Sterling Heights Mosque Controversy

[dtowncitylover]

I thought this mosque was only to be used for Friday prayers and Ramadan. So once a week or for a month. It's not like call to prayers to going to be 5x a day, 365 blaring across Maple and Ryan. You people really love to jump to the worse. Most Muslims I know don't pray five times a day because they are working or aren't that religious; at most they just go to Friday prayers. If they do, they print out a prayer timetables [[yes, they exists) and go pray in private when the time comes.

And while I get people don't like "noise", frankly whatever that means because unless you grew up in the middle of nowhere, we live in a major metro area with sirens, people, traffic, NOISE, all around us, but the Islamic Call to Prayer is actually a very beautiful testament of faith and quasi-song.​​​

[DetroiterOnTheWestCoast]

I thought this mosque was only to be used for Friday prayers and Ramadan. So once a week or for a month. It's not like call to prayers to going to be 5x a day, 365 blaring across Maple and Ryan. You people really love to jump to the worse. Most Muslims I know don't pray five times a day because they are working or aren't that religious; at most they just go to Friday prayers. If they do, they print out a prayer timetables [[yes, they exists) and go pray in private when the time comes.

And while I get people don't like "noise", frankly whatever that means because unless you grew up in the middle of nowhere, we live in a major metro area with sirens, people, traffic, NOISE, all around us, but the Islamic Call to Prayer is actually a very beautiful testament of faith and quasi-song.​​​

Yes, but those Friday prayers will really impact the local traffic, as everyone is at home Friday between 12 and 2 pm. Oh wait, perhaps they are not.....

[Wesley Mouch]

...snip...And while I get people don't like "noise", frankly whatever that means because unless you grew up in the middle of nowhere, we live in a major metro area with sirens, people, traffic, NOISE, all around us, but the Islamic Call to Prayer is actually a very beautiful testament of faith and quasi-song.​​​

It is very beautiful. I enjoyed hearing it sung without amplification by a neighbor in Hamtramck years back.

The beauty of the prayer does not make amplification good public policy.

I recall an article in the Times about the cacophony in Riyad, but couldn't find it. But here's Wikipedia's opening paragraph about loudspeakers in Mosques that hints at why allowing this is bad public policy.

Loudspeakers were invented in the early 1900s, and they were introduced in mosques in the 1930s, where they are used for the adhan [["call to prayer"),^[1] and sometimes for khutbah [[sermons).

Outdoor loudspeakers, usually mounted on tall minarets, are used five times a day for the call to prayer, sometimes starting as early as 4 a.m. Some mosques have loudspeakers that are powerful enough to be heard as far as 5 km [[3 mi) away.^[2] In areas where more than one mosque is present, the loudspeaker sounds overlap one another,^[3] especially in the early morning when sounds are more clearly heard. Loudspeakers are sometimes also used inside mosques to deliver sermons or for prayer.