing people off roofs. Shooting up Christmas parties, night clubs, army bases. Flying airplanes into buildings. Honor killings. Stoning people to death. Destroying antiquities.
Religion. Don't interfere.
Solution: Amplifiers on the bells and ram horns. A War of Cacophony.
I was at a hotel in Makassar Indonesia. I asked for a 5:30 wakeup call. At 4:30 the next morning I was practically thrown from my bed by the sound waves from the call to prayer from the mosque next door. Amplified? Beyond belief.
Limited the decibels of the call to prayer is not unreasonable.
Cool. Ram horns and Christian bells five times a day. Full volume. Tit. Tat.
It isn't religion, it is noise, decibels, in public. Everyone is treated equally, and that treatment is to insist that nobody makes loud noises, especially if the neighbors complain. Get the neighbors to accept your noisemaking, and then there will be no complaints.
If you have to, or want to kill all your neighbors to avoid noise complaints, there is a bigger problem than the noise with your behavior.
They didn't used to do it. This is probably being done on purpose to disturb Jews and others. The Israel-haters are always looking for an issue.
"If it's okay to use modern equipment in the call to prayer, why not us phone apps and alarm clocks?" Snarky. But Muzzies don't do snark. Islam is about, you know, submission.
Years ago, I went on a tour through portions of Syria, Jordan, and Israel while a seminary student. During our time in Jerusalem, as we were examining an area of particular archaeological importance, the calls to prayer started broadcasting from all around us. It was clear, to me at least, that the mosques were blaring out the call at the highest possible volume. Several were so loud that the audio was distorted. It went on for at least 15 minutes. You could hear the various calls from different mosques overlapping each other. It was so loud it became difficult to hear out tour guide.
Anyone who has spend any time there would tell you right away why they do this. It isn't because they are trying to be good neighbors. It's designed to be intimidating.
5 times a day is torture.
Would Muslim countries permit Jews to do the same?
In Saudi Arabia you aren't even allowed to own a Bible.
Islamists wage their war against the kafirun on many fronts.
Islamists wage their war against the kafirun on many fronts.
" It's designed to be intimidating."
Of course it is and in London billboards that advertise alcohol are being slowly banned.
How can anyone object to "the most beautiful sound in the world" ?
Racists.
EMD said...A War of Cacophony.
Lärmkrieg?
Ask the Copts about Muslim tolerance.
I was in a hotel in Beirut a couple years ago, with a mosque about a hundred yards away, other side of a busy intersection. You could hear the call to pray *in the street*, but certainly not inside the hotel.
But then, Beirut went through twenty years of civil war, so there's a certain limit to the mutual antagonism tolerated between sects. Especially in northern, cosmopolitan Beirut, where the Sunni and the Christians are somewhat united in trying to avoid domination by the grotty Shia of the southern slums.
(I just double-checked my memory, and it exaggerated how close the mosque was. More like five hundred feet than a hundred yards. Still, we're not talking deafening.)
Meanwhile with the recordings the muezzin need not actually be awake and on duty, it can be set on a timer probably with the very iPhone app mentioned. It's really just insect politics. The stronger polity, if Islamic, will kill and eat the weaker polity.
"We demand tolerance when we're in the minority; we demand compliance when we're in the majority. We make reference to times, hundreds of years ago, when we were relatively tolerant to other faiths, but if you cross us today we'll cheer when an "extremist" chops your head off."
Lovely people--can't imagine why anyone would oppose importing large numbers of these guys.
damikesc said...Would Muslim countries permit Jews to do the same?
Wiki: Religious Segregation - Saudi Arabia
In the City of Mecca, only Muslims are allowed. Non-Muslims may not enter or travel through Mecca; attempting to enter Mecca as a non-Muslim can result in penalties such as a fine;[19] being in Mecca as a non-Muslim can result in deportation
Wiki: Freedom of Religion in Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an Islamic theocratic monarchy in which Sunni Islam is the official state religion based on firm Sharia law and non-Muslims are not allowed to hold Saudi citizenship.[1] Children born to Muslim fathers are by law deemed Muslim, and conversion from Islam to another religion is considered apostasy and punishable by death. Blasphemy against Sunni Islam is also punishable by death, but the more common penalty is a long prison sentence. There have been no confirmed reports of executions for either apostasy or blasphemy in recent years.[2]
Religious freedom is virtually non-existent.[4] The Government does not provide legal recognition or protection for freedom of religion, and it is severely restricted in practice.
The problem with the call to prayer is it usually sounds like some irritated, raspy old man yodeling out a demand to prayer. Before I'd ever heard it, I thought it would be a beautiful song or chant. But no. It's almost always awful.
