Row over mosque's use of loudspeaker

[Flintlock]

Row over mosque's use of loudspeaker
26 Dec 2007, 0121 hrs IST,PTI
Print Save EMail Write to Editor
LONDON: A major row has erupted in Britain over a plan by Muslims of East Oxford to summon believers for prayers over a loudspeaker from a mosque, with local residents terming the practice an attempt to turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto".

Local residents, who met at a council meeting over the issue, attacked the plan 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.

But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim's also have the right to summon worshippers. "The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford," Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford, told the Oxford Mail.

Huckster argued that if an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry.

"There could be a sense of ghettoisation of East Oxford. Cowley Road would have a Muslim flavour and could become a Muslim ghetto which is contrary to what we want in a multicultural society," he was quoted by the paper as saying.

Allan Chapman, who lives in East Oxford, said, "I do not want preaching at. It is not the tradition of this country or the tradition I subscribe to." David Hutcheson, of East Avenue, said: "I'm very happy for people to practice their own religion but very unhappy about the thought of having loudspeaker broadcasting any messages into my private space."

Sardar Rana, a spokesman for the Central Mosque, said "the call is going on in so many places in the UK, and we must get the same right as everybody else".

 

[Flintlock]

What do you guys think? Is the loudspeaker more important or the privacy?

 

[niaz]

IMO and I speaking both as a muslim and a UK national. If the local council and majority of the residents want to prohibit use of the loudspeaker; it should be respected. If I want to make some addition to my house, Council writes letters to all the neighbours if they had any objection to it and if any one objects, there is a hearing before a decision is made. A neighbour can say that the extension would reduce amount of sunlight on his house. If found to be correct, the permission would be refused. That is how things are done in UK.

Jewish Synagogues and Hindu temples do not use loud speakers so why does this mullah want to do so. UK is not Dar ul Islam. Use of loudspeaker is not a " Sunnat". Mullahs in India had labelled use of loudspeaker as "kufr' when it was first introduced.

There are many muslims MPs, let them raise this matter in the parliament.

 

[UnKnOwN]

Loudspeakers were used in the past because people didn't have clocks/watches. They weren't educated on how to tell time by looking at the sun. So the Mullahs would go to the top point of the Mosque and call for prayer. As time passed loudspeakers were introduced.

I really don't see the need to introduce them in an urban area as I know how "bothersome" it might get plus I think its an individual's responsibility to know when its time to go pray.

 

[Tiki Tam Tam]

Loudspeakers were used in the past because people didn't have clocks/watches. They weren't educated on how to tell time by looking at the sun. So the Mullahs would go to the top point of the Mosque and call for prayer. As time passed loudspeakers were introduced.

I really don't see the need to introduce them in an urban area as I know how "bothersome" it might get plus I think its an individual's responsibility to know when its time to go pray.

That maybe true, but then such very practical practices become a religious ritual.

If one analyses the rituals, they are all very scientific, but then they become rituals and even when they become irrelevant, they cannot be cast away, having been etched in stone!

They also give an identity that a religion is different from another!

In Christianity, one has the church bells, while the Hindus have their conch shells!

Loudspeakers, if the decibel is controlled as in Malaysia, is not that unpleasant and their muezzins have a sonorous voice!

 

[Vinod2070]

I totally second Niaz's views. In fact if most people start thinking along these lines in SA itself, there will be lot less problems.

Many times communities just believe that they have to be antagonoistic to each other when there are far better solutions in working togather.

 

[ARSENAL6]

I think the reporter in the article is diverting the news from the actual news and really should take a chill pill and a life !


A getto state is only applied to non-white no go areas

How does putting loud speakers make this area, East Oxford Mosque area, a ghetto area
this level of stupidity of western media (WM) to tarnish muslims as a whole, is proof of their level of hypocracy and blantant attacks on the Muslim majority who are peace abiding muslim living in the west. Constantly viewed by WM as backward, western hating and unsocial people.
The article makes no refference to other muslim Imams who have reasons why they would not put an Azzan - call to prayer, in the UK.

AS for the Call to prayer - why would you want to do it in non-muslim country
- when the majority of some have little knowledge of islam
- when Islam is viewed in the media as hostile


Is this an idea to attack non-muslims ? When will theses Mullahs get the meassage that Islam was never spread through violence but through peace
when are they gonna realise it is their behavior thats gives amminition to Islamaphobes.

True to what Niaz has said
and I'll to go futher

1) the UK is non-muslim state
2) Muslim should learn to live with the law of the land and folow that doesn't contradicts Islam
3) Love thy Neighbour