Friends in England lived in a village, next to a church where the bells chimed the time, even on the quarter hour. I quickly got used to it when I stayed in the 90s, and was sorry to hear that the rich newcomers of recent years had demanded it be curtailed. I also grew up under a flight path, have stayed with family who lived next to railway lines, and now live close to a freeway. I know which sound I prefer to be burdened with.
No they don't! 😂"History is now and England," said T.S. Eliot, and, being from Missouri, he was more English than the English. 😂 Brent, ever seen the Waldorf Salad episode of Fawlty Towers? 😂
Our local church (in the UK) does this and it’s fine (I barely notice it). But when the Queen died the bell tolled all day the following day and by around 3pm it was driving me nuts. I went from appreciating it to wondering when it would stop to being absolutely savage.
Learned something new about the stained glass windows in Turkey Brent! As a Muslim American, I hear you on the question of why the athdan needs to play for each prayer. I’ve been to Turkey and Malaysia too, and found the sounds beautiful but then I return to the suburbs here and there’s no sounds at all, even though there’s a mosque down the street. For Muslims, the call to prayer is like a reminder, a visceral reminder, “come to prayer, come to success.” The translation of the Arabic is interesting to me as a non-native speaker. I think it’s saying there’s something more than this world… but I can imagine how annoying the call could be if you just need to sleep. There’s actually noise pollution all around us, every time we go to a store, a cafe, anywhere, but the athan is also over in less than 5 minutes which I like too. I loved hearing church bells as a kid but I never hear them anymore.
Thank you. I've wondered how strange it would be to grow up with the call to prayer, and then move somewhere where it's not there. Very strange, I bet!
I grew up in New York City, so never really heard the call to prayer outside in public except when I traveled abroad. The human voice — agh! It’s so powerful, it’s like a siren going off.
I liked your article for how it captured multiple perspectives rather than sticking to just one side, it showed understanding and open mindedness.
At a deeper level, I resonated strongly with the article because it reflected my ambivalence not just towards the azaan but towards religion itself.
There is so much beauty in the different expressions of faith - the haunting call of the azaan, beautiful mosques and churches, religious art, hymns in Orthodox churches.
And yet - is it beautiful if it involves imposition of one's own preferences on others?
I was born and raised in Iran before the Islamic Revolution. Back then 5 times a day someone from the mosque had to climb the minaret to sing the call to prayer. Seen anyone at the top of a minaret these days?
A singing voice is pleasant to hear and it carries so far. Now they have craggily loud speakers on auto-timers that serves no practical purpose. Devout muslims have iPhones and wake up for pray at home without a call.
Several years ago, I stayed in a hotel room directly across from a church in Venice where they rang the bell every morning. The first morning I jumped out of bed and nearly hit the ceiling, but after a few days I got used to it and end up liking it.
I spent a month in Istanbul and never got used to the call to prayer from the mosques' loudspeaker. It sounds awful and is just a nuisance. I hope you can find a way to get some rest.
Yes, I have mixed-to-negative feelings about these loudspeakers. I've climbed to the top of several minarets, and I think it would be quite the honor to do that every morning. Plus, the beauty of the "real" sound, as you say.
I am slowly adjusting, thank you. Funny how the brain works.
While visiting my friend in Istanbul, upon the commencement of the call to prayer, she looked up, then at me and said, “ these are our church bells.” That's how I've viewed the call to prayer ever since.
Tangentially connected: this makes me want to re-listen to The The's 1989 album MIND BOMB. One song begins with a recording of the call to prayer. I listened to that album A LOT in my first year of college.
What a gorgeous and thoughtful piece. I really enjoyed this - your epiphany at the end, about how travel leads you to realizing how many other ways there are to do things in the world, is very relatable too. For me, the "right way" to do things had always been the Western way and I had internalized so much inferiority as a Western Muslim. Travelling to Turkey in the summer of 2022 was only the second time I had been in a non-Western environment as an adult. And It gave me this epiphany that the things I did and believed didn't get their worth from their adjacency to white-centrism. Sounds obvious now, but it was life changing for me.
Thank you! Appreciate that -- Michael is a fan of your Substack too.
