The Palestinian Authority said it would turn to the international community to fight a bill in Israel that would limit the volume of the muezzin’s call to prayer.
Known as the “muezzin bill,” the measure passed the Knesset’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation on Nov. 13 and moves to the full Israeli parliament.
The call to prayer comes from a minaret of the mosque five times a day, including very early in the morning. In modern times, the mosques use loudspeakers to assist in making the call.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threw his support behind the bill at the weekly Cabinet meeting on Nov. 13.
“Muslims, as well as Jews and Christians, also suffer from … the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer,” Netanyahu said. “This is how it is in many European cities and in many places in the Islamic world, where the loudness of the announcements is limited out of consideration for the populace as a whole.”
The chairman of the Joint Arab List Party, Ayman Odeh, called the muezzin bill “racist” and “populist.”
The Israel Democracy Institute said in an opinion submitted to the Knesset committee that “even though the bill is worded in neutral language and defines a house of worship as a ‘synagogue,’ ‘church’ or ‘mosque,’ it is clear that in practice this law is aimed at limiting and harming the activities of mosques only. After all, only Muslim houses of worship make frequent use of public address systems.” — jta