Loudspeaker Victory

“Social scientists and doctors have confirmed that unnecessary and unwanted noise leads to sleeplessness, stress, nervous disorders, leading to heart attacks. Is this what our religious institutions are doing for us? It is a most thoughtless act and definitely an anti-social activity. It is also against the law.”

“And to make matters worse, they start preaching at the top of their lungs which is very disturbing…. The government should pass a law against the misuse of the loudspeaker…” These excerpts from letters by newspaper readers – the first by H. Kishie Singh of Chandigarh, India, and the second by Shahzia Said Babar of Islamabad, Pakistan – illustrate the problem of allowing outward expressions of religiosity – of any religion -- to overshadow core values like compassion, truth, honesty, tolerance and justice.

Subhash Sharma of Amritsar writes: “If jagrata or path is performed in anyone’s residence, it becomes an unbearable trouble for all the residents in the locality. Is He (God) deaf that we have to scream? And what type of message of mental peace (do) these houses give? The administration should persuade (or pressurise) the owners of religious places not to use loudspeakers.”

Dr M. Yaqoob Bhatti of Lahore reminds newspaper readers of how Hazrat Umar (ra) directed the removal of pulpits built on raised platforms or on raised steps in the form of a chair in all mosques “on the principle that the preacher should stand on a level with the other worshippers and not sit or stand at a higher level in a haughty style.”

Most people suffer the loudspeaker menace in silence. Some speak out, like the newspaper readers quoted here. Their views are silently endorsed by most, but the prevalent view is it is best not to speak up when religion is involved. Religious leaders who privately agree that loudspeakers should not be so loud that they cause discomfort to people in the vicinity, refuse to voice these views in public. The upholders of the law and the administration ignore such complaints.

But organization and persistence can prevail as in the case of the residents of a Karachi locality recently who scored a ‘loudspeaker
victory’ after two years of complaining. The details are worth sharing.

Some time ago, they found their lives disrupted by an over-loud call to azaan, not from a mosque but from four loudspeakers illegally placed on
top of a private apartment block in their Clifton locality. Inquiries revealed that the loudspeakers belonged to a small under-construction mosque (apparently being built on a residential plot) across the road.

Residents jointly complained to the Cantonment Board office, which referred them to the police. A written complaint to the police led to a promise that the matter would be looked into, but several phone calls and a visit to the area by a police officer yielded no results. The mosque authorities contended that they had only placed the loudspeaker on the apartment block because their “minaret was under construction” and they wanted to be “of service to the neighbours”.

The police officer faithfully repeated their assertion to the complainants. The residents told him, and also pointed out in a letter to newspapers, that “There are, Alhamdolillah, many mosques in our locality. We can hear them clearly, five times a day. No individual has the right to install a loudspeaker in a private locality that is not a designated mosque, just to demonstrate their own piety. There are old people, students and small children living here; some residents have health problems. An elderly resident has trouble sleeping due to this illegality, and her brother who has heart trouble has been advised by the doctor not to visit her.”

Their letter to the editor should have made the city government take notice and action, but nothing happened. After some time, they contacted the police again, and the police officer went back to the mosque. This time he returned with the assurance that the loudspeakers would be removed, or at least their volume level lowered.

The promise was not kept. When the residents complained again, the TPO Clifton told them that “This is a problem common all over Karachi”, and that there might be ‘fatwas’ against them if they persisted. He agreed to “do something about it” when confronted with the argument that just because a wrong is widespread it does not mean that it should be passively accepted.

Finally, the fed-up residents sent a letter to the DIG Operations, with a copy to the Citizens Police Liaison, attaching copies of all the previous correspondence in the matter. A few days later, another police officer presented himself, took stock of the situation and promised to do something about it.

And he did – not by invoking the law against this illegal installation but by appealing to mosque authorities’ “moral good sense”. He spent considerable time negotiating with them he finally got them to remove the loudspeakers. But he deliberately allowed them to leave one in order to prevent the matter from being used to escalate religious tensions.

The residents agreed to consider the matter settled, despite some unease at compromising on the principle that it is illegal to place loudspeakers on a private residential building – a compromise that illustrates the government’s weakness when it comes to such matters. But at least the noise level is down, and the incident also illustrates how the refusal of citizens to allow their rights to be trampled upon in the name of religion, can prevail.