Free Republic

The Muslim call to prayer will ring out more freely in New York City under guidelines announced Tuesday by Mayor Eric Adams, which he said should foster a spirit of inclusivity. Under the new rules, Adams said, mosques will not need a special permit to publicly broadcast the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, on Fridays and at sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. Friday is the traditional Islamic holy day, and Muslims break their fast at sunset during Ramadan. The police department’s community affairs bureau will work with mosques to communicate the new guidelines and ensure that devices...

St. Louis, Mo., Apr 18, 2023 / 15:00 pm The mayor of Minneapolis on Monday signed into law a new ordinance allowing the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, to be broadcast on loudspeakers from the city’s nearly two dozen mosques five times a day, including at dawn and late evening. The new ordinance is expected to take effect on Friday after passing the city council unanimously and gaining the approval of Mayor Jacob Frey, who likened the call to prayer to the ringing of church bells and the Jewish shofar. The previous ordinance restricted the adhan practice to between...

Mosques in Minneapolis will now be able to broadcast the “Adhan,” or public call for prayer, multiple times each day. In a move pushed for by Councilmember Jamal Osman, mosques will not need to apply for permits to broadcast outside their doors if noise ordinances are followed. “This is huge. This is huge to many people who call Minneapolis home,” Osman said. Prior to the change, many members of Minneapolis’ Muslim community relied on alarms and timers to know the proper time to pray – a practice done five times throughout each day. “In our faith, it is obligatory,” said...

Obama wanted to systematically change America, well, keep electing people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and it will happen. But this change won’t be good for the real Americans! Obama might be gone but his legacy lives on. We all know that we are a country that is based on freedom and diversity but the left has gone too far! Everyone should express their religion as long as they don’t interfere with our way of living. Culver City is the latest city that has to put up with the enormously loud Islamic call to prayer 5 times a day...

The Muslim call to prayer, known as the adhan, will echo from loudspeakers through parts of Minneapolis five times per day for the entirety of Ramadan in what is believed the be the first time the Islamic call has been publicly broadcast in a major U.S. city. Al Jazeera reports: Recited by different representatives from mosques around the city, the call to prayer is expected to reach thousands in the Cedar-Riverside neighbourhood in Minneapolis, according to Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of Minnesota's Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The first call went out late Thursday: An English translation of the...

The next Democratic debate isn’t in Paterson, New Jersey, but it should be: that unlikely city is blazing new trails in multiculturalism and diversity. On Wednesday, the City Council voted unanimously (with two members not voting) to grant preliminary approval to the Islamic call to prayer being broadcast over loudspeakers in the city. This followed the swearing-in earlier this month, on the Qur’an, of course, of Paterson’s new police chief, Ibrahim “Mike” Baycora, the first Muslim police chief in an American city. Celebrate diversity, right? Sure. The problem is that it is by no means certain that this diversity will...

Muslims in Sweden have applied for permission to broadcast the call to prayer, claiming the move would boost community self-esteem and assist with integration. The Växjö Muslim Foundation submitted an application to the police requesting permission to send out a three-minute Islamic call to prayer each Friday from a loudspeaker attached to the front of a mosque in the city’s Araby district. “We are just wanting Sweden to allow Muslims in Växjö to feel even more at home. The Islamic community should be proud of their culture, and not feel like they have to hide,” said Imam Ismail Abu Helal....

Locals in west Dublin have filed an appeal against plans for a large-scale mosque in the area, citing concerns the call to prayer would cause “noise pollution.” The Fingal County Council granted planning permission for a mosque to the Shuhada Foundation of Ireland last month. The mosque, including a 95-foot-tall minaret, a community center, and a primary school is to be built on the site of Warrenstown House, in Blanchardstown. Dr. Taufiq al-Sattar, a neurosurgeon in Dublin, pledged to build the mosque in memory of his late wife and three children who died in an arson attack in Leicester, England,...

Hamas on Friday denounced the “Muezzin Law”, which passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset this week, warning the law would face “stiff resistance”. “This decision will not pass,” deputy Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said after Friday prayers in Gaza. “Our people and nation will raise the Azan all over the world,” he said, using the Arabic word for the Muslim call to prayer, according to AFP. The “Muezzin Law” was originally to have been applied during all hours of the day, but haredi parties objected to its original wording, fearing that it could be used to silence the Shabbat...

A law to muffle mosques’ amplified calls to prayer in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem won preliminary approval on Wednesday in a charged parliamentary session where Arab legislators denounced the measure as racist. Supporters of the bill say it is aimed at improving the quality of life of people living near mosques who have been losing sleep. The calls usually begin sounding a little before 5 A.M. through loudspeakers mounted on minarets Opponents say the legislation, sponsored by right-wing parties, impinges on the religious freedom of Israel’s Muslim minority. Arabs make up almost 20 percent of the population and have...

