Nice to see religious tolerance and pluralism in real life.


If you are one of those who thinks "now they are going to take over" and so on remember this: either everyone has the same rights or your own rights mean nothing.

(VIDEO)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/historic-ramadan-call-
prayer-echoes-minnesota-city-200424145353618.html


A muezzin from the Minneapolis Cedar-Riverside Dar al-Hijrah Mosque performed the traditional Muslim call to prayer (adhan) for Ramadan this week. It is believed to be the first publicly broadcast call to prayer ever performed in a major US city.

I read about this, with a picture, in my newspaper.

Notice no women? They've still got a LONG way to go, as they still don't say these prayers, themselves all rolled into a bowl shape, with the female sex.

Does anyone here know what they pray about? How grateful they are to be men, and not women?

All of the intolerance and sexism in Islam was present in Christianity not so long ago...

Transliteration:

Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah. Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah.
Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah. Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah.
Hayya 'ala-s-Salah. Hayya 'ala-s-Salah.
Hayya 'ala-l-Falah. Hayya 'ala-l-Falah.
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!
La ilaha illa Allah.


The English translation of the adhan is:

God is Great! God is Great! God is Great! God is Great!
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that there is no god except the One God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to the prayer.
Hurry to salvation. Hurry to salvation.
God is Great! God is Great!
There is no god except the One God.

You seem to be a little suspicious of Islam, in this case judging its place for some. Keep in mind that Judaism, Mormonism, and several other religions fail to incorporate women in leadership. It's akin to decrying the hijab. How many other religions do the same? Orthodox Judaism, some orthodox Christians, Amish, Mennonite, and several others that require women to cover their heads, yet never receive the attention that Islam gets. Also, don't forget that many staunch American Christians force their women to have long hair, and do not allow the women to wear pants or jeans. (The military has tons of these over-the-top Christians.) They also do not allow female leadership. So it's hardly just Muslims in this role.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2020 09:39PM by cludgie.

cludgie Wrote:
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> Keep in mind that Judaism, Mormonism, and several other
> religions fail to incorporate women in leadership.

I am very happy to report that women rabbis now exist in all denominational sectors of Jewish religious life (except for the Jewish extreme Orthodox right)....and that women are very heavily represented in the highest sectors of both congregational and institutional Jewish life (except for the Jewish extreme Orthodox right).

Going back to medieval times (and even to ancient times in some instances), some number of learned Jewish women have almost always had far more real life religious and institutional influence than appeared to be possible given the serious constraints of those times.

On June 3, 1972, however--at a rabbinical seminary in Ohio-- Sally Priesand became the first "regular" ordained woman rabbi in modern times. Since then, Jewish women have swiftly become a constantly growing, institutional/religious, force within Judaism (to the point where there is now on-going discussion about the eventual fate of male rabbis as a group; although males are not yet outnumbered, the developing mathematical reality is clear).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2020 12:43AM by Tevai.

In my town, the Catholic Church and the nearby Community Church ring their bells on the hour. The Community Church also has a live caralon tower that plays hymns very loudly, heard over the entire community, and the Catholic Church plays recorded music from their fake bell tower. But I'd wager that if the local mosque (ours is tiny, anyway), were to play their rather calm and soothing calls to prayer, locals would cry foul, an possibly go ballistic, even if occasionally a Jewish Cantor prays at a public venues, like high school graduations. The hypocrisy is tangible.

I applaud your recognition of the diversity in Islam and your indication of the hypocrisy in much of the board's discussion of that religion and its culture/s.

I would add that the prayers belted out of minaret loud speakers at 5:00 AM every damn morning can, as I'm sure you know, be quite an annoyance. But my personal preferences don't matter: you are right that religious freedom and tolerance should be meted out equally to all.

Thanks for the perspective.

You should live next to the Community Church tower, like I do. It provides a lot of unwanted clanging. Anyway, point taken about the early morning calls to prayer. If we were to tell the Muslim community that they were free to belt out their calls to prayer over a loudspeaker, like the Catholics do here with their music and chimes, but forbid them to do the early morning calls to prayer, I would bet that any local Muslims would easily go for that.

Incidentally, while it didn't wake me up (after I'd lived there a while) in Pakistan, the early morning prayers DID disturb my sleep every damned morning when I once worked in Jakarta for some 5 weeks, and the hotel was right next to a mosque. So I moved to a different hotel, and, as you might have guessed, there was a mosque right next to that hotel, too. And I believe that in more secular Indonesia, the calls to prayer are at fixed times, like 5am, as opposed to varying times of the lunar clock.

