Too many.
Posted on 08/14/2010 10:20:51 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Cairo is to synchronise the call to prayer across the city's 4,500 mosques using computers to put an end to out of tune and out of time muezzin.
For more than a millennium, the competing calls to prayer intoned from Cairo's thousands of minarets have been one of the city's most distinctive features.
The government this weekend begins a long-heralded project to synchronise the five daily calls to prayer across the city.
Neighbourhood by neighbourhood, the ministry of religious endowments is linking all of the mosques in the city, the largest in the Arab world, to a central computerised feed.
"Egyptians have a problem with timing," said Sheikh Salem Abdel-Galil, the ministry official behind the proposal. "Our goals are to accurately set the time of prayer so that it is called at the same time from each mosque, and to control the quality of the voices that call the prayer." It is proving unpopular with the muezzins – the human voice of the call to prayer up to now – as well as traditionalists for whom the clashing sounds of the chants, whether in tune or out of it, are part of the city's charm.
The muezzins fear losing their prestige or even their jobs, as they are not necessarily the mosque's prayer leaders.
"The Prophet Mohammed never ordered people to unify their calls to prayer in Medina, so we shouldn't do the same in Cairo," said Sheikh Youssef al-Badri, a conservative cleric.
Medina is the city in Saudi Arabia where Mohammed founded Islam in the seventh century and where he first instructed a follower named Bilal to calls believers to prayer.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
How many minarets are there in an hour?
Soon people visiting Ground Zero will have to hear that horrible noise five times a day.
Oh God-Can you imagine all that screeching noise going off at one time?
Too many.
The muzzies are going to sync the prayers to the mecca clock via computer world wide so that the muslims have their own time and western time is abandonded.
The result will be a synchronized “call to worship” that can be heard five times a day world wide.
That would truly be domination of the mind and we need to end these calls to worship in the USA.
Sorry, slings. I don’t find anything funny here. This mecca clock/unified islam time thing is an insidious idea and should be crushed if possible.
One of the reasons why Christianity really advanced the development of mechanical clocks was the need to tell monks the time of prayer service in the morning, mid day, and evening in monasteries. Indeed, the church tower bell synchronized to mechanical clocks literally became the way to tell time for a whole town around the church that could hear it until the arrival of accurate handheld watches in the 18th Century.
Hey! Hold on a minute. That would be ....us!
Our driver, who pulled over during prayer time, was only too happy to assist in the translation. But it wasn't all bloody. In the evenings, there was a very good English-language TV show featuring an Imam with an impeccable Oxonian accent, who patiently explained the nicer parts of Quran to us infidels, who if we did not submit to the Will of Allah, would serve as slaves to the faithful throughout all eternity.
Whateva! The money was fab.
BTW, some muezzins are really quite unique. Imagine Luciano Pavarotti doing a chicken imitation.
Cool—in Egypt, you’ll be able to set your cellphone with a special ringtone for when the mosque calls. Hmmmm... which tune to use?
At least it will all be synchronized.
I can hear three mosques from a few places around base and sometimes when they're all going off at the same time, it's excruciatingly discordant.
There was one we used to hear when I lived/worked in another part of this lovely {sarc} town who really did have a beautiful voice.
We used to refer to him as "Mohammad Pavarotti." LOL
Too many indeed.
Someone should tell Paulycy that not all Not-a-Pings are funny.
Oh, Paul, there you are!
That’s awful and should be banned. If people don’t know when to go to worship, they need their heads examined.
OK - that’s cool. I always associated it with funny FR stuff. I’ll be a better, more respectful and humbler ping list member from now on, I promise!
Umm....what is it?
Catchy a capella (except for the drum) tune. I watched the whole thing. It's great.
I agree with Allegra, what is it?
Tuneless? How could they tell?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.