writer: Anne Marie Baylouny
In what was for the past 1400 years Muslim majority land, Israel’s attempt to reshape its cultural history is reaching new heights of absurdity. The Israeli state has introduced a bill that bans the call to prayer. And they are doing this because it is apparently too loud. Known as “the muezzin bill,” named after the people who announce the call to prayer, the bill’s ostensible cause is to curb noise pollution by forbidding the use of loudspeakers. The bill also prohibits religious messages in the name of religious freedom. The adhan and the loudspeakers used to announce it must go. The draft bill is approved and is ready for a Knesset vote. If passed, it would become law.
I first heard the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, on the morning after my first arrival in the Middle East. I was young, and knew next to nothing about the Middle East. I was staying at St. Paul’s Chapel in Damascus, where Paul himself had escaped over the walls some 2,000 years ago after converting to the new Christian religion. The call to prayer woke me up: I remember it vividly. I had no idea what it was, but it made me feel at ease, as if all would be well in this place where I barely spoke the language. Later I asked some friends about the man who sang so beautifully early in the morning. My Christian friends laughed at me as they explained to me what it was. Christians throughout the Middle East grow up with adhan as does everyone else, including Jews.
Noise pollution laws limiting the call to prayer’s volume are already on the books and those laws have been followed, decreasing the volume of the adhan. This has not stopped a further attempt to stomp out these reminders of the presence of Palestinian Muslims, which is what this is really about. Israeli lawmakers contend that the current bill has broad support. The bill is currently paused as some Knesset members feel it could be used against Jews, a fact that highlights the target of the bill as Muslim noises only. The sirens used to signify the start and end of the Jewish holy day are quite loud, and they too carry religious messages.
Eliminating the call to prayer is a provocation sure to invite reprisals. Removing such a fundamental element of Muslim culture, present and taken for granted for almost a millennium and a half, cannot be taken as anything but a message of “we are not seeking any form of peaceful existence.”
To put it in simple Eurocentric terms, because most people relate to Europe more readily, a parallel would be if the descendants of the ancient Romans took claim to all of Europe, and changed the culture accordingly. Most Europeans and the world would find that absurd. Indeed, a common statement of immigration in the West is that the migrants adapt and acculturate to the land and culture they are in. Here we have the opposite: Israel is actively changing the fabric and culture of the land they inhabit, little by little as more Jewish migrants move in.
The adhan law is not about noise pollution, but about the presence of Palestinians in general. It is another attempt to erase their presence from this ancient land they have lived on. As Muslims, Palestinians have been there for over 1400 years, and as Christians they have been there hundreds of years longer. The Palestinians are an ancient people, mentioned in the Bible (the Filisteen). While most Palestinians are Muslim, a sizeable number are Christians, who are also targets. Churches were tagged with graffiti insulting and threatening death to Christians, and Palestinian Christians and others were banned from Jerusalem churches almost every year at least since 2009. This is usually ignored because many don’t want to recognize that Palestinians come in Christian garbs too.
source: https://electronicintifada.net
World leaders from across the globe seem intent on increasing violence and extremism, by denying people even their little bit of cultural identity and pride, forcing humiliation on the losers, now even in their own lands. Israel is not a new player to this game; it has been at it for some time now. But the recent American elections have emboldened the country in its rejection of any “other” in their territory. Israel now feels it has a free hand, unrestrained by those pesky American complaints about settlements and human rights abuses. This is an opportunity to pass absurd laws.
The origins of extremism lie in microcosms, small neighborhoods who are usually pushed to their limits. The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and Israel suffer tremendously both through Israeli laws and illegally from the settlers and settlements. At what point do we say that we are heading toward a genocidal disaster? Or do we accept that the winners write history, and the losers assimilate or die? Would Israel even accept the Palestinians if they gave up and converted? That is doubtful. So they have no real choices – nowhere to go, and unable to live peacefully in what is now Israel.
Note: The views reflected in the posts are solely the writer's.