The Principal of the school, Rashmi Hegde explained that the azaan had been played as an initiative to make students aware about prayers of different religions. “This is a misrepresentation of our attempt,” she said, according to The Indian Express.

As if suspension of the teacher was not enough, the issue has been criminalised. Deputy Commissioner of Police Ajay Kumar Bansal said that a complaint has been filed in the matter and an inquiry is being done, ANI reported.

The protest by the parents was led by Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Yogesh Sagar. The police complaint about hurting religious sentiments was filed by local Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Sawant, according to The Indian Express.

Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra

Members of BJP and Shiv Sena, along with some parents, created ruckus at a school over a teacher playing Azaan (Islamic call to prayers) during morning assembly.

According to the school principal, it was an initiative to inform the students about… pic.twitter.com/1IWDSxZAHG

— HindutvaWatch (@HindutvaWatchIn) June 17, 2023

“A teacher belonging to the minority community deciding to play the Azaan from her phone into the loudspeaker during the morning assembly of Friday is not just a mistake,” Sagar told reporters.

Meanwhile, the principal — who herself had explained the act as a means of spreading diversity later is reported to have told parents that the school management was also conducting an inquiry into the matter. “This is a Hindu school and our prayers include Gayatri Mantra and Saraswati Vandana,” the principal said. “We assure that such an instance will not be repeated in the future.”

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As many as 72 percent of Mumbai’s mosques said they will hold off on playing the 5 AM azaan via loudspeakers, police sources informed PTI on April 19, 2022. Although the news comes after the open threats of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) Chief, this decision is in keeping with the Supreme Court order that bans the use of loudspeakers between 10 PM and 6 AM.

Earlier, MNS Chief Raj Thackeray had demanded that mosques all over Maharashtra remove their loudspeakers by Eid i.e May 3, 2022. He claimed that party members will build speakers twice the height of the structure and play Hanuman Chalisa if the minority community does not heed him.

Focused on maintaining peace in the city, the police met religious leaders and concluded that 72 percent of mosques will not employ loudspeakers for the first azaan of the day. The rest will reduce the volume in line with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board Rules. Mosques will also adhere to the apex court decision, violating which parties are subject to a minimum sentence of five years and a fine of ₹ 5 lakh.

According to India Today, a special squad is likely to monitor noise levels, while the police collect information on people charged with inciting communal tensions. Further, senior officials said the police will monitor hate mongers and take strict action against any inflammatory speeches. Social media will also be monitored.

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The Allahab High Court has ruled that though azaan or a call to prayer is an essential and integral part of Islam, the use of loudspeakers isn’t. The court ruled that the recitation of azaan “through loudspeakers or other sound amplifying devices cannot be said to be an integral part of the religion, warranting protection of the fundamental right enshrined under Article 25 of the Constitution of India, which is even otherwise subject to public order, morality or health and to other provisions.”

The court was hearing a plea by Ghazipur MP Afzal Ansari Congress Leader Salman Khurshid and senior advocate S Wasim A Qadri. A division bench comprising Justices Shashikant Gupta and Ajit Kumar ruled that azaan may be recited by the muezzin from mosque minarets “by human voice without using any amplifying device and the administration is directed not to cause hindrance… unless such guidelines are being violated.”

The bench also banned use of amplifying devices from 10 PM to 6 AM. In response to Ansari’s plea, the Uttar Pradesh government had filed a counter affidavit stating that Azaan was a call to congregate for prayer and hence a violation of lockdown protocol.  

This is however, not the first time Azaan has been targeted. In April, two Delhi policemen had unilaterally decided to ban azaan drawing flak for targeting the customs of the Muslim community. A short video clip of the policement giving stern instructions to the Muezzin not to give the call to prayer went viral. Two women can be heard reasoning with the cops that Ramzan was starting soon and azaan was essential to let people know when to break their fast. They told the cops that no one was going to the masjids to pray and only the muezzin would give the call. “This is wrong, this is ramzan, the rozas (fasts) will be observed, there is no ban on Azaan, we see the news too,” reasoned the women.  “Go and fight with LG. The LG has said no,” the policeman replied. Disciplinary action was initiated against the errant cops as the LG had not given any such directions.

