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Broadcasts of Muslim call to prayer anger many residents
IHT ^ | 05/05/04 | John Leland

Posted on 05/05/2004 9:57:17 PM PDT by Pikamax

Tensions rise in a Michigan town John Leland NYT Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Broadcasts of Muslim call to prayer anger many residents

HAMTRAMCK, Michigan To hear people in this blue-collar town 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 one day last week 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 worker, sat on her front stoop watching three men in Islamic shirt-dresses at the house across the street. "I don't know what's going to happen to our little town," said 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 1990s 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, 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. 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 last week, 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 Pointe, spoke against the measure.

"Everyone talks about their rights," 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 ACLU 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," 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. You moved too fast."

In response, Abdul Latef, the imam at Masjid Al-Falah, a mosque in Detroit, asked the community to be patient.

"You can make history," Al-Falah said.

"This is part of our religion. If it is too noisy, then you can complain, and they will stop it forever."

Council members emphasized that there was nothing technically preventing the mosque from amplifying its call to prayer, even without amending the city's noise ordinance, and compared the amplification to the chiming of church bells.

The amendment just gave government officials leverage to limit the volume and hours of the broadcasts, said Councilman Scott Klein.

Motlib said the mosque had applied for approval "because we want to be good neighbors."

Paradoxically, the call to prayer is one that even most of the Muslims at al-Islah mosque cannot understand, because they speak Bengali rather than Arabic, said Khan, the mosque secretary.

Yet for many Muslims in town, the dispute seemed less about noise or the content of the azan than about insecurities of an older immigrant population feeling threatened by a newer one.

"They see we are coming more and more, and they think we are taking their city," said Abusayed Mahfuz, 34, the editor of Bangla Amar, a local Bengali magazine and Web site. "It's not really a religious problem. It's about migration, which is a reality."

Musad, who moved to Hamtramck from New York in 1999, said he understood the insecurity.

"It's human nature," he said. "You feel an invasion. It could happen to me also."

Like others in his mosque, Musad said, he was drawn to the Muslim community here not for its engagement with the rest of America, but for its distance.

"What attracted me was seeing school girls with veils and burkas," he said. "It's more authentic here than in New York, more roots. There's village life."

The New York Times


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: internaltakeover; michiganmuslims; religionofpeace
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To: Pikamax
There is a precedent for this. Constantinople allowed mosques and the call to prayer within its walls before the city fell for the last time in 1453 to rapine and slaughter. Maybe "for whom the bell tolls" should be renamed "for whom the muezzin calls."
41 posted on 05/06/2004 12:17:10 AM PDT by bohemond
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To: sweneop; ladyinred; chadsworth
ive heard the call to prayer over loudspeakers before and ill say its probably less intrusive than the bells.

Just wait until ramadan when they babble that rubbish all through the night. Hamtramck should do like Singapore (a city surrounded by muslims) and limited the volume to just above a whisper.

42 posted on 05/06/2004 12:42:15 AM PDT by Ah Beng ("Back bone... not back down")
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To: Pikamax
There are cities all over this nation that have turned 50% or more foreign born since 1980 to 1990. Can someone please explain how that happens with 1-2% immigration per year. Something is rotten in the hinterland. Our nation has suddenly become mostly foreign born in just one generation. In some parts of the nation, we're talking about large percentatges not even being citizens.

The US citizen is getting corn-holed by both parties. Where are those pictures? Maybe someone should appologize to us.
43 posted on 05/06/2004 12:42:56 AM PDT by DoughtyOne
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To: Pikamax
Bump for later reading!
44 posted on 05/06/2004 4:58:02 AM PDT by F-117A
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"This is part of our religion. If it is too noisy, then you can complain, and they will stop it forever."

No way, I have a better idea.

HOW ABOUT MOVING YOUR @$$E$ BACK TO YOUR REAL HOMES.