Jakarta!

That was one of the cities to which I was alluding. I spent months in various hotels in Jakarta and yes, the early morning prayer calls and the exceedingly high volume of those calls, were annoying. The evening calls were also obnoxious.

I've had similar experiences in other Islamic countries, but you read my description accurately. And there's a good chance we shared at least one of those hotels, from whose gym the neighboring Mosque was clearly visible as well as audible!

My question is this, was this amplified through loudspeakers to the public? If the answer is yes, I reckon you may guess my feelings on the matter.

I think cludgie's point is that the same rules should apply to Christian churches as to Mosques. I'm confident you would agree with that.

It is amplified in the Cedar-Riverside area. The city granted a permit for the noise variance, the Mosque paid for the sound system.

All the churches in Minneapolis are ringing their bells at noon everyday as well.

Not much complaining here about either event.

Interesting.

Thanks.

If I hear an idiot yelling out a prayer call at 5 a.m. and it wakes me up, there will be hell to pay. Same goes for church bells. Trains, I accept. Religious noise, not so much.

Let me add in a disclaimer that I do hate Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. I despise these frauds and their purveyors. Their noise does more than irritate my ears, it goes to war with science and reason. It is the noise of battle to me.

I remember seeing some graffiti saying "Islam is right about women".

That paradox alone should make virtuous heads spin.

I would guess that American Islam is as close to Saudi Arabian Islam as American Yoga is to Indian Yoga.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would guess that American Islam is as close to
> Saudi Arabian Islam as American Yoga is to Indian
> Yoga.

Saudi Arabian oil money pays for most of the fancier new mosques in the west.

Their influence isn't just financial. It's pretty heavy.

A Muslim city official arranged for the city land to be sold at 1/2 to 2/3 its appraised value. This man also does city's "sensitivity" training for city departments. The Marathon bombers attended the mosque's satellite mosque in Cambridge.

On a brighter side, Saudi Arabia has recently outlawed flogging, to be replaced with imprisonment and fines, and also outlawed capital punishment for children. This may seem minor, but when you consider the stranglehold Wahhabism has on the kingdom's culture, it is progress, inconceivable only ten years ago.

I'm not sure the overall direction has been "progress." MBS is a ruthless sociopath who is jailing his rivals (including relatives), launching wars abroad, destabilizing the global economy, and killing reporters in other countries. I think his strategy is to combine slight religious reforms at home with a much greater centralization of power in his own hands, power that he is happy to exercise internationally and unilaterally.

Saudi Arabia under his leadership is almost certainly a greater threat to global piece than it was before.

The reason that I don't like it has nothing to do with individual religions.

I see it as a disturbance of the peace simply because of the loss of *quiet* in this world.

Religious overtones of any kind just add to the annoyance.

You would be hard pressed to find any Islam that is similar to Wahabiism in Saudi Arabia.

Look, here's some perspective for them what hate Mooslims: If you are in need of specialized medical treatment, such as advanced neurology/neurosurgery, or any other high specialized medicine, you cannot help but rub shoulders with Muslims. Sons and daughters of Indian and Pakistani Muslim immigrants are now a primary source of medical specialists in the United States. I think it's because Islam was always a religion that welcomed science, math, and astronomy. They were round-earthers way earlier than we were. They used the concept of zero long before the West did. Much of western thought and medicine come from the Muslims, especially Persians. They've always been guardians of science. Embrace it. Even with extreme forms of Islamic fundamentalism happening in the world, the overwhelming bulk of all Muslims are no different than the overwhelming bulk of Catholics or anyone else, with the advantage that Muslims didn't go through the Dark Ages. And a lot of American fundamentalist Christian religions are the same in every way. Most of the problems you see in Islamic cultures stem not from the religion, but from the culture that embraced it.

Another great post.

Islam saved most of the classical world's learning and transmitted it to Europe when Europe was ready for it beginning in about the 15th century. I would disagree with you slightly about Wahabism; Deobandi Islam, which arose in India and became the mainstay of the Taliban, shares a lot of Wahabi characteristics if not the Saudi authority structure. The similarities are not entirely natural, of course, as the Kingdom financed a lot of Deobandi efforts for many decades--which is one reason Osama bin Laden was embraced by the Taliban in the years before 9/11.