It's 5 times a day, starting before dawn, and if there is more than 1 mosque in shouting distance then they are competing with each other. The volume gets turned all the way up, the speakers are blown, and it's a cacophony. I thought it was romantic and cool for about 1 day in Egypt. After that it's just unpleasant noise, like someone banging pots and pans together
I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during Ramadan one summer. Mosques broadcast loud, obtrusive, distorted calls to prayer at 4:30am and long 'sermons' at 10:30pm. After a week or two of it I looked up the phenomenon on the Internet, and there are complaints all over the world. In north Africa, churches and mosques are actually competing to see who can irritate and alienate more neighbors with the ridiculous volume, haranguing tone, and terrible sound quality. It's like the devil is in charge of their public relations. If I were a local, Muslim or otherwise, I might not say anything, but I'd surely grow to hate and resent it.
By contrast Singapore, with many Muslims and many government regulations, has pleasant calls to prayer at reasonable volume.
In Saudi Arabia you aren't even allowed to own a Bible.
Our allies, ladies and gentlemen. I empathized with Bush's desire to bring democracy to that useless shithole.
I have no empathy left. Keep Israel armed, have them do what they must and wash our hands of the entire region.
Don't get the appeal of Islam. Have to pray 5 times A DAY? How needy is Allah, anyway?
Don't get the appeal of Islam.
I don't either, but you have to remember that most Muslims are born in to it, are never taught the religious traditions of others, and in most Muslim communities, it is literally a death sentence to leave Islam.
Have to pray 5 times A DAY? How needy is Allah, anyway?
Think of it as the overseer's lash, remember Muslims are slaves not worshippers.
True. But I wouldn't want to be a part of a faith whose Supreme Being is more needy than a jealous girl/boyfriend.
No wonder they're all crazy, nobody can get 8 hours of sleep!
"Think of it as the overseer's lash, remember Muslims are slaves not worshippers."
Think of it as a Muslim believes he is the slave of his imaginary playmate. And his imaginary playmate wants you to be his slave also. If you refuse, he will have his slave kill you.
When I'm visiting my in-laws (missionaries) in Sarajevo the 200 or so mosques can be a bit irritating at first especially since they are automated and you can hear the click as the tape start. Most of the new ones are gifts from the Gulf states to bring the 95% of the population that is nominally Muslin back into the fold. After awhile it's just background noise. My In-laws use it as a reminder to say a prayer.
I have a feeling that the electronic call to prayer is similar to outsourcing. They no longer pay to have someone climb the minaret and sing the call to prayer as had been done for centuries. Now just program the times. And the volume.
You can spend months in Jerusalem and never hear the shofar.
When amplification is used, what the person hears is not the call to prayer, but artificially created sounds that seem to be the call to prayer. That is NOT what Allah and the Koran envision. It is like translating the Koran, a form of blasphemy.
"damikesc said...
In Saudi Arabia you aren't even allowed to own a Bible.
Our allies, ladies and gentlemen. I empathized with Bush's desire to bring democracy to that useless shithole. "
He didn't.
I lived for six weeks in Tunis, a block from a mosque where, sure enough, the first call to prayer (prerecorded and at high decibels)was at 4:30 a.m. The call to prayer is the Islamic-majority way of saying: You're in the umma now. Historically, Islamic countries have forbidden the ringing of Christian church bells, and I can't think of a single Islamic-majority country where church bells chime. As for the Jewish shofar, nearly all the Jews in Tunis fled the country after it won independence from France during the 1960s. This was the case in most Islamic-majority countries during that period--an enormous ethnic cleansing.
They should put up a minaret in Hyde Park, Chevy Chase and the Upper East Side.
There is one on 96th Street I think on 2nd or 3rd Avenue. I don't know if they wake up the neighborhood I would imagine that the... I don't know what I would imagine I would imagine they don't make trouble but who knows.
Getting up at 4:30 in the morning is insane. The religion that demands that is an insane religion. Why wouldn't a loving God want you to get 8 hours of sleep?
I was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during Ramadan one summer. Mosques broadcast loud, obtrusive, distorted calls to prayer at 4:30am and long 'sermons' at 10:30pm. After a week or two of it I looked up the phenomenon on the Internet, and there are complaints all over the world. In north Africa, churches and mosques are actually competing to see who can irritate and alienate more neighbors with the ridiculous volume, haranguing tone, and terrible sound quality. It's like the devil is in charge of their public relations. If I were a local, Muslim or otherwise, I might not say anything, but I'd surely grow to hate and resent it.
I was in Addis in 1998. Christian churches also broadcast calls to prayer over loudspeakers, and some also broadcast the entire services.
Why wouldn't a loving God want you to get 8 hours of sleep?
Allah is not a loving god, he's a slavemaster.
Post a Comment