It’s open to musical interpretation, IMO. They definitely don’t “shout”. They don’t “sing”, either. I’m not sure what is the appropriate word, but it’s certainly musical. They “vocalize”, perhaps?
Same thing here. But perhaps I would think differently if I was living 20 yards away from a church or mosque.
Bells usualy don’t awake me, though. Even in the little village were I spend some vacations, though the church is quite close. Possibly the call to prayer wouldn’t awake me, either, once I would be accustomed to it.
After listening to that sound file, I personally would probably find the call to prayer much more annoying for two reasons.
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I don’t know what is being sung. I would spend invaluable time trying to make sense of words I can’t pronounce much less translate. I would create pronunciations that are so far off track that websites would be created mocking my inability to pronounce those words. “I think I heard a “bling” in there…didn’t it sound like that to you?”
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As a musician, my ear gets irritated when I have to listen to music that doesn’t seem to have a melody and also wanders off pitch for no apparent reason. I risk being called all sorts of names, but I prefer Western musical sounds. Staying on pitch is important to my brain, and pattern is important to my brain. Instead of a single bell, many churches use a carillon (usually a tinny recording) that will play a line or two of a hymn. While these are usually not my favorite hymns, at least there is a tune to follow. Perhaps after months of listening to the call to prayer I would get used to the pattern, but that’s after months of annoying sound.
My church rings its bell only on Sunday mornings, and not very regularly. When I lived next door to the church, it was a bit loud at first, but not fly out of bed loud. Now that I live five blocks away, I enjoy hearing the sound waft across on the morning breeze. When I hear any of the church bells in town ring during the week, I know that someone’s funeral has just ended, and I can send out a thought or a prayer for their families. And when the one church plays its carillon at noon, I at least know what time it is.
This is a fairly local issue for me, although not anywhere near close enough that I’d be personally affected. What the linked article left out was all the hating trash talk we’ve been hearing on the news about this. Obviously, the cameras go for the most controversial stuff, so instead of seeing the nice lady who’s concerned about the noise levels considering they plan on hanging loudspeakers everywhere in town, we get the racist freaks screaming about how ‘they could change the words and be telling each other terrorist stuff and we’d never know!’ :rolleyes:
Yeah, I’ve lived near trains, worked nights while living next to an elementary playground, lived near churches that rang bells and bought a home 3 miles from a major airport, one adjusts. The noise level being talked about is “loud enough to be heard above normal background noise in a home” just like most trains or garbage trucks or church bells are. Initially disturbing, sure, but anything that regular quickly fades out of your awareness.
It’s been really sad seeing how ugly some of my friends and coworkers are while trying to rationalize their objections to this one.
Kittenblue, all of your objections are based on you personally- your musical tase and what you find annoying. Something more consistent would be fairer.
If an Islamic Call to Prayer blasted five times a day was the worst thing about living in Hamtramck, Hamtramck would be a hell of a nice place to live.
What about church bells clanging at 6 am, as per the OP article? Are most people already awake then? If so, what’s the big deal about the muzzein sounding off at 5?
As for the esthetics of the two sounds, I don’t find the shrieking of sirens all that musical. It’s not all that musical when Claudia the Vunderhund decides to sing along, either. Being very near a major road minutes from the main trauma center in the area, we hear both sounds in the middle of the night on a regular basis. It’s something of a pain in the arse, but it’s part of living near other people.
Besides, as others have pointed out, you get to the point where you don’t even really hear certain sounds any longer. They’re so standard they just become part of the background. When I lived with my parents, it was the traffic from the toll road that practically ran through our yard. When I lived in the dorms, it was the stereo down the hall and the frat parties across the complex. When I lived in my first apartment, it was the trains blowing their whistles as they went through the crossing a hundred yards from my window. When I lived above the grooming shop, it was the dogs barking incessantly downstairs. People adjust, you know?
Maybe where you live… when I was in college, the church in town (about 1/2 a mile from my dorm) had speakers that amplified sound very well. The bells rang on the hour and 1/2 hour from 8am to 8pm. Loudly. And every Sunday, between 6pm and 6:30pm they would play “songs” non-stop. I dunno, maybe people five miles away thought the music was “pretty” but it was horribly distracting if you say, wanted to have the window of your airconditioner-less room open in warm weather and hear anything else or do a paper. Every friggin week…
Put me in the how-about-they-get-rid-of-both camp; I didn’t think the wav sounded like anything I’d want to hear 5 times a day, either.
Hanging speakers all over town? Whoa. I find most of the calls I’ve heard highly annoying. the changing pitches remind me of cats fighting. I’m sure a pleasing version exists but that is not what the town commissioners are voting on. Once permission is granted it will get unquestioned protection and any version can be used.
The local equivalent wouldn’t fly too far so I don’t see why this should either. I don’t want to hear 10 minutes of someone yelling “I love Jesus” every day. What this will ultimately lead to is a bunch of fundamentalist Christian churches looking for equal loud speaker time.
I live right next to a church and I can barely hear the bells. They are also discrete in tone and quality of sound. While it is subjective to say what is, or isn’t annoying it is common for communities to enact and enforce their own standards for noise. It is something that should at the very least be brought to a vote because it is the town as a whole that will be subjected to it, not just the commissioners.
