The Times of Israel reported in early March on a controversy involving Jewish residents of East Jerusalem who were upset about how loudly a nearby mosque was broadcasting the adhan, or Islamic call to prayer. Amidst all of the problems confronting Israeli and Palestinian society, one might be forgiven for having missed this story. It was only a dispute about noise, after all.
Yet this incident was hardly an isolated event. Call-to-prayer disputes have erupted in numerous European and U.S. cities over the last decade. In many cases, municipal authorities have even required mosque developers to agree never to broadcast the call publicly as a condition for obtaining necessary building permits.
U.S. Muslims, for their part, have divided over the question of whether mosques should even want to broadcast the adhan. Critics suggest that the practice no longer makes sense when many of a mosque’s neighbors are not Muslim and when adhan apps are readily available on smartphones. One Muslim activist even told me that he thought it was “crazy” for anyone to make an issue out of this, given all of the “real” problems facing American Muslims. “It’s not a critically important aspect of our faith,” he said. “We’ve got enough problems. So why bring them unnecessarily?”
