Israel endorses bill to silence Muslim call to prayer

Israeli ministers on Sunday endorsed a contentious draft bill which Muslims say is meant to silence the traditional call to prayer, information released by the justice ministry showed.

A list of draft legislation put to the vote in the powerful ministerial committee on legislation marked the "bill for prevention of noise from public address systems in houses of prayer" as having "passed".

It gave no further details.

Approval by the committee, chaired by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the far-right Jewish Home party, means that the draft will now go before parliament as a government bill.

While its heading makes no mention of any specific religion, the bill has become commonly known as the "muezzin law" after the lay Muslim officials charged with calling the faithful to prayer, often through powerful speakers mounted on minarets.

An earlier draft was rejected because it might have silenced the siren sounded in Jewish areas at sunset on Friday to mark the start of the Sabbath.

The revised version bans amplified sound nightly, from 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) to 7:00 am, limiting its scope to the first of the five daily Muslim calls to prayer just before dawn.

"This law does not deal with noise nor with quality of life, just with racist incitement against a national minority," Israeli Arab MP Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint Arab List, said in a statement.

"The voice of the muezzin was heard here long before the racists of the (Prime Minister Binyamin ) Netanyahu government and will after them," he said.

This law does not deal with noise nor with quality of life, just with racist incitement against a national minority. - Ayman Odeh

In November, Palestinian activist Ghassan Munair told The New Arab that the law was unwarranted and existing noise nuisance regulations could be used to find a solution.

"There is no need for a new law because there already is a law in place that bans excessive noise. Officials could apply this law by working with mosques and coming to an understanding," Munair said at the time.

"I think this is earlier to implement because you can't ban the call to prayer as it is a fundamental Islamic ritual, however, it is possible for it to be at a volume that is suitable for all."

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has spoken against the bill, which has sparked outrage around the Arab and wider Muslim world, agreeing with Munair that existing noise pollution regulations could provide a solution.

If passed into law, the bill would apply to mosques in annexed Arab east Jerusalem as well as Israel, but not to the highly sensitive al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam's third holiest site, according to an Israeli official.