Noise pollution is something that can be controlled. There is no excuse for disturbing the peace and that includes amplified church bells. This is not a religious issue, it is community standards issue.
Maybe, but I put up with emergency tests on cable TV every week and a nuclear plant testing its sirens ever week on Thursday. Where I live, I might not even hear the “call to prayer”. I’ll take the chance to hear the “call to prayer” vs what I hear now and can’t avoid twice a week …
I start from the premise that I don’t want to hear ANY noise at all. Then I move from there to the position that I recognise that some noise (like that of traffic) is unavoidable.
Calls to prayer and bells are avoidable. They do not fulfill any essential function therefore they should not be allowed if they disturb local residents.
They are also different from each other. The call to prayer goes out before the prayer time. It is telling people that they must now pray. I disagree with this. I disagree with all cases of religion publicly telling people what to do. If someone wants to pray at 5am they can set their alarm clock. What does it have to do with me?
To me this is similar to the Saudi religious police or the taliban going round telling people what to wear etc. It’s one of the things about islam that I don’t like and one of the things that islam does a lot of - the idea that they can tell people what to do. Obviously the call to prayer is not exactly the same as having a religious police but what I mean is it’s the same kind of thing - it just differs in terms of degree.
Church bells are not telling people to do something. They ring after the ceremony usually but I still disagree with them because they are non-essential noise. If they are occasional, like for a wedding, and they happen in the middle of the day then that’s one thing.
I’ve stayed in villages where the bells ring every hour on the hour all fucking night. It’s not a question of “You should get used to it”. If the bells weren’t ringing then I wouldn’t have to get used to it. If I want to know what the time is I will look at a clock.
I once went to Kashmir. There was some kind of festival going on. The call to prayer went on ALL NIGHT every night. And I was several miles from the mosque but I could hear it loud and clear.
The question of whether it is aesthetically pleasing or not is irrelevant. If you like the sound then go buy a CD of it and listen to it in your house. Do not presume to interfere with my peace by blaring it out from loudspeakers.
I don’t want to hear about your silly religious beliefs. Am I allowed to rig loudspeakers to my house and blast out Black Sabbath five times a day? No? Well then you are not allowed to blast out your ideas about God either.
It is non-essential noise. End of story.
I thought the OP was asking us which sound we would find more annoying. I thought I answered that, with reasons. To be fair, I listened to the sound file first. How is my answer unfair? Isn’t an opinion what is asked for in this forum?
Towns in rural north Japan do have loudspeakers dotted around the town. There are regular announcements and music played occasionally. Worst of all, every school holiday in my village had my recorded voice telling the kids to go in for dinner!! (luckily I was usually in another country all holiday). I have also lived in Iran where we used to hear the mosques everyday, but from a distance, usually prerecorded. I think that they are both noise pollution. If loud speakers weren’t used for churches and mosques, then they would be less of a problem.
We also have an alarm clock in the shape of a mosque and, you guessed it, the alarm is the call to prayer - needless to say, it never gets used (a joke gift).
It appears, from what I’ve seen in the local (to Detroit) media, that the majority of the citizens are not going to have any problem with the proposal and that the city council is going to approve of it.
Of course, “most folks are not concerned” does not make good headlines, so we see lots of interviews with those who are either clearly loonies (secret messages over the loudspeakers) or who are simply terrified by their own xenophobia.
It does not seem to be a big issue, to me.
My reasoning was as follows:
Muslims: “If the local religions have church bells, which make a loud sound, then we should be allowed to make loud religious sounds, as well.”
Christians: “Aaaah! Aaaaah! Heathens! No, no, no, no, no!”
Unconcerned locals: “Who cares?”
Concerned locals: “Man, I don’t want to listen to that nonsense all day and all night.”
Local officials whose job it is to make everyone happy: “All right. We have church bells, on multiple churches. If the Muslims wanna install bells in their mosque, peachy. No? They wanna call to prayer, just like back in Sandland? Okay. You can do it, but you can be no louder, earlier, or later than any of the other religious noises that people have been putting up with for generations. No, it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s as close to fair as we are likely to get.”
I liked the call to prayer in Morocco, but they don’t amplify.
Especially in Fes, where we stayed in the medina, in thevicinity of 300 mosques, it was quite weird hearing it in a sort of overlapping stereo, but not really invasive.
Living in Ireland, you get angelus bells, bells all Sunday morning, plus lots of churches have clocks which chime on the hour.
It wouldn’t bother me, like all these things, you filter the noise out after a while.
At the mosque near my office in Dearborn, they amplify, and it sounds like crap. Reminiscent of Blackhawk Down. Also, I am sure that many muslims have heard of ‘wrist-watches’, and no longer need a yodelling prayer-alert, 5 frigging times a day.
The local church restricts their bell-tolling to Sunday ~10am. (Get-ready-for-Brunch alert!) Why couldn’t the mosque(s) do the same on whatever day?
This all comes down to cultural integration. Some immigrants just ain’t doing it, and that is bound to cause problems.