A commentator for American Thinker is calling on supporters to contact campus officials to protest the fact that a Muslim call to prayer is being broadcast on the campus of UCLA – a “publicly funded institution.” “This in an act of Islamic supremacism,” writes Carol Brown. “If Muslim students at UCLA can’t figure out how to tell time or keep track of when they need to pray, that’s their problem.” Her column provides online links for a long list of UCLA officials, including President Janet Napolitano and many more, specifically including contacts for a list of corporate donors to the...

Duke University’s reversal of today’s plan to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer from its historic chapel tower has reinvigorated a debate over shared worship space. The Durham, North Carolina-based school had authorized Muslim students to recite the three-minute chant from Duke Chapel on Friday, the weekly day of assembly in Islam, but rescinded the decision this week, following criticism and citing a “serious and credible security threat.” Franklin Graham, whose ministries (Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) are headquartered in North Carolina, attacked the university’s decision and condemned the use of a Christian space by members of...

On Friday, CBS This Morning reported on news that Duke University had cancelled plans to have a Muslim call-to-prayer projected from the school’s famous bell tower at the Duke Chapel and, while Duke suggested that there were “several factors” that led to the decision, the segment prominently tied it to Rev. Franklin Graham and subsequent threats against them. CBS News correspondent Julianna Goldman fretted that the cancellation came as “students, faculty, and administrators spent months working on a new way to make campus feel more inclusive for its 700 Muslims.” Goldman added that the event was axed “following security threats...

Apparently last semester the Office of Religious Life made up of chaplains' from various faiths thought there should be a new addition to the weekly Muslim service. The adhan, the Muslim call to prayer would be broadcast from speakers on the top of the Chapel bell tower. Omid Safi, director of Duke's Islamic Studies Center said, "We had hoped for a symbolic action that would shine a light on how a leading international university in the American South can be a place where the symbol of the Christian heritage of the university is demonstrating hospitality to its Muslim community members."...

FROM CHURCH BELL TOWER TO MINARET AND BACK AGAIN Multiculturalism at Duke University blows up in its face. By Mark Tooley – 1.16.15 Supposedly Duke University thought turning the majestically Gothic bell tower of famous Duke Chapel into an Islamic minaret for every Friday call to prayer, heralded as “interreligious reimagining of a university icon,” would be non-controversial. But the bow to campus multiculturalist ideology, thanks to nationwide publicity, barely lasted 24 hours. A campus spokesman curtly announced that what had been intended as unifying had become undesirably divisive. So the Muslim student group, which serves the five percent of...

from Duke University’s chapel tower after all. The university announced that it has reconsidered its decision to allow the call for prayer from the iconic tower on Fridays. The reversal came a day after evangelist Franklin Graham posted a scathing criticism on Facebook asking donors not to give to Duke until the policy was changed.

It all started when a University alumnus made a $3 million dollar donation to fund the position of Director of Islamic Studies at Duke University. Bettye Martin Musham, who gifted the Islamic Studies Center with the vast sum of money, said that she was convinced that it was the right thing to do after hearing a lecture on the meaning of jihad. Musham said that she and her husband would later become “hooked with the importance of Islam.” Dr. Omid Safi was appointed to run Islamic Studies at Duke University in July of 2014. He has been the point of...

Duke's Downsized Call to Prayer Draws Hundreds in Support of School's Muslims BY ELISHA FIELDSTADT Hundreds of students of varying religions gathered outside of the chapel on Duke University's campus Friday to take part in a Islamic call to prayer — in support of the school's Muslim population, which had been offered then denied the opportunity to broadcast the call from the chapel's bell tower. "I was out here to show my support and solidarity for the diversity and the religious beliefs for all of Duke's students," said Steven Boyd after the call to prayer, or "adhan," was read in...

s they have almost every Friday for two years, Muslim students gathered at Duke University’s chapel for weekly prayers at midday Friday.. But a university plan to sound the prayer call from the Duke University Chapel’s 210-foot bell tower for the first time was hastily called off Thursday in the face of anti-Islamic tirades on social media and what a school official described as credible concerns about security. Instead, the call to prayer, or adhan, was sounded in Arabic and English on Friday from a small portable speaker set up on the chapel steps. Many among the hundreds of students...

Ralph Lee, the broadcaster's head of factual programming, said that 2.8million Britons will fast for the month of Ramadan starting next week. Channel 4 will broadcast the call to prayer, known as the adhan, at sunrise on television and over the internet as part of plans to appeal to young Muslims. Mr Lee said he expected the channel to receive criticism for doing so, but added: "Nearly five per cent of the country will actively engage in Ramadan this month; can we say the same of other national events that have received blanket coverage on television, such as the Queen's...