Thursday, February 14, 2008

Oxford Call to prayer: Pass the diazepam smartish

Oh gaw blimey. The BBC are at it again. PM had a report on the Oxford Call to prayer thingey (after reading Jock Coats' summary of the situation, I refuse to call it a "controversy" or anything else similar).

The BBC reporter, Christopher Landau (who interviewed the Archbishop of Canterbury about Sharia law) characterised the pressure for an amplified call to prayer in terms unrecognisable from Jock Coats' observation from the locality:

Apparently, no such "request" has been made. What happened is that a well known local figure in "inter-faith relations" a retired Christian minister who did things like organize an interfaith cricket match after 9/11 and similar things, thought one day what a jolly good thing it would be to have the call to prayer sung out from our new city mosque. He went to the Imam and suggested it and they agreed to present a petition to the council. A petition, get this, apparently of two, yes, more than one, less than three, signatures - that of the interfaith dialogue chappy and the Imam himself.

The Imam had not consulted or particularly mentioned it to anyone else, and speaking to a couple of Muslim city councillors seems to confirm that there's been no popular movement, nor do they feel they want one, to get them the call to prayer - the responses seemed to be along the lines of - "do you think we're stupid, we know when we're supposed to pray and don't need reminding".

I notice from the BBC report that there is a newly elected Imam, at the Mosque in question, who accepts that the proper consultation process has not been followed to date.

Why on earth it all has to be blown out of proportion a year before any planning application is likely to come forward is beyond me. Well, it isn't actually. Journalists need to put bread on thier tables.

Allan Chapman, a historian at the university, commented that most of the letters about the non-existent hypothetical planning application (always the worst sort, of course) mentioned "it" being the "thin end of the wedge". I thought he was being ironic or was in favour of the call to prayer. It turned out that he is leading the campaign against "it". Surely that is the whole point? "It" is not the "thin end of the wedge" but people jump up and down like Mexican beans thinking it is.

Landau (he is never taken for a ride by anyone presumably) mentioned that there has been an amplified call to prayer from a mosque in Whitechapel road, East London for twenty years with no complaints, which rather puts things in perspective, with the proviso that presumably the relevant area in East London has different demographics than Oxford.

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