Mosques in Mumbai, India’s economic hub, have decided to respond to demands from extremist Hindus to reduce the volume of loudspeakers following police intervention.
Imam Muhammad Ashfaq Qazi of Mumbai’s largest mosque says that the sound of our call to prayer has become a political issue but I do not want it to take a religious turn now. Ashfaq Qazi has a significant influence on the Muslim population of the West Coast city of India.
Ashfaq Qazi and three other senior Muslim religious leaders in 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.
Muslim extremists in India are calling the decision another attempt by Hindu extremists to restrict their religious freedom and rights.
It may be recalled that Raj Thackeray, leader of the local Hindu Jamaat, had in April demanded that mosques be required to keep the volume of loudspeakers within a certain range. He had threatened that if this was not done, his supporters would raise Hindu religious slogans outside the mosques in protest.
According to Reuters, the BJP did not respond to an attempt by Maharashtra’s Raj Thackeray to reduce the volume of loudspeakers in mosques.
Earlier, a senior leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party also called for changes in marriage and inheritance laws to be made according to a uniform civil code instead of religion, which aims to have four marriages for Muslim men. Is to target the freedom of