The Muslim call to prayer will ring out more freely in New York City under guidelines announced Tuesday by Mayor Eric Adams, which he said should foster a spirit of inclusivity.
Under the new rules, Adams said, mosques will not need a special permit to publicly broadcast the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, on Fridays and at sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. Friday is the traditional Islamic holy day, and Muslims break their fast at sunset during Ramadan.
The police department’s community affairs bureau will work with mosques to communicate the new guidelines and ensure that devices used to broadcast the adhan are set to appropriate decibel levels, Adams said.
“For too long, there has been a feeling that our communities were not allowed to amplify their calls to prayer,” Adams said. “Today, we are cutting red tape and saying clearly that mosques and houses of worship are free to amplify their call to prayer on Fridays and during Ramadan without a permit necessary.”
Flanked by Muslim leaders at a City Hall news conference, Adams said Muslim New Yorkers “will not live in the shadows of the American dream while I am the mayor of the city of New York.”
The adhan is a familiar sound in majority-Muslim countries but is heard less frequently in the United States.
Officials in Minneapolis made news last year when they moved to allow mosques to broadcast the adhan publicly.
The adhan declares that God is great and proclaims the Prophet Muhammad as his messenger. It exhorts men — women are not required — to go to the closest mosque five times a day for prayer, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.
Somaia Ferozi, principal of the Ideal Islamic School in Queens, said New York City’s new rules send a positive message to her students.
“Our children are reminded of who they are when they hear the adhan,” said Ferozi, who attended Adams’ news conference. “Having that echo in a New York City neighborhood will make them feel part of a community that acknowledges them.”
Adams, a Democrat, enjoys close relationships with faith leaders from various traditions and has promoted the role of religion in public life.
He has at times alarmed civil libertarians by saying he doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state.
“State is the body. Church is the heart,” Adams said at an interfaith breakfast earlier this year. “You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”
A spokesperson for the mayor said at the time that Adams merely meant that faith guides his actions.
7 comments:
Islam is under the circumstances a foreign 'sickly weed' ethos that can never animate 'the body' of this State
Depends on which faith for which continent
@ Cohen Y, yes, in fact a person who was a former practicing Muslim (who did a giyur lchumra after finding out his mother was Jewish; his father was an Arab from the gulf states) said in an interview that Islam doesn't have a system for working on oneself internally the way Judaism does, they are only focused on the external trappings of the law and its reward. unlike Judaism which has external law but it brings you to internal perfection as well. following the law in Judaism brings you to "shlamus", internally and externally, with physical and spiritual reward. ( this in itself is a "great debate" within Judaism whether something "extra halachic", such as mussar or chassidus is needed to draw out the points of the law, or will the law itself contain these features). see here for more. https://youtu.be/002FJDthy3I
Ideally
Orthodox Judaism as practiced in the Western hemisphere has gone just about to the other extreme
Individualism in observance has become a pluralistic be all & end all for many
Any larger collective incumbent overriding obligations is deemed crudely "judgemental"
Better than the deafening Shabbos alarms in some places.
Well let's start a new religion that, in order to call the faithful to prayer, must blast Metallica's Greatest Hits across the street from the mosque 2 minutes after they broadcast their call.
The call to prayer at mosques bothers me no more than church bells.
Then you miss how a certain religion at least in some denominations, however skewed & specious it is, is an integral bedrock of the edifice of the national metamorphosis.
Switching horses midstream even partway could have potentially mortal consequences for the shaky structure
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