I've loved all of my travels, but my trips to Muslim countries have been among the most interesting. I guess it's because it's here that my attitudes have shifted the most.
Michael has been so kind about my Substack - I geeked out big time when I saw him engaging because I've been reading stuff from you guys for YEARS (and then I tried to collect myself and appear cool as a cucumber lol).
No pressure whatsoever, but if you're interested in reading more about how my thinking changed, and what I discovered, I wrote this piece last fall about my experience of travelling through the Andalusian region in Spain. I've been a minority my whole life and I never realized what that did to my perception of my own identity:
That's a lovely essay! Thank you for sharing. (History and ancient buildings are always interesting, but they're especially interesting when a building has had two different incarnations. Like you, perhaps!)
I've heard it said, and I largely agree, that fundamentalists of any religion often have more in common with fundamentalists of different religions than with less-strict members of their own faiths. Behavioral controls, dress codes, strict gender roles, etc. Food for thought, anyway.
This remark of yours could use its own essay, I think: "And don't get me started on social media, which seems increasingly toxic. Was everyone always so self-centered?" It does seem to me that 40-50 years ago, and more, social pressure was on people to be more humble and courteous in public (superficially, at least). The prevailing attitude was a kind of, "Let's try to stay in our lanes and not impinge too much on those around us." Now the social public attitude seems to be, "Get the hell outta my way!!"
There has been a lot of pontificating about why that is. I have a few tentative thoughts:
1. Views on child-rearing have flipped 180 degrees. It used to be that any adult was presumed to be more deserving of authority than any child, and a general policing of child behavior--at school, camp, houses of worship, in the neighborhood--was tilted toward that perspective. When people became aware of just how widespread child abuse has been, it flipped to the point that most adults are highly suspicious of any other adult who might interact with their child, and their emphasis now is not on socializing the child to conform with adult expectations, but on protecting and defending the child from any possible harm.
2. The "greed is good" mentality of the 1980s, which I think grew out of Randian philosophy, did us a lot of harm, and is still with us. The idea that an individual should try to maximize individual wealth way beyond the point of individual need, and no matter what the cost to anyone else, is pervasive in our social policy. (In fact our social policies toward people in need have become so punitive and malicious that I would even call them sadistic.)
3. The huge and increasing income inequality here, coupled with the increasing powerlessness of people, leads nowhere good. Affordable housing is scarce. Good jobs are scarce. We're being spied on all the time. There's this feeling of desperation and competition and distrust.
4. Calling out egregious injustices has lost some of its power amid a sea of internet pile-ons about issues large and small. Some of this is the thrill of self-righteousness, but maybe some is also fear-driven safety-seeking: better to join the pilers-on than the piled-on.
All good theories! I've come to think that most social change starts with a key, important truth which eventually forces to society to change. But the change often results in an over-reaction that must then be corrected.
Unfortunately, I think social media has the incentives all wrong. It rewards the wrong behaviors and the wrong voices. The business models requires anger and scorn, not compromise and discussion.
Awesome read thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed my time in Istanbul. I went to various mosques to observe the prayers. I think it's beautiful to listen to. Inside its so peaceful and the artwork surreal. Enjoy the travels!
The first time I visited my to-be in laws in Bangalore, India, I was given a room with an old grandfather clock that ding donged on the hour through the night starting midnight. Imagine my plight at midnight when I was deep asleep🤣.
I grew up in a Zoroastrian neighborhood in Mumbai, but even today, when I visit my mom (I live in the US), I hear the 5 am call for prayer. I have a more tolerant attitude now, as an adult living away from my country. Growing up, I used to be annoyed like a lot of other folks including area Muslims.
I loved “Which brings up one of the great ironies of my traveling the world for the last seven years: I’ve started seeing the flaws of my own culture much more clearly than before.” True, we grow up with world travel and also realize, it’s a small world after all and we are more alike than different.
Thank you for sharing the recording of the call to Prayer as well as the meaning of the Stained Glass Windows. I've always had a passion for history and culture so these were great nuggets.
It is also interesting that you have met those who are not active participants of Islam. It's such a good reminder of how many claim to be Jewish or Catholic or Christian who aren't actively involved in any of the communities and seldom attend their church, mass or Synagogue. It appears the world has more in common than not with a few exceptions. While I would not look forward to the early morning or late evening calls to prayer I absolutely respect the customs.