45 posted on 05/06/2004 5:09:37 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (John F'ing Kerry, dumbocRATs and the media support terrorists.)
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To: sweneop
"that town is full of church bells"
Church bells (tone) are acoustic, and not on a daily basis.
The Islamic call to prayer is broadcast over a loudspeaker (spoken word) 5 times a day.
Can you see the difference?
46 posted on 05/06/2004 5:09:59 AM PDT by airborne (lead by example)
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To: Pikamax
If my experience in India is any indicator, this little town is in for a bigger surprise from the mosque during Ramadan! They send out guys with drums to all the homes of the faithful. In our Indian neighborhood they woke EVERYONE in the process of beating on the drums and chanting, knocking on various households until they answered. This commotion is so that the faithful wake to eat their last meal before sunrise (3-4 am!).
47 posted on 05/06/2004 5:12:47 AM PDT by wjeanw
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To: Pikamax
A visual, auditory, and philosophical assault by another collective (gang) against the smallest minority on the planet...the individual. What is freedom?
48 posted on 05/06/2004 5:32:44 AM PDT by PGalt
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To: bellas_sister
The solution -- the only solution -- is to conquer the Muslim world, at least the Arab center of it, destroy the mosques -- especially the Kaaba --, burn the books, re-educate the children, deprogram as many as possible and destroy the so-called "religion"/ideology. And do it at this time while we are stronger - no need for any "cease-fires".
49 posted on 05/06/2004 5:36:58 AM PDT by UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide (Give Them Liberty Or Give Them Death! - Rumble thee forth...)
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To: jordan8
"Our Town". What a great song.
50 posted on 05/06/2004 5:38:42 AM PDT by Duke809
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To: Pikamax
"I feel they've come to our country, infiltrated it, and they sit there looking at us, laughing, calling us fools."

Give the man a cigar!

51 posted on 05/06/2004 5:40:05 AM PDT by patriot_wes
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To: FITZ
re: "What attracted me was seeing school girls with veils and burkas," he said. "It's more authentic here than in New York, more roots. There's village life." )))

See? A gangland marker--there more there are, the more there will be.

52 posted on 05/06/2004 5:43:17 AM PDT by Mamzelle (for a post-Neo conservatism)
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To: oyez; not_apathetic_anymore; Citizen Soldier; PattonReincarnated; Jaysun; airborne; PGalt
if a mosque wants to do its eeeyayayaya it is welcomed as multiculturalism. Its time to end this kind of BS.
 
Let them fire up them speakers, 7 days a week, but their selection is limited, the only thing they should be permitted to play is "Taps"

53 posted on 05/06/2004 5:44:21 AM PDT by TexasTransplant (Only fools, cowards, criminals and terrorists are afraid of good men with guns.)
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To: Pikamax
I feel they've come to our country, infiltrated it, and they sit there looking at us, laughing, calling us fools."

That pretty well says it.

54 posted on 05/06/2004 5:45:19 AM PDT by mombonn
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To: mombonn
"Everyone talks about their rights," 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 ACLU would shut us down."

Bingo.
55 posted on 05/06/2004 5:48:15 AM PDT by reagan_fanatic (Liberalism is the end result of too many people peeing in the gene pool.)
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To: Pikamax
Two choices:

1) Take a stand
or
2) Get used to it

either way...
ululululululululululululululululululululululullul

:^)
56 posted on 05/06/2004 5:56:18 AM PDT by Liberty Valance (Keep a simple manner for a happy life :o)
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To: Mamzelle
Like others in his mosque, Musad said, he was drawn to the Muslim community here not for its engagement with the rest of America, but for its distance.

Some will say that ALL immigrants only come here to assimilate and because they believe in the Constitution. That is very naive and dangerous thinking and why with all the people in the world who would love to come here are we taking in Muslims from Bangladesh after we've seen how they cannot get along with the Hindus who were there first. We want to import the problems and hate in the world?

57 posted on 05/06/2004 6:22:56 AM PDT by FITZ
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To: oolatec
Only if we let them. Illegal intimidation can be applied against the ACLU, the lawyers/judges/city council people for allowing such loudspeaker noise at 4 am declaring THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH! in other words, forget your Jesus! That is against the the so called separation of church and state. Deport all these Moslems out of the US.
58 posted on 05/06/2004 6:29:38 AM PDT by philosofy123
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To: Pikamax
It's time to inform the islames that their catcallin freaks are disturbing the peace. The people of this town need to unite and deny them the use of their loudspeakers to wail that filth. They have allowed these vermin who pray to a pedophile to be given a sense of legitimacy. What needs to be done will cause shock waves through that town. It needs to have been done yesterday.
59 posted on 05/06/2004 6:34:51 AM PDT by BayouCoyote (The 1st victim of islam is the person who practices it.)
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To: Pikamax
Masud Khan, the mosque's secretary, sat on the carpeted floor one day last week 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.

Masud and his friends should be asking themselves, "what have we done to make them hate us so much and how can we appease them so that they will like us?"

60 posted on 05/06/2004 6:38:13 AM PDT by Alouette (Float like a butterfly, sting like a B-52)
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