Minneapolis allows Islamic call to prayer five times per day

World
By William

Local groups welcome the decision to make Minneapolis the first major city in the US with a year-round public call to prayer.

The Islamic call to prayer, or “adhan,” will soon be ringing the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota, as it becomes the first major U.S. city to approve mosques to publicly broadcast the call to prayer five times a day.

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution making changes to the city’s noise ordinance that prevented some morning and evening calls during certain times of the year.

“This is a historic victory for religious freedom and pluralism for our entire country,” Jaylani Hussein, director of the Minnesota Branch of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a statement. rack on Thursday, after the vote. “We thank Minneapolis City Council members for leading this great example, and we urge other cities to follow suit.”

The vote took place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and was celebrated by members of the city’s local Muslim community. The city’s mayor is expected to sign the resolution next Monday.

“Minneapolis has become a city for all religions,” said Imam Mohammed Dukuly of Minneapolis’ Masjid An-Nur Mosque.

The city last year allowed the call to prayer to be broadcast year-round, but only between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., with the exception of some morning and evening prayers.

Prayers take place when the light appears at dawn, at noon, in the late afternoon, at sunset, and when the night sky appears. In Minneapolis, dawn comes as early as 5:30 a.m. and sunset after 9 p.m. during certain times of the year.

Since the 1990s, Minneapolis has had a vibrant community of immigrants from East Africa, and mosques have become commonplace throughout the city, where three of the 13-member city council identify as Muslim.

The resolution received support from people of a wide range of faiths in the community, including Christian and Jewish leaders who spoke at a recent public hearing for an extension of hours.

The effort met with no mobilized public opposition, which is remarkable in a country where efforts to promote mosque activity have at times been the subject of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In 2010, an attempt to build a mosque and community space near Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York City, met with brutal backlash from anti-Muslim groups, ultimately forcing planners to stop effort.

Former US President Donald Trump also drew on anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies, such as a “Muslim ban” that banned people from numerous Muslim-majority countries from coming to the United States.

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