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 ...
It's Polish Hardeim [traditional Orthodox Jews] singing and worshipping. Not sure which sect.
Besides funny, NAPL also covers weird and outrageous...and sometimes all three in the same post.
Like The Old Lady said, very catchy tune and lively dance.
And I dig the hats.
Wait until some day it drowns out the reading of those SLAUGHTERED on 9/11.
It’s an excellent ping list, especially for not being a ping list. Only this list can pull this off. I shall never again question it (unless the thread it refers to pushes my buttons and I lose all control of my faculties, blaming everyone around but me... not that it ever happens. Yeah.)
Me too! [See the last pic.]
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OH YEAH! WADDYA MEAN BY.... oh, never mind.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html?_r=1
Obama: Man of the World
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 6, 2007
NY York Times
Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
LOL!
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