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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 Jordanian official on Tuesday criticized the so-called Israeli “muezzin law”, which would ban places of worship, such as mosques, from using loudspeakers that disturb residents. The bill is aimed at limiting the noise of the muezzin, the Muslim who calls followers to prayer five times daily. The undersecretary of Jordan’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Abdullah Abbadi, denounced the law and said that any decision by Israel with regards to Jerusalem's holy shrines is “false and insignificant”. "An occupier cannot make any historical change to the city it occupies, and things (must) remain the same without any change,” he told...

The Palestinian Authority is furious over a proposed law that would prohibit places of worship from using a loudspeaker system, and threatened to take Israel to the UN Security Council. A Hamas representative called the bill "a dangerous and provocative development. Any interference on the part of the Israelis will be met with disaster. No one is allowed to interfere with our religious rituals." On Sunday, the "Muezzin Law" was approved by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation. The law was initiated by MK Motti Yogev (Jewish Home) and other Knesset members, and came after Israeli citizens complained about the disruption...

RAMALLAH, West Bank: Thousands of Arab Palestinians took to the streets in Israel to protest a mosque bill that will ban muezzins from using loudspeakers to call the faithful to prayers. Sami Abu Shihadeh, the Arab member of Yaffa (Jaffa) municipal council, said the residents held the protests in his city and Umm Al-Fahem, Shafa’amr, Baqah Al-Gharbiyeh, Tarsheeha, Al-Taybeh, Nazareth, Negev and Al-Teireh against the bill, proposed by Knesset member Anastasia Michaeli of rightist Yisrael Beiteinu party. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to bring the bill to a vote by his Cabinet on Sunday after he failed to muster enough...

Several Likud ministers oppose a bill proposed by MK Anastasia Michaeli (Israel is Our Home) for limiting the noise from mosque minarets. As a result, the bill did not come up for a vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation Sunday, and its fate is unclear. Lack of support in the ministerial committee usually spells doom for Knesset bills. Ministers Dan Meridor, Michael Eitan, Limor Livnat and Benny Begin are reportedly opposed to the law, which leftists call "the law for muzzling Muezzins," and ministers Gideon Saar and Moshe Cachlon are reportedly also expected to vote against it. Unnamed sources...

The fight against the muezzins - the pre-dawn, loud, mournful calls to prayer by Islamic prayer leaders, or recordings thereof - has reached the Knesset, where MK Aryeh Bibi (Kadima) is promoting a bill to silence them. Bibi says that the 4 a.m. call to prayer “wreaks havoc in Jerusalem,” awakening people in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. “There is no reason why they can’t do what they do in Turkey, Egypt and elsewhere,” Bibi told Arutz-7’s Hebrew newsmagazine, “and that is to have a ‘silent radio station’ which ‘awakens’ every day at 4 o'clock with...