Muslims must give up azaan by loudspeakers. Even Prophet would have rejected it
From both religious and practical point of views, there is no justification for using loudspeakers at mosques for azaan recital.
An unseemly controversy has been breaking out every now and then for the last few years regarding azaan. Recently, the vice-chancellor of Allahabad University, Sangita Srivastava, complained to the district magistrate that the early morning azaan disturbed her sleep, which affected her productivity at work. Earlier, in 2017, singer Sonu Nigam was in the eye of a storm for tweeting, “I am not a Muslim and I have to be woken up by the Azaan in the morning. When will this forced religiousness end in India.” But the story of how the azaan should be rendered has a complicated history — from the Prophet himself choosing a human voice instead of a mechanical device, to the Muslim community seeing loudspeakers as shaitan in the 1970s.
Azaan is the Muslim call to prayer, made five times a day from a mosque, for believers to join the congregational prayer. Prophet Muhammad instituted this practice after he migrated to Medina, and built a mosque there. As to the method of calling people to the mosque for the five periodic prayers, he deliberated the issue with his companions. Some suggested ringing a bell, some blowing a horn, and some lighting a fire. But, under divine inspiration, the Prophet decided on the human voice, and chose a manumitted Black slave, Bilal, for making the call.
The human voice, even if it were the baritone of Bilal, couldn’t be as loud and couldn’t go as far as the mechanically produced sound of a bell or a horn. Yet, the Prophet chose the low-decibel human voice over the high-decibel mechanical sound. Clearly, there is a lesson in it for his followers who should consider whether the mechanically amplified sound of a loudspeaker remains the human voice that the Prophet might approve of. They would also do well to reflect on whether attaching religious import to the use of such a contraption amounts to a reprehensible novelty called bid’at, — that is, an innovation which distorts the religion.
Thus, from the religious point of view, there is no justification for the loudspeaker. In2020, the Allahabad High Court said that though azaan was essential to the Islamic religious practice, the use of loudspeakers was not. This court drew upon the Supreme Court’s judgment of 2000 in the Church of God (Full Gospel) in India vs. KKR Majestic, wherein it was observed that “no religion or religious sect can claim that the use of loudspeakers or similar instruments for prayers or for worship or for celebrating religious festivals is an essential part of the religion which is protected under Article 25”. After all, loudspeaker is a 20th-century invention, but the religions are millennia old.Reformation. It calls for relocation
Do Muslims need loudspeakers?
Azaan is intended for Muslims. That it falls on non-Muslim ears is an inadvertence. Its efficacy could be verified by the response it evokes to bring the believers to the mosque. A random peek in any mosque during the prayer time would show that not many Muslims respond to the call. The footfall in the mosque is negligible except for the midday Friday prayer. And those who regularly go there five times a day do not actually depend on the azaan to be reminded of the prayer time. Even if they did, they need not in this age and time when most have a watch on their wrist, and a smartphone in their pocket where they can get numerous Islam apps to set off the azaan at the appointed hours. If there ever was a functional justification for reciting the azaan from a loudspeaker, such apps have put paid to it. It is an anachronism that gives the impression of tardy modernisation of the Muslim community.
The ubiquity of loudspeakers in the mosque is of fairly recent origin. In the 1970s, it started becoming pervasive. First, it was installed as a bauble of superficial modernity to reflect the self-esteem of the local community, which, in its growing affluence, couldn’t be seen lagging behind the neighbouring Muslim community, which had already fitted their mosques with loudspeakers. However, it was always met with much scepticism and some resistance because it was not only seen as an intrusion of modernity in the timeless space of religion, but the blaring sound was also regarded as shaitani awaz — devilish sound — which was not fit for the sanctity of a mosque.
Today, it is seen as a way of asserting the Muslim community’s presence in public space. This not-too-veiled sentiment is not lost on India’s majority community either. Therefore, the resentment against it, which is deeper than what its sporadic expression suggests, is not against the call to prayer per se, but against the loud, in-your-face stamping of an identity-obsessed self-othered presence. Posturing of assertion is not the best formula for amity.
