The Blue Mosque in New-West Amsterdam wants to become the first mosque in Amsterdam to amplify their call to prayer with loudspeakers. This would only apply to the Friday call to prayer.
On their Facebook page on Tuesday, the Blue Mosque announced that they wanted to amplify their Friday call to prayer. Their reason for doing so is to normalise Islam, and to make it a more visible part of Amsterdam “Amsterdam, the most tolerant city,” is the perfect place to do this for the first time, according to the main Imam at the mosque, Yassin Elforkani.
Twitter, of course, had plenty to say about the development. Stephen de Wijn says that those who don’t live near the mosque should pay attention to what the nearby residents think- which appears to be mainly positive.
Misschien moet iedereen die niet in #Amsterdam (Nieuw-West) of in de buurt van ‘n #moskee woont zijn PVV-gevormde mening voor zich houden. Wellicht vinden de mensen in de buurt het wel lekker; “hé, is het al zo laat? Bijna het #vrijdaggebed gemist”. #blauwemoskee #liveandletlive
— Stephen de Wijn (@Stephen_de_Wijn) October 8, 2019
Whereas Darry Lavid is planning on bringing his organ to Marrakesh to normalise the Dutch culture.
Ik ga volgende week met mijn draaiorgel in een woonwijk van Marrakesh staan om de Nederlandse cultuur te normaliseren. #Islam #blauwemoskee
— Darry Lavid ?? (@DarryLavidNL) October 9, 2019
In the same post, the mosque says that they want to talk to local residents about this decision. The meeting will be this Sunday at 5pm in the mosque. Some people who were asked in the street about this change by AT5 said they would need to get used to it. Others were positive about the change.
Would you say Amsterdam is a tolerant city? Let us know in the comments below.
That’s wrong on many levels.
And don’t get me wrong: I’m a proud citizen of the multicultural and tolerant Amsterdam, but it’s not by allowing anyone to blast their call to prayer through loudspeakers that a city shows how tolerant it is. For several reasons:
1. Unlike many other places in Europe, Muslims have already plenty of places to pray here. It’s one of the few cities in Europe where plans to build a mosque aren’t met by the open opposition of the majority of the citizens worried about “cultural replacement” bullshit. Islam is already normalised: we have mosques, we have representatives in the city council, you don’t need to blast your call to prayer to the whole neighbourhood to further normalise it.
2. Even though many Muslims live in the Nieuwe-West area, the majority of the people living in the area is non-Muslim. Many of them will inevitably feel a sense of alienation if forced to listen every week to an unfamiliar call to prayer, and the sense of alienation is the seed of intolerance. Instead of normalising things, they risk turning into intolerants the residents of a traditionally tolerant city.
3. If we allow Muslim calls to prayer to be blasted from a loudspeaker, then it makes sense to allow similar macroscopic displays of faith even when it comes to other cults. The risk is to easily transform a tolerant but secular city into a religious Babylon, and I’m not sure about other residents but that’s not what I want. We tolerate everybody’s beliefs here, but tolerance doesn’t mean that everyone is allowed to turn this place into an exact copy of their own town.