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Mosque council mulls ‘simultaneous’ call to prayer in Greater Jakarta
Concerns over the liberal use of mosque loudspeakers in urban centers have been a topic of profound sensitivity in Muslim-majority Indonesia, but talks are under way to bring some order to the ubiquity of mosques that have come to define the modern urban landscape.
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This picture taken on Sept. 7, 2021 shows officials inspecting a mosque's speakers in Jakarta. (AFP/Bay Ismoyo)
T
he Indonesian Mosque Council (DMI) is considering plans to have mosques in big cities broadcast the adzan (Islamic call to prayer) from a centralized source, starting with those in the Greater Jakarta area.
Concerns over the liberal use of mosque loudspeakers in packed urban centers have been a topic of profound sensitivity in the Muslim-majority country, in some cases leading to blasphemy charges against complainants.
However, talks are under way to bring some order to the ubiquity of mosques that have come to define the modern Indonesian urban landscape.
“For instance, we could centralize the adzan for Jakarta and surrounding areas within the same time zone. [The adzan] could be broadcast from the City Hall Mosque, or, perhaps more suitably, from the Istiqlal Mosque, due to it being situated in the nation’s capital,” DMI secretary-general Imam Ad Daruquthni told Tempo.co on Wednesday.
To follow through with such a plan, he said the Jakarta administration and other regional authorities would have to install receivers in every mosque sound system so they would be able to broadcast the adzan simultaneously.
A second call immediately before the prayer called iqamah would likely still be delivered by worshipers at their respective mosques and without a broadcast.
Imam said that the council had been training voluntary sound technicians to go from mosque to mosque to ensure the acoustics were tuned to comfortable levels. These volunteers would be enlisted for the free service or maintenance of mosque sound systems, for all but the most serious of hardware damage, he said.
