@RichardDawkins 1) Some church bells sound nice. Others clang annoyingly and sound like a hammer smacking a cooking pot. Sometimes the adhan (Muslim call to prayer) is delivered in an aurally pleasing way by the muadhan (the man who calls). At other times it can be a terrible affront to the ear.
@RichardDawkins 2) Muslims don't like to think of the adhan as "singing," but in fact in many countries the adhan is delivered in one of the Arabic maqams—musical scales used in traditional music of the Middle East/Arab World. It can have a very musical quality, depending on the muadhan's skill.
@RichardDawkins 3) In Syria one can commonly hear, for example, an adhan chanted in the "bayat maqam," the same musical scale that you would hear in many typical Fayruz songs. In more puritanical contexts, like in Saudi Arabia, the adhan can be simply spoken rather than chanted.
@RichardDawkins 4) There is a great degree of tension in Islam regarding music, as some hadith are interpreted to mean that all music is forbidden by Islam. I know young Muslims who purchased musical instruments they wanted to learn to play, but kept them hidden from their parents out of fear.
@RichardDawkins 5) This can obviously explain the reticence to acknowledge the musical quality of the adhan—though it is obvious—and the readiness of those of a Salafi tendency to reject musical adhans.
@RichardDawkins 6) The point is that an adhan can sometimes be as movingly beautiful as any form of sacred chant. At other times, it can be a terrible affront to the ear. Giant loudspeakers placed on minarets can assault nearby homes unlucky enough to be positioned adjacent to the mosque.
@RichardDawkins 7) Another problem is that in recent decades a lot of money has been used by governments—hoping to appease religious constituencies—or by wealthy individuals to build an inordinate number of mosques that far surpass the amount of space needed for worship in a given city.
@RichardDawkins 8) Cities like Damascus, therefore, have many mosques that are almost completely empty of worshipers, but they were built by some man trying to score points with God, as the construction of a mosque is considered a significant act of piety.
@RichardDawkins 9) If you are standing in a city quarter where say 20 mosques are all located in your immediate vicinity, all equipped with loudspeakers that were not used by the Prophet, the resulting cacophony of simultaneous adhans delivered in differing styles is an aural assault indeed.
@RichardDawkins 10) Because of this recent mosque-boom, more often than not this barrage is the case in many major cities today. Being inside the city at prayer time is a very different experience than, say, sitting on Muqatam Mountain and hearing multiple simultaneous adhans from a distance.
@RichardDawkins 11) Further, the expression "Allahu Akbar" is used alike by the muadhan calling an ordinary community to prayer, the terrorist blowing himself up, and the Christian Arab grandmother who opens the fridge and is startled to see that her plate of leftover cheese grew mold overnight.
@RichardDawkins 12) So, summarizing the above: both bells or adhans can sound nice or appalling, depending on a number of factors, and the expression "Allahu Akbar" carries a quality of aggressiveness only when used with aggressive intent.
@RichardDawkins 13) As both church bells and adhans can differ in their degree of aural beauty, I would suggest that it is less useful to compare the value of different forms of aesthetics and more profitable to focus on the evaluation of ideas of inclusivity/exclusivity, and pluralism.
@RichardDawkins 14) While comparisons of aesthetics are fruitless, by mentioning bells vs. adhan you have inadvertently touched upon a relevant issue for pluralism, namely how Islamic law long maintained positions preventing Christians from using church bells that could be heard publicly.
@RichardDawkins 15) In other words, in a context that lacked a framework of real pluralism, the right to dominate public aural space and be heard was contested, and the ascendant group saw a need to dominate it.
@RichardDawkins 16) The ability of the ascendant group to use the adhan to assert supremacy vis-à-vis non-Islamic minorities in public space is definitely worth discussing (and critiquing—in a balanced way).
@RichardDawkins 17) Christians and other religious minorities (in Muslim-majority regions) have long perceived the construction of mosques near their religious and community centers to be deliberate acts of conquest and dominance.
@RichardDawkins 18) The broadcasting of the adhan into religious minority spaces can be the aural component accompanying the visual dominance asserted by the mosque's size.
@RichardDawkins 19) In the Palestinian Christian village of Zababde, the only majority-Christian town in the northern West Bank, the Muslim minority built an exceedingly tall minaret—possibly the tallest in Palestine. Christians there understood this to be a deliberate statement—as though the >
@RichardDawkins 20) < Muslim community needed to assert dominance through architecture, not in a center of Muslim community, but specifically in a Christian community center full of church steeples now dwarfed by the new tower touching-the-sky.
@RichardDawkins 21) The real issue we should be discussing, therefore, is not aesthetics (which are clearly subjective), but pluralism. The need that some religious people have for superiority—to prove that their religion is the best: this is the real problem that we must confront.
@RichardDawkins 22) Believing that one is more in God's favor than someone else, or that one's afterlife will be one of bliss while another's is full of suffering—such views are not merely relevant to the next life but necessarily impact how people perceive and treat each other in this world.
@RichardDawkins 23) Beliefs have a tangible impact on how people live and approach the other. If I believe that I am walking in God's path while all those who do not share my beliefs are living in error, I will inevitably view those different from me through some lens of condescension.
@RichardDawkins 24) Your praise of medieval cathedrals suggests that you believe that religion can produce good things. In that case, shouldn't we work on improving our religious systems, promoting pluralism, and eliminating the exclusivist ideas that still afflict us and contribute to division?
