Indonesian vice president seeks to curb mosque noise

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Indonesian Vice President, Jusuf Kalla, on Thursday in Indonesia indicated move to set up a team to monitor and curb noise coming from mosques’ loudspeakers.

He said this had become imperative because the mosques Ramadan broadcast calls earlier to wake up the faithful for sahur, or the pre-dawn meal fast, filled the air.
The vice president said it was wrong for discordant voices to fill the streets at the five prayer times, when all local mosques blast the adzan at the same time.

Kalla said the sound coverage should not go beyond the mosque’s immediate surroundings, so that it would not overlap with sounds from mosques in other neighborhoods.
Husain Abdullah, Kalla’s Spokesman, said the Vice President who was also the chairman of the Indonesian Mosque Council, has been critical of external loudspeakers used to broadcast calls to prayer, sermons and Koranic recitations.

The spokesman said decades ago, government issued guidelines on the use of loudspeakers, including a requirement for mosques to use only inside speakers for activities other than calls to prayer, but the instruction was ignored.
He said now government was determined to review the guidelines because the vice president believed the duration should be measured.

“A team will gather facts on the ground about overlapping sounds and timings of religious sermons, Quranic recitals and calls to prayer through loudspeakers in major cities,” he said.
He said earlier in June, Kalla had called on mosques to stop blaring recorded sermons through mosques’ loudspeakers, saying that worshippers would not gain God’s favour by doing so.