Minneapolis amends noise ordinance to allow Muslim adhan over public speakers at all hours

[unicorn]

According to the AP, "Minneapolis will allow broadcasts of the Muslim call to prayer at all hours, becoming the first major U.S. city to allow the announcement or “adhan” to be heard over speakers five times a day, year-round. The Minneapolis City Council unanimously agreed Thursday to amend the city’s noise ordinance, which had prevented dawn and late evening calls at certain times of the year due to noise restrictions, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The vote came during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan...". 

https://apnews.com/article/muslim-prayers-minneapolis-6bc3fe5ca2eb7436fbdf417481821277

Considering dawn can be quite before 6 AM in northerly Minneapolis, that puts a burden on those who don't want to hear the adhan. I would think that if people want a call to prayer on their own phones or in their own house, the technology is pretty easy to do that. This change in the law might force some people to need to move, and lower property values in areas near mosques. It seems like this constitutes jamming some peoples' religious views on others. Thoughts?

[Marc in Calif]

I remember always hating the sound of church bells (real and electronic) on Sundays at 7:00 am in suburban Chicago. It was a Lutheran church, but there weren't really that many church congregants in the neighborhood. Electronics created an added buzz and carried farther.

I guess we had to submit to dear old Martin's views — whether we wanted to or not! 😇

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, unicorn said:

According to the AP, "Minneapolis will allow broadcasts of the Muslim call to prayer at all hours, becoming the first major U.S. city to allow the announcement or “adhan” to be heard over speakers five times a day, year-round. The Minneapolis City Council unanimously agreed Thursday to amend the city’s noise ordinance, which had prevented dawn and late evening calls at certain times of the year due to noise restrictions, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The vote came during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan...". 

https://apnews.com/article/muslim-prayers-minneapolis-6bc3fe5ca2eb7436fbdf417481821277

Considering dawn can be quite before 6 AM in northerly Minneapolis, that puts a burden on those who don't want to hear the adhan. I would think that if people want a call to prayer on their own phones or in their own house, the technology is pretty easy to do that. This change in the law might force some people to need to move, and lower property values in areas near mosques. It seems like this constitutes jamming some peoples' religious views on others. Thoughts?

I'll come at it from the 30,000 foot level.  Ruy Tuxeira is one of my current favorite thinkers.  At the time he and leftie John Judis wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority in 2002 it seemed like a joke.  W. was President.  And the Iraq War was wildly popular.  I actually bought the book while at a symposium at Carleton in Minnesota, my alma mater.  The symposium was in honor of Senator Paul Wellstone, who had just died in a plane crash.  So you had a bunch of leftie students and disciples of his mourning all kinds of bad right-wing things going on in America.  The world Tuxiera and Judis described did not seem possible.  That was 2003 or so.  Then there was 2008.

Tuxeira now is like the old crank in the room with pretty much the same liberal or progressive thoughts as two decades ago.  But he writes lots of wonderful blog pieces about how elements of the progressive movement seem to be hellbent on going too far.  And thus preventing a Democratic majority from emerging and governing for a long time.  Name pretty much any culture war issue - CRT, transgender athletes, and probably "Muslim stuff," and he'll throw that on the pile of things that increasingly make White working class people think the Democrats are a bunch of leftie, out of touch elitists.  Who all went to some liberal arts college.  And got indoctrinated by some leftie Jew academic like Wellstone.  Guilty as charged, I guess.  😍

Minneapolis of course was the spiritual home of "defund the police," after George Floyd's murder.  Which more than any other culture war slogan - "Make Islam Great Again" ??? - has caused problems for Democrats.  So my criticism of my own team would be, "Why are we bending over backwards to act like stereotypes and write ads for Republicans?"  And this is actually serious shit.  After 30 years they finally ran moderate Democrat Collin Peterson out of his rural Minnesota House seat in 2020 by linking him with Ilhan Omar in crazy TV ads.  And suggesting the two (plus Nancy Pelosi, somehow) were all involved in some 9/11-type plot to encourage terrorism and destroy rural Minnesota.  Can mosques be far behind?  But it's a great example of the polarization.  Why would a White rural area of Minnesota elect an anti-abortion, pro-gun, homophobe sounding conservative Democrat who opposed same sex marriage?  So now they elect Republicans.  Democrats are the party of Muslims and cop haters and The Gays, they think.

All that said, how many Minnesotans will flee their state because of dawn calls to prayer, so they can move to a red state (Iowa?) where Republicans are rushing to ban abortion as quickly as they can?  Probably not very many.  This goes to the point I made in another thread I started.  I don't think you can argue that America is a liberal nation.  It's easy to argue Minneapolis went too far - again!  But compared to what?  Banning abortion totally?  Compared to what the MAGA election deniers and God-fearing abortion haters like Herschel Walker are doing, the Democrats come off as the normal people and pragmatists, more often than not.

Back to earth, though, they should just ban anybody from broadcasting calls to prayer at dawn.  That's when The Gays are leaving the bars, after all.  Why not let them go home peacefully and quietly?  😉

[Pete1111]

America needs to start taxing religion.  It's total BS.

But back to the Minneapolis.  I escaped that place 20+ years ago and will never return.  The people are too quirky for me and that's putting it nicely.  They deserve having a Muslim horn blowing in their ears at all hours.

One man's opinion.