JAKARTA – The highest Muslim council of Indonesia has called for a reviewof the guidelines on the use of loudspeakers at mosques.
The move comes after concerns and complaints from members of the public inthe world’s largest Muslim-majority country.
The vast Indonesian archipelago, where over 80 percent of the 270 millionpopulation professes Islam, has nearly 625,000 mosques. Most of the mosquesuse loudspeakers to air azan, or call to prayer, and sermons. Many of themhave poor acoustics and set the volume high, resulting in complaints overnoise pollution.
The country’s Religious Affairs Ministry released a decree in 1978, whichserves as guidelines on the use of mosque loudspeakers. In the fatwa issuedearlier this month, the Indonesian Ulema Council said it was necessary to“refresh” these guidelines for present social dynamics and to preventdiscord.
The edict was welcomed by the country’s Religious Affairs Minister YaqutCholil Qoumas as “very important to provide a greater insight for mosquemanagement to use loudspeakers more wisely.”
Masduki Baidlowi, one of the council’s leaders and spokesperson forIndonesian Vice President Ma’ruf Amin, said over the weekend that religiousscholars had identified uncontrolled use of mosque loudspeakers as agrowing public concern.
“We took note that it has become a problem, especially in heterogenous,urban spaces,” Baidlowi said. “The guidelines have been there for long butare not executed properly.”
He gave as an example Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, where the populationwas more homogenous decades ago, but times have changed as the country’sbiggest city has since become home to new residents of various religiousbackgrounds.
“Contextually, for example, Jakarta used to have a homogeneous populationof Betawi people, but now it has developed into a heterogeneous society,”Baidlowi said, referring to the city’s native inhabitants, who arepredominantly Muslim.
Read Top Stories
In Jakarta, there are nearly 7,000 mosques in an area of 661.5 squarekilometers that is home to some 11 million people — currently, about 20percent of them are non-Muslim.
“We have to use (the speakers) properly, we can’t do it as we please,” saidMiftahul Huda, the council’s fatwa commission secretary. “Even though theintention is good, it could be disturbing, and we don’t want that tohappen.”
The issue of mosque loudspeaker volume has also been repeatedly raised byIndonesia’s former Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who chairs the IndonesianMosque Council.
One of the council’s main programmess for 2017-22 has been fixing acousticsystems at mosques. It has already repaired and adjusted them at more than52,000 mosques.
Complaints about the volume of mosque loudspeakers and their use in theearly hours, even before the call to prayer, have led to severalcontroversies.
Muslim actress Zaskia Adya Mecca faced a public backlash in April this yearafter an Instagram post in which she asked whether it was ethical to usemosque loudspeakers as an “exuberant” wakeup call for suhoor, a pre-dawnmeal consumed during the fasting month of Ramadan.
In August 2018, a Buddhist woman in North Sumatra was charged withblasphemy and sentenced to 18 months in prison after she complained aboutthe volume of a nearby mosque’s call to prayer. She was released on parolein May 2019.