Are Egyptian mosques’ call to prayer a role model for Indonesia’s?
Giving a speech at a conference of the Indonesian Mosque Council, Indonesia’s Vice President, Dr Boediono, made this comment about the call to prayer (a.k.a. adzan) at Indonesian mosques:
I feel, and perhaps other people feel the same thing, that adzan with lower volumes and heard from long distances will touch our hearts more than the hard, loud ones.
The Vice President has a reputation for avoiding controversy, but didn’t stop there. Despite the potentially hostile audience, he also suggested that calls to prayer were “too loud”, and their volume needed to be limited/regulated.Jakarta Post
In discussion of Boediono’s speech, Indonesian mosques’ calls to prayer were compared to those in Egypt. It is said that Egyptian mosques’ calls to prayer have been “centralised”, meaning that mosques can no longer broadcast their own call to prayer, only transmit a call to prayer broadcast by a government radio station.BBC This new policy was instituted after a 2004 letter to the Egypt’s Ministry of Religious Endowments, complaining that the excessive volume of mosques’ calls to prayer ruined its true spiritual significance.BBC
Should Indonesian mosques walk call like an Egyptian mosque?
I asked a friend who has lived in both countries (and currently resides in Cairo) about his experiences in this area:
1. How successfully have Egypt’s new regulations on calls to prayer been enforced? Have you noticed any real difference?
They have never centralised the call to prayer.
They planned to, ran some trials, but general lack of enthusiasm and the revolution stopped any actual progress.
There has been no enforcement, no change at all. Everything is as loud as it once was.
The places that do it are Istanbul (Turkey) and Damascus (Syria), but I’m not 100% sure.
2. Where are the mosques louder – Indonesia (Jakarta) or Egypt (Cairo)?
Mosques are very loud in Cairo, but pretty loud in Jakarta, too.
From memory, Jakarta has fewer mosques than Cairo, where they are in every 3rd building or so it seems.
3. In both countries, is there any difference in mosque volume between larger cities and smaller cities, or more/less prosperous parts of Jakarta/Cairo?
Volume of the call to prayer essentially depends on how much money they have for amplifiers and speakers. More mosques in Cairo means louder volume.
Mosques are funded by the government, so they fund them in both poorer and richer areas.
So, in reality Indonesian mosques already/still call like an Egyptian.
Dog,
The Dutch speaking Indonesian is NON EXISTENT in Indonesia nowadays. There are some Dutch speaker in Jakarta, they are Dutch Ambassador, his wife, his staff and our beloved old chum Meneer Arie Brand. Dutch language is an archaic stuff. Trying to utter a dutch word in public speech would evoke an out loud laugh among audience. Yeah, there are of course, some students majoring law learning Dutch for research purpose, but the majority of them have no interest to learn conversational Dutch.
They are taking it to the next level now:
Indonesian Air Force to fly jet fighters to wake people for ‘sahur’
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/05/08/indonesian-air-force-to-fly-jet-fighters-to-wake-people-for-sahur.html
Copyright Indonesia Matters 2006-2025
Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Contact
BB, I already provided annecdotal evidence to suggest that far more Indonesians speak Dutch than you or I would perhaps initially imagine.
It was the same in Vietnam – “Nobody speaks French here anymore,” I blithely crowed (hey, you know, even “left-liberals” can’t help indulging in a little retrospective colonial triumphalism from time to time), until I met this French couple – “Um, actually they do…”
(Also, incidentally, go to Bangladesh and Myanmar, and you’ll find that the English has withered away; the endurance of English in middle class India and Pakistan can probably no longer reasonably be attributed principally to the colonial legacy).
Now, besides the fact that Indonesia just isn’t a literary country in the way that India is (despite being a much more literate country), there’s this:
Um, how about the single dominant (and thoroughly dreary) figure of Indonesian literature – Mr Pram?
And, um, with the exception of historians taking a almost overwhelmingly critical line –
which ones BB? You know I’m always keen for book recommendations.
And the place names – seriously, how many Indian/Pakistani place names can you cite? I’ll give you a couple: Abbotabad, Dalhousie, Sleemanabad, but those, like the handful of similar ones, are attached to a place that was completely British-built, and I’m not entirely sure if “anyone could instantly recognise as British”…
Ambassador cars are rapidly vanishing (and do you not think that 30 years ago on the streets of Indonesia you wouldn’t have found vehicles looking very much like the ones that were there 30 years earlier; and are you really basing this on a car?)
On the British atecedents of the courts and civil service, I’m pretty sure that those same things in Indonesia come from Dutch roots, don’t they? (again, you and I are not as well-placed as Arie and co to judge that).
I would say that there probably are more instantly palpable colonial relics in India than in Indonesia, but you are massively overstating the one, and massively underplaying the other….
Face it, I know that because I state something the timdog/Arie/Oigal triumvirate have a Pavlovian reaction to deny it