Michigan?
Any Michigan FReepers?
What's up with all your Michigan Mullahs?
LISTEN: http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ME&showDate=27-Apr-2004&segNum=5&NPRMediaPref=WMTension in a Michigan City Over Muslims' Call to Prayer
By JOHN LELAND
To hear people in this blue-collar city tell it, things were fine until the al-Islah Islamic Center petitioned to broadcast its call to prayer, or azan, over an outdoor loudspeaker.
Masud Khan, the mosque's secretary, sat on the carpeted floor on Wednesday and reflected on what he had learned about some of his neighbors in the last few months. ''How much they hate us,'' he said softly.
Jackie Rutherford, a librarian and youth-care worker, sat on her front stoop watching three men in Islamic shirt-dresses and tupi caps at the house across the street. ''I don't know what's going to happen to our little town,'' said Ms. Rutherford, 39.
''I used to say I wasn't prejudiced against anyone, but then I realized I had a problem with them putting Allah above everyone else,'' she said, of the plan to amplify the call to prayer, which mosques announce five times a day. ''It's throwing salt in a wound. I feel they've come to our country, infiltrated it, and they sit there looking at us, laughing, calling us fools.''
For the population of Hamtramck, a city of 23,000 surrounded by Detroit, the battle of the loudspeaker, which the City Council approved on Tuesday, has revealed a crossfire of religious, ethnic and lifestyle grievances, aggravated by the lingering memories of Sept. 11, 2001, which left many Muslims here feeling they were under suspicion.
Once an enclave of Polish immigrants, Hamtramck has since the 1990's become a haven for immigrants from Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, Bosnia and other countries, including a large Muslim population. In the 2000 census, 41 percent of the city's population was born outside the United States.
On spring afternoons the sidewalks of Joseph Campau Avenue echo snatches of Polish, Bengali, Arabic and hip hop, punctuated by the sound of bells from several Catholic churches. Three mosques have opened in the last few years, increasing in size while the congregations at neighboring Roman Catholic churches dwindle.
Yet for all this churn, the ethnic populations coexisted with little overt friction.
''Even after 9/11 we had no problems,'' said Abdul Motlib, the president of the al-Islah mosque, which serves a mostly Bangladeshi membership (the other two mosques are primarily Bosnian or Yemeni).
Then last year Mr. Motlib applied for approval to amplify the call to prayer, a sonorous invocation in Arabic that lasts up to two minutes.
For some longtime residents, like Joanne Golen, 68, who described herself as a born-again Christian, the request crossed a line. Mrs. Golen said she had always gotten along well with the Bangladeshi families in her neighborhood. She noted that at Easter one of her new neighbors brought her a turkey that he had gotten at work. But she said the call to prayer was too much.
''My main objection is simple,'' she said. ''I don't want to be told that Allah is the true and only God five times a day, 365 days a year. It's against my constitutional rights to have to listen to another religion evangelize in my ear.''
At City Hall on Tuesday, before the final vote on the loudspeaker, a crowd of more than 100 crammed into a room, with dozens more listening or arguing in the hallway outside.
Chuck Schultz, 49, a computer programmer from nearby Grosse Point, spoke against the measure.
''Everyone talks about their rights,'' Mr. Schultz said. ''The rights of Christians have been stripped from them. Last week there were Muslims praying downstairs, in a public building. If Christians tried to do that, the A.C.L.U. would shut us down.''
Some residents complained about the potential noise. Others, like Veronica Wojtowicz, 81, reminded neighbors of a time when life in Hamtramck was simpler.
''My parents came to this country and worked hard,'' Ms. Wojtowicz said. ''I think the grace belongs on the other side. The intolerance doesn't come from the people who object, it comes from the other side. We all lived in peace and had no problems..."
Read rest of article here: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501E5D8113DF936A35756C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
More articles & links here: http://www.chat11.com/Hamtramck_Michigan_Islamic_Call_To_Prayer
Your town churches should ring the bells at the same time they sound the Shura, let's see what happens then.. A lot of noise from church bells to drown out the nasty sound of the call to prayer.. they should do it 5 times a day exactly at the time the Muslims sound their prayer call.. would be interesting..
I don't think the town father's could stop the churches without stopping the Mosque..fight fire with fire!