Mumbai mosques turn volume down on call to prayer after Hindu’s demands

MUMBAI: Before giving the call to worship, Mohammed Ashfaq Kazi, the chief preacher at Mumbai’s largest mosque, examined a decibel metre attached to the loudspeakers in an office lined with books overlooking a massive prayer hall.

“The volume of our azaan (call to prayer) has become a political issue, but I don’t want it to become a community problem,” said Kazi, one of the city’s most powerful Islamic professors.

He pointed to loudspeakers mounted on the minarets of Mumbai’s historic trading neighbourhoods’ magnificent, sand-colored Juma Masjid.

Following complaints from a local Hindu lawmaker, Kazi and three other prominent clerics from Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, said more than 900 mosques in the state’s western region had agreed to lower the level of call to prayer.

In April, Raj Thackeray, the leader of a regional Hindu party, requested that mosques and other places of worship adhere to noise regulations. If they don’t, he says his supporters would protest by chanting Hindu prayers outside mosques.

Thackeray, whose party only has one seat in the state’s 288-member parliament, said he was only demanding that noise-level court orders be followed.

“If religion is a personal concern, why are Muslims permitted to use loudspeakers every day of the year?” Thackeray spoke to media in Mumbai, India’s financial metropolis and Maharashtra’s capital.

“Come together, my beloved Hindu brothers, sisters, and mothers; be one in putting these loudspeakers down,” he added.

The action, which coincided with the holy festival of Eid, is seen by India’s 200 million Muslims as yet another attempt by extreme Hindus to undermine their rights to free worship and religious expression, with the tacit approval of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

In recent weeks, a top BJP official has begun advocating for the replacement of religious-based marriage and inheritance laws with a unified civil code, specifically targeting provisions that allow Muslim males to marry four wives.

A request for comment from the BJP on Thackeray’s effort was not returned. It denies discriminating against minorities and claims to promote progressive change for all Indians.

Kazi said he agreed to Thackeray’s requests at the Juma Masjid to decrease the chance of violence between Muslims and Hindus.

Since independence, periodic confrontations have erupted across India, most recently in 2020 when scores of people, largely Muslims, were killed in Delhi after protests against a citizenship law that Muslims said discriminated against them.

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“We (Muslims) have to keep calm and peace” while radical Hindu leaders seek to discredit Islam, Kazi remarked.

Thackeray’s idea was taken seriously by the state.

Senior police authorities met with religious leaders, including Kazi, earlier this month to guarantee that microphones were turned off, fearing clashes in Maharashtra, which has over 10 million Muslims and 70 million Hindus.

Police in Mumbai launched a criminal case against two individuals on Saturday for using loudspeakers to recite the early morning azaan, and Thackeray’s party workers were cautioned not to gather around mosques.

“We will not allow anyone to generate communal conflict in the state under any circumstances, and the court’s direction must be followed,” said VN Patil, a senior Mumbai police official.

The proposal, according to a senior official from Thackeray’s party, was not intended to target Muslims specifically, but rather to eliminate “noise pollution” generated by all places of worship.

“Our party does not satisfy the minority population,” Kirtikumar Shinde said, adding that police had issued 20,000 party workers with warnings this month.

The issue of prayer calls is not limited to Maharashtra. At three states, BJP politicians have asked local police to ban or restrict the use of loudspeakers in places of worship.

Over 60,000 unlawful loudspeakers have been removed from mosques and temples, according to the deputy chief minister of the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.