A European friend of mine, The G. Wagner, who has been long-stay living in an Indonesian neighborhood in the north of Bandung, frustrating with was very high noisy volume loudspeakers, bad sound system, and also almost more than 5 times a day. This comes from the Mosque nearby his house.
Moslems have obligation to perform at least five times a day to pray, which are at around 4.30 am, 1200am, 03.30 am 17.50 pm, and 1900pm. So almost every mosque here utters called Adzan (Pray Call) as high as possible with the assumption can be heard by every Muslim elsewhere. Of course, there is not every mosque can prepare someone who has a good voice and sing a beautiful Adzan song, then anyone can do that to sing the Adzan.
“Look at that Ali, if only five times a day and each only five minutes that was fine. But near my house, people call to pray at 02.30 am with high volume. And what another worst was if early in the morning and in the late afternoon, the young kids used high mosque microphones and sing very bad songs, with no good tune, no melody, and very bad voices as well, and that was a terrible thing”, Wagner complaining.
“For me, that was not expressing praise to the God but that was humiliating God”, he added. Wagner measured how the people do in the church, but here in Indonesia since it is praising God the ability to sing does not important, but people accepted it.
Although vice President Budiono in his address to the Board of Indonesia Mosque Meeting implied that Adzan was so nice to hear in softly voice and from far away, he wanted to regulate.
But, this is in Jakarta, a Dutch guy, who lived in an apartment, complained to the imam about the call of prayer, “Can you keep the noise down!” the imam said you need to respect local customs, and if the Dutchman didn’t like it, He should move. The imam could have got angry and told the locals and had the Dutchman raced out of town. Instead, He didn’t get angry and told the man He should find a quiet apartment.
