Summoned to prayer

Christian Century, Nov 15, 2005 by Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski

ALMOST EVERYONE agrees that prayer is, or should be, an irenic action, a gentle, generous, solicitous reaching out to others--to God, to the heavenly court of angels and saints, to our fellow creatures, to the world. "He prayeth best who loveth best / All things both great and small," wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, underscoring the specific virtue that animates, at the best of times, our petitions, adorations and thanksgivings. But we humans traffic in vice as well as virtue, and prayer can be an occasion for discord, enmity, even drawn swords. Conflicts erupt most often when different religions collide.

The modern world has no monopoly on interfaith friction; religious pluralism and its attendant problems have been with us since ancient trade routes brought Romans to Luxor and Buddhists to Beijing. In recent years, however, religious mixing has become the order of the day. Who would have guessed, 50 years ago, that Muslim mosques and Hindu ashrams today would sit side by side with Christian churches in many American communities? We are, as historian Jon Butler puts it, "awash in a sea of faith." Shipwrecks are cropping up everywhere, epitomized by the recent civic crisis in Hamtramck, Michigan.

By most accounts, Hamtramck is a pleasant town of 23,000 souls, a blue-collar square on the Detroit urban checkerboard built by and populated by immigrants: first German Protestants, then Polish Catholics, and most recently Bosnian, Yemeni and Bengali Muslims. One couldn't ask for a friendlier, more well-balanced polis--at least until the local Bengali mosque, the al-Islah Islamic Center, petitioned the city council for the fight to broadcast on loudspeakers, five times a day, the Islamic adhan (call to prayer). This practice, widespread in Europe and Asia, remains almost unknown in North America, and a segment of the non-Muslim population of Hamtramck reacted with outrage. "I don't want to be told that Allah is the true and only God five times a day, 365 days a year," protested one resident. "It's against my constitutional rights to have to listen to another religion proselytize in my ear."

This Hamtramckian's scholarship may get failing grades--the U.S. Constitution nowhere forbids a religion from announcing its beliefs, even if electronically amplified--but her sense of invaded privacy was shared by many. Protesters poured into Hamtramck; at a city council meeting called to debate the petition, one man unveiled an "Allah Is No God" T-shirt while robed Muslims prayed in the hallway.

When the city council unanimously approved the Islamic Center's request to broadcast, the debate accelerated. Why, several citizens wondered, would the government ban prayer in schools and the Ten Commandments in courtrooms and yet allow a Muslim prayer to fill public space? Muslims countered by noting the torrent of Christian messages that pour their way. "When Muslims go out during the Christmas season, we hear Christian religious songs in the malls and other gathering places," wrote Shahab Ahmed, a Muslim member of the city council, in the Detroit News. More to the point, Ahmed and others noted that church bells have pealed in Hamtramck for decades. Opponents responded that church bells "have no religious significance," a measure of spiritual amnesia rather than a serious counterargument.

In any event, forces against the call to prayer remained unswayed. A petition to block the broadcast garnered 630 signatures, enough to force the city council to either rescind its decision or put the matter to a citywide referendum. The council voted unanimously to let the public decide; on July 20, 2004, the right to adhan was narrowly upheld, by a vote of 1,462 to 1,200, and Muslim prayers resounded through the city.

The Hamtramck brouhaha captures, in miniature, what befalls a society when prayers collide. The aggrieved parties seethe with righteous indignation; feel trampled, abused and woefully misunderstood; assure their opponents and the world that they operate from the best of motives; and continue to press their case. In Hamtramck each side had, as it happens, a legitimate point of view. Clearly, Muslims have as much right as Christians to practice their religion, and Islam traditionally includes a vocal call to prayer. For centuries Christians did the same through the recitation of the Angelus. And yet one can't help but sympathize with the affronted Christians, especially old-timers who watch their traditions decay (who in Hamtramck prays the Angelus today?).

The answer, we believe--for Hamtramck and for all interreligious disputes of this sort--is for people to invigorate their own faith and let their neighbors do the same. Let the muezzin sound the call to prayer, and let the church bells ring out the Angelus. Let Muslims rejoice when they hear the bells, and Christians rejoice when they hear the muezzin. Let each take the other's summons as a neighborly invitation to prayer. Always, as the early morning adhan proclaims, "Prayer is better than sleep!"