The Muezzin's Voice
(Sounds from the Mosque)
The muezzin's voice emanates from loudspeakers on mosque minarets all over Israel, throughout all hours of the day and night.
This way, by means of an announcement via loudspeaker, the muezzin calls the Muslim faithful to prayer, one of the five fixed prayers in the religion of Islam. The muezzin's call, called the Adhan, lasts a few minutes and sounds like a short religious song in an Arabic style.
It is heard very loudly in the area where the mosque is located – in the village, in the neighborhood, in the city. And if there are gusts of wind, they carry the sound to the open spaces, it rolls and is heard kilometers away, in the nearby Jewish communities – in the city and in the village, in the kibbutz and in the moshav.
The prayer times are identical everywhere, and accordingly also the announcements – starting with dawn and ending in the late evening hours, at fixed time intervals throughout the day and night.
The muezzin's voice serves as a daily reminder to Israel's Jewish citizens that although they are the majority in the country they established, in this land, a minority of Muslim Arabs, 20 percent of the total population, live alongside them, and across the "Green Line" borders live millions more Muslim neighbors who also have their own prayers and ways of life.
The neighbors are called in spoken Israeli Hebrew: "our cousins," because we all have one shared historical great-grandfather – Abraham, our father. We and they have one shared God.
Our cousins pray to Him in their own unique way, celebrate religious holidays with their own vacations, study chapters of the Quran, and have weddings with joyful and noisy "Haflas" (parties).
The muezzin is an inseparable part of their daily routine.
This is what the muezzin's call to prayer sounds like.
Most of Israel's Muslim Arabs live in closed communities in neighborhoods in cities and in villages scattered throughout the country – from the Negev to the Galilee.
In these communities, the muezzin's announcement is part of the culture and tradition, even when it is heard very early in the morning. It doesn't bother any of the local residents in the vicinity of the mosque.
It also doesn't particularly bother the residents of the nearby Jewish communities, because when the announcement reaches them, the sound weakens and is less noisy. The Jewish neighbors get used to the winding, poetic noise that lasts about five minutes, and try to contain it, out of a desire to respect their neighbors. If the noise is exceptionally loud, they will politely and firmly approach local dignitaries to help reduce the volume.
The situation is different in mixed cities, like Ramle and Lod, where Jews and Muslims live in close proximity. The mosques are very close to Jewish homes, and the muezzin's trills, especially in the early morning hours when the Jews are sleeping, are not pleasant to their ears, and the noise emanating from the loudspeaker bothers them and can harm their quality of life.
The muezzin's voice is also heard well in Jewish communities across the "Green Line" borders, the settlements in Judea and Samaria, and in the Jewish communities near the Palestinian Authority, where every community has at least one mosque.
In contrast, the residents of the "sterile bubble" in the Gush Dan area are almost not exposed to the noise. Except for a few mosques in the city of Jaffa-Tel Aviv, from which the sounds emanate but are swallowed up in the hustle and bustle and noise that washes over the city.
Umm al-Fahm - an Israeli city with mosques and muezzins at its heart
Only Jerusalem is an exception.
In the colorful city sacred to the followers of the three religions, the voices of the muezzins are mixed with the chiming of church bells along with the trills of cantors and liturgical poets emanating from the synagogues, and no one would think of interrupting what it symbolizes, among other things – freedom of worship and the shared existence of believers, no matter from which religion, all together on the same urban patch of land called: Israel.
From time to time, the problem of the noise from the mosques comes up for public discussion, and has even reached the Knesset, but an agreed-upon solution has not yet been found. Knesset members and heads of local councils promise their Jewish constituents that "they will reduce the noise once and for all." This is a topic that is raised in election propaganda, especially by Jewish parties from the nationalist side of the political map. But after the elections are over, nothing happens.
Those who raise the issue understand how complicated it is politically, diplomatically, and socially. The entire region is filled with inter-religious tensions, and the daily friction between Jews and Arabs can add more fuel to the raging fire in the small piece of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
And in the meantime,
The muezzin's voice continues to roll and add a shade to the historical story of the State of Israel – a Jewish and democratic state that has already reached 75 years of age, and has not yet arranged for itself a narrative that is agreed upon by all its citizens.
A national story in one frame:
The muezzin's loudspeaker above a Leumit Health Services clinic. Photo by Emile Salman, Haaretz.
For further reading:
-
Israel's “Muezzin Bill” and the Everyday Politics of Sound.
Author: Jeremy A. Siegman -
In Jaffa, ‘A Muezzin is Born’ to protest Israeli bill
By ToI Staff -
Israel Wants to Silence Islamic Call to Prayer
"Jerusalem story"
This is part of "The Israeli Story 1948-2025" project.
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