The Gujarat government too had banned the use of loudspeakers and public gatherings for religious events. While on the surface, the order seems to apply to religious functions of all communities, the timing of it was curious given how it was issued after the various lunar new year celebrations of other communities, but just before Ramzan began. 

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Actor Suchitra Krishnamoorthi reached home at 4.45 am on the morning of July 23. Soon thereafter she was disturbed by “ear-shattering” azaans (calls for namaz) from two neighbouring mosques. The angry actor shot off a Tweet message protesting against what she described as “extreme imposed religiosity”.

A section of the Twitterati shot back, some mocking her, some alleging her complaint was nothing but cheap attention grabbing. Samajwadi leader Juhi Singh mocked Suchitra for thinking sleep is more important than prayers.

“Such irresponsible comments have been made in the past also. I am unable to understand what kind of people they are. I would like to know how does azaan, which otherwise purifies you on hearing, bother her. May be her sleep is more important,” SP leader Juhi Singh told ANI, on Monday.

Responding to the criticisms against her, Suchitra shot back to say that one, she had no objection to azaan during “decent hours” and two, she herself prayed but did not need someone to wake her up for that through blaring loudspeakers.

In April this year, singer Sonu Nigam had triggered a similar conroversy, describing the use of loudspeakers for azaan and sermons as “hooliganism”.

He had tweeted a message saying: “God bless everyone. I am not a Muslim and I have to be woken up by the azaan in the morning. When will this forced religiousness end in India?”

“Gundagardi hai bus (it is hooliganism),” he had added. Apologising later, Nigam had said he was trying to raise a social issue and not raking up a religious controversy.

However, when the imam of Kolkotta’s Jama Masjid declared an award of Rs. 10 lakh to anyone who shaved off Nigam’s head, the singer got himself a cleanshave before TV cameras and demanded that the award be paid to him.   

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His tweets, that have gone viral now, said, “God bless everyone. I’m not a Muslim and I have to be woken up by the Azaan in the morning. When will this forced religiousness end in India. And by the way Mohammed did not have electricity when he made Islam.. Why do I have to have this cacophony after Edison?”

In his concluding tweets, the famous singer said the act was nothing but gundagardi.

“I don’t believe in any temple or gurudwara using electricity To wake up people who don’t follow the religion . Why then..? Honest? True? Gundagardi hai bus…”

The singer is now being branded as communal even as others defend him as somebody who just cared about his sleep. Some users felt that Sonu’s comments criticising the use of loudspeaker for azaan, which lasts for few 2-3 minutes was his Abhijeet moment against Islam. Many on Twitter, however, have termed his act as extremely courageous.

Abhijeeet, a former Bollywood singer, has been known for his hatred against Islam and Muslims. His racist tweet last year had prompted the Mumbai Police to arrest him briefly.

Here are some of the reactions on Sonu Nigam’s outbursts against Muslims;

Courtesy: Janta Ka Reporter

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Image Credit: Carlos Latuff/Mondoweiss

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared his support this month for the so-called “muezzin bill”, claiming it was urgently needed to stop the dawn call to prayer from mosques ruining the Israeli public’s sleep. A vote in the parliament is due this week. The use of loudspeakers by muezzins was unnecessarily disruptive, Mr Netanyahu argued, in an age of alarm clocks and phone apps.

But the one in five of Israel’s population who are Palestinian, most of them Muslim, and a further 300,000 living under occupation in East Jerusalem, say the legislation is grossly discriminatory. The bill’s environmental rationale is bogus, they note. Moti Yogev, a settler leader who drafted the bill, originally wanted the loudspeaker ban to curb the broadcasting of sermons supposedly full of “incitement” against Israel.

