Indonesia to reduce noise from mosques

balinews

Indonesia has set up a new team to reduce noise from mosques, an official said on Thursday, as places of worship go into overdrive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. There are about 800,000 mosques in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, but residents living nearby have long complained that their speakers are too loud. Places of worship become particularly active during Ramadan, which this year runs from mid-June to mid-July, when mosques blare out religious sermons even earlier than usual. In an attempt to tackle the issue, Indonesia’s vice-president, Jusuf Kalla, who also heads of an umbrella group for many of its mosques, has formed a team to sample the noise from mosque loudspeakers across the country, his spokesman Husain Abdullah said. “The idea is for mosques to turn down the volume a little so that the sound can be heard only by residents in the immediate area,” he said, adding that the aim was to have a “more harmonious, melodious sound coming from mosques”. He also said that mosques should ensure that the sounds they produced did not clash with other local noise. There was often a “loudspeaker war” between places of worship in the same area trying to outdo each other, he said. Indonesia bids to muffle noisy mosques | World news | The Guardian

Mark

Thank goodness for this. I imagine it is bad in many places in Indonesia but the business hotels in Jakarta seem to be targeted by the small local mosques with their speakers aimed up to the hotel at full volume and then not only announcing the call to prayer at 4am or so, but also an hour following of prayers through the loudspeakers. Given that there are at least 3 to 4 such mosques in the vicinity of each hotel, it is a total cacophony and even if you wanted to you couldn't understand any words being spoken. I lived for many years in Abu Dhabi and while on a per square kilometer basis they have many times more mosques than Jakarta, they were courteous enough to tone down the sound in the early morning hours and limited the transmission to the relatively short call to prayer only.