Detroit Suburb Expected to Allow Muslim Prayer Calls on Loudspeakers
by Chad Groening
April 22, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Michigan woman says as a Christian, she is offended that the city council in her small community is poised to approve an ordinance that would allow local mosques to broadcast calls for prayer over loudspeakers.The City Council of Hamtramck, Michigan, has given preliminary approval to a mosque's plans to send out the Muslim call to prayer on loudspeakers. The Bangladeshi al-Islah mosque wants to air the Arabic call to prayer via loudspeakers five times a day, but has agreed not to air them between 10:00 at night and 6:00 in the morning.
The Detroit suburb's city council is expected to give its final approval at its April 27 meeting; if approved, the ordinance would take effect on May 26.
Some Muslims say the call to prayer is the equivalent of church bells. But opponents argue that church bells have no religious significance and that allowing the Arabic call, which lasts less than two minutes, unfairly elevates Islam above other religions.
Some Christian residents, like Joanne Golen, resent the city allowing Muslims to impose their religion on everybody else. Golen feels her rights are being violated.
"Allah is not my god -- my God is Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God," she says. "And I feel it's against my constitutional rights to have to hear this at sunrise, four more times at sunset, which may be ten o'clock, blaring in my ears, telling me about their god."
Golen considers it offensive for her and other Christians to have to hear chants from a mosque. "I do not impose Jesus on them because He's quiet," the Hamtramck resident says. "Jesus calls in a quiet, gentle voice -- He doesn't have to blare over a PA system to call His followers.
"We know when it's time to go to church; we pray constantly -- we don't need a call to prayer. My life is a prayer, and I resent this."
Golen says if the situation was reversed and a local Christian church asked permission to broadcast over a loudspeaker, they would be turned down immediately. She and her husband says they plan to carry on the fight to head off the ordinance.
Estimates are that about one-third of the population in Hamtramck is Muslim. The Chicago Tribune says that while people of Polish descent control the town's politics, the growth -- and perhaps the future -- of Hamtramck is driven by Muslims.
