Ministers to Debate Bill to Limit Muezzin Noise

The Ministerial Committee for Legislation will begin deliberations Sunday on a bill tabled by MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) and Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Betenu) to ban houses of worship from announcing prayer times via loudspeakers. Yogev said the early-morning calls to prayer, mainly from mosques, disturb the sleep of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Arabs alike.

Yogev said his office, as well as the ministries of public security and environment, have received dozens of complaints, who say they have no problem with daytime calls to prayer but who claim the early-morning broadcasts are disruptive.

“We are not opposed to religious observance, and certainly not to the call of the muezzin (muslim prayer leader) that ‘God is great’,” said Yogev. “[Religious Jews have been] reciting a similar phrase for thousands of years, long before the emergence of Islam.

“But with all the technological advances of today, there is no justification for waking people up at 4 o’clock in the morning who don’t want [to attend prayer services]. There are cell phone applications, alarm clocks, and other technologies to use. There is no need to wake up the whole neighborhood,” Yogev told the Hebrew-language Channel 1’s education program.

Members of Israel’s Arab community were quick to criticize the bill. MK Issawi Freij (Meretz) called the move “anti-Semitic” and said the move was not motivated by noise concerns, but rather by a desire for anti-Muslim moves that have become popular in the current coalition.

Dr. Thabet Abu Rass, co-chairman of The Abraham Fund Initiative, also opposed the bill on Channel 1, but appeared to accept Yogev’s claim that the loudspeakers are disruptive and unfair.  But he cited a precedent in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa and said that dialogue is way to address the issue, rather than unilateral legislation.

“Nobody legislated the issue in Jaffa, but somehow the local residents managed to work it out on their own, through dialogue,” Abu Rass said.

Yogev rejected the claims out of hand, saying that the new proposal is necessary because existing laws to limit noise pollution have simply not been enforced. He also rejected accusations that the Jewish Home party was “against” public expressions of Islam, saying that broadcasting the call to prayer is not part of the Muslim religion.

“One hundred years ago there were no loudspeakers,” Yogev said. “So what did the muezzins do at that time?