And last week, after the Jewish ultra-Orthodox lobby began to fear the bill might also apply to sirens welcoming in the Sabbath, the government hurriedly introduced an exemption for synagogues.

The “muezzin bill” does not arrive in a politically neutral context. The extremist wing of the settler movement championing it has been vandalizing and torching mosques in Israel and the occupied territories for years.

The new bill follows hot on the heels of a government-sponsored expulsion law that allows Jewish legislators to oust from the parliament the Palestinian minority’s representatives if they voice unpopular views.

Palestinian leaders in Israel are rarely invited on TV, unless it is to defend themselves against accusations of treasonous behavior.

And this month a branch of a major restaurant chain in the northern city of Haifa, where many Palestinian citizens live, banned staff from speaking Arabic to avoid Jewish customers’ suspicions that they were being covertly derided.

Incrementally, Israel’s Palestinian minority has found itself squeezed out of the public sphere. The “muezzin bill” is just the latest step in making them inaudible as well as invisible.

Notably, Basel Ghattas, a Palestinian Christian legislator from the Galilee, denounced the bill too. Churches in Nazareth, Jerusalem, and Haifa, he vowed, would broadcast the muezzin’s call to prayer if mosques were muzzled.

For Ghattas and others, the bill is as much an assault on the community’s beleaguered Palestinian identity as it is on its Muslim character. Netanyahu, on the other hand, has dismissed criticism by comparing the proposed restrictions to measures adopted in countries like France and Switzerland. What is good for Europe, he argues, is good for Israel.

Except Israel, it hardly needs pointing out, is not in Europe. And its Palestinians are the native population, not immigrants.

Haneen Zoabi, another lawmaker, observed that the legislation was not about “the noise in [Israeli Jews’] ears but the noise in their minds”

Haneen Zoabi, another lawmaker, observed that the legislation was not about “the noise in [Israeli Jews’] ears but the noise in their minds”. Their colonial fears, she said, were evoked by the Palestinians’ continuing vibrant presence in Israel – a presence that was supposed to have been extinguished in 1948 with the Nakba, the creation of a Jewish state on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland.

That point was illustrated inadvertently over the weekend by dozens of fires that ravaged pine forests and neighboring homes across Israel, fuelled by high winds and months of drought.
Some posting on social media relished the fires as God’s punishment for the “muezzin bill”.

With almost as little evidence, Netanyahu accused Palestinians of setting “terrorist” fires to burn down the Israeli state. The Israeli prime minister needs to distract attention from his failure to heed warnings six years ago, when similar blazes struck, that Israel’s densely packed forests pose a fire hazard.

If it turns out that some of the fires were set on purpose, Netanyahu will have no interest in explaining why.

Many of the forests were planted decades ago by Israel to conceal the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages, after 80 percent of the Palestinian population – some 750,000 – were expelled outside Israel’s new borders in 1948. Today they live in refugee camps, including in the West Bank and Gaza.

According to Israeli scholars, the country’s European founders turned the pine tree into a “weapon of war”, using it to erase any trace of the Palestinians. The Israeli historian Ilan Pappe calls this policy “memoricide”.

Olive trees and other native species like carob, pomegranate and citrus were also uprooted in favor of the pine. Importing the landscape of Europe was a way to ensure Jewish immigrants would not feel homesick.

Today, for many Israeli Jews, only the muezzin threatens this contrived idyll. His intermittent call to prayer emanates from the dozens of Palestinian communities that survived 1948’s mass expulsions and were not replaced with pine trees.

Like an unwelcome ghost, the sound now haunts neighboring Jewish towns.

The “muezzin bill” aims to eradicate the aural remnants of Palestine as completely as Israel’s forests obliterated its visible parts – and reassure Israelis that they live in Europe rather than the Middle East.

The “muezzin bill” aims to eradicate the aural remnants of Palestine as completely as Israel’s forests obliterated its visible parts – and reassure Israelis that they live in Europe rather than the Middle East.

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