JEDDAH — With only a couple of days left for the holy month of Ramadan to begin, demands to stop loudspeakers blaring out calls for prayers and the recitation of Qur'an in night prayers drew mixed reactions on social media. A heated debate started recently by two groups, with one of them calling on officials to ban the use of loudspeakers in mosques as they disturb people living in the neighborhoods and the other supporting the raising of volume to the loudest possible in order for the prayer calls to reach everyone in the area. Nasir Al-Shihri on his Twitter account explained that the call to prayer aired five times a day is not the issue here but rather the use of loudspeakers by many mosques in the same neighborhood simultaneously. He said the use of loudspeakers bother those living in buildings close to the mosques and that this becomes more obvious in Ramadan when the taraweeh prayers are performed every evening throughout the month. Hatim Al-Ghamdi agreed. "The noise of prayers coming from different mosques at the same time can be confusing and irritating," he said. Siraj BaHarith responded to Al-Shihri's tweet which said, "Loudspeakers were a necessity in the past when everybody did not carry a watch to know the prayer time. So announcing it through loudspeakers was advisable and nobody was annoyed." BaHarith described the tweet as an attack on faith. Turkey Al-Shalhoub supported BaHarith and said: "People have been hearing the call for prayer on loudspeakers for around 100 years and no one was ever bothered. If you do not like to hear it, please close your ears." Afrah Al-Najdiah said a quieter call to prayer is more likely to enter a person's heart rather than the noisy ones. "Our main request is to make mosque officials understand how to turn down the volume of the sound system so they become more harmonious with other mosques in the area," said Abrar Al-Harithy. Saeed Al-Obthany disagreed with Afrah and Abrar. "A mosque needs to alert the public when it's prayer time and the high-volume calls could benefit the public when the muezzin has a nice voice or when people are negligent in performing their prayers," he said. He added that some people are attempting to erase the Islamic identity of the country. "Call for prayer", known in Arabic as the adhaan, has its origin in the beginning of Islam when adherents would shout the call from rooftops. The adhaan was later called out from the minarets of mosques and has since been largely replaced by loudspeakers that amplify the call. Loudspeakers were invented in the early 1900s and they were introduced in mosques in the 1930s to call for prayer and deliver Friday sermons.
