New Delhi: Loudspeakers have been reduced in Mumbai, India, to provoke controversy over the sound of the call to prayer by Hindus and to give the call to prayer in hundreds of mosques following their demand.
The Imam of Mumbai’s largest mosque, Muhammad Ashfaq Qazi, looked at the loudspeaker system before the call to prayer and said that the sound of our call to prayer has become a political issue, but I do not want it. Let the matter take a religious turn.
Ashfaq Qazi and three other senior Muslim religious leaders from the Indian state of Maharashtra have agreed that loudspeakers will be kept low while giving azan in 900 mosques in the western part of the state.
The decision came after complaints were lodged by local Hindu leaders.
Hindu Jamaat leader Raj Thackeray had in April demanded that mosques and other places of worship be required to keep noise under control.
He had threatened that if this was not done, his supporters would raise Hindu religious slogans outside the mosques in protest.
Talking to reporters in Mumbai, the state capital of Maharashtra, Raj Thackeray said that if religion is a personal matter then why Muslims are allowed to use loudspeakers for 365 days.