Most who came to America early did so to escape religious persecution and to sever the church and state controls. Many opposed the Catholic rule over the poor and the forbidding of reading the Bible for themselves and the Church of England had a stronghold on their Colonies as well. John Calvin literally had men killed who did not follow his belief's which were supposed to "free" the Christians from the persecution of the Jews, the Romans and others. His influence was far and wide and literally written into the covenants of Geneva.
There have been extremists throughout history all over the world. We must never forget that the root of most Faiths are good and to not confuse the "fringe militants" with the many.
It's an easy thing to forget, but extremists -- and loudmouths in general -- are, by definition, loud, and they get most of the attention. The counter is personal experience -- my aunt was a Catholic nun, for example -- and, of course, I attended Jesuit schools for 8 years of my education (and Catholic grade school before that. I think we all see nuance when it comes to our own experiences, and our own memberships. The challenge is to generalize, and to see that literally every group (and many issues) are complicated.
You bring up an important reminder that America is, in fact, very different from Europe. (And yet, it is not a perfect paradise, of course. People gonna be people.)
Nice to hear your thoughts on this. I've often found the call to prayer to be quite beautiful when I've stayed near mosques. I've never woken up to it either mind you, maybe because I haven't been close enough, so I can understand how that might play a part!
Oh, wow. I vote for soothing and calming sounds, for sure. Anything else would be a big adjustment. I would have to reframe my thinking about it so that it might bring a sense of peace. But, in this situation, is that even possible? 🙏🏼
Thanks for this. I vividly remember my first time in Istanbul, waking to the call to prayer. You raise the fundamental question. Freedom From religion should be our goal but probably Won’t happen in our lifetime
I didn't know that about the stained glass windows -- how beautiful!
I always enjoyed the Call to Prayer when I heard it, but imagine we all have different sound tolerances. When we lived in Boston, it was very close to a big hospital and there were ambulance sirens 24 hours a day. I kind of got used to it. But the growth of traffic noise in my small Montana town over the past 4 years has become a nighttime irritant I can't seem to adapt to, whereas I barely register the 10pm curfew siren that terrifies people visiting town.
It's funny things we adapt to, and the things we don't. One challenge of nomading is the challenges keep changing, making adaptation even more difficult...
I hear you, Brent (pun intended). Coming from Malaysia, thankfully when I was still living in my childhood home, there wasn't any mosque nearby. But after I've left for quite some time, the community decided to build one just one row down, and it's really strange how that happened cause the community that lives around there are mainly non Muslim. Nevertheless, I was shocked awake in the early dawn when I was back visiting, but luckily I learned to sleep through the sound quickly. Miraculously even my children! I agree that the blaring sound from a speaker, a bad one at that, is definitely not a pleasant way to be called to prayer or to be awaken to.
I do remember being struck by the wonder of the sounds from "everywhere" enveloping Istanbul during those calls each time. This collective calls can actually be transcendental.
Friends in England lived in a village, next to a church where the bells chimed the time, even on the quarter hour. I quickly got used to it when I stayed in the 90s, and was sorry to hear that the rich newcomers of recent years had demanded it be curtailed. I also grew up under a flight path, have stayed with family who lived next to railway lines, and now live close to a freeway. I know which sound I prefer to be burdened with.
Yes, those quarter hour chimes are something, aren't they? But I have mixed feelings about those too. Times have changed. Clocks exist! LOL
No they don't! 😂"History is now and England," said T.S. Eliot, and, being from Missouri, he was more English than the English. 😂 Brent, ever seen the Waldorf Salad episode of Fawlty Towers? 😂
Our local church (in the UK) does this and it’s fine (I barely notice it). But when the Queen died the bell tolled all day the following day and by around 3pm it was driving me nuts. I went from appreciating it to wondering when it would stop to being absolutely savage.
oh my!
Okay, yes, a bit much! 😂
Learned something new about the stained glass windows in Turkey Brent! As a Muslim American, I hear you on the question of why the athdan needs to play for each prayer. I’ve been to Turkey and Malaysia too, and found the sounds beautiful but then I return to the suburbs here and there’s no