Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is supporting a bill that aims to quieten calls to prayer for Muslims. The summons is sung five times a day from mosque towers and amplified by loudspeakers.
Netanyahu said he has received complaints about the calls to prayer, with people complaining about their “noise and suffering,” BBC News noted.
On Sunday, a government committee agreed upon a bill that will reportedly stop mosques from using PA systems during their calls to prayer throughout the day, The Times of Israel noted.
“I cannot count the times — they are simply too numerous — that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused them by the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer,” Netanyahu said, per BBC.
The new plan is in effect for all religions, but will mainly impact the Muslims, with the first of their prayer calls coming at dawn and the last after sunset.
Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya of the Israel Democracy Institute views the new bill divisive.
“The real aim is not to prevent noise but rather to create noise that will hurt all of society and the efforts to establish a sane reality between Jews and Arabs,” he wrote in a local newspaper, The Times of Israel noted.
Netanyahu said “Israel is a country that respects freedom of religion for all,” the BBC noted.
“Israel is committed to protect anyone who suffers from the excessively loud calls,” he added. “That is the custom also in various places in the Muslim world, where they limited the volume of the calls out of consideration for the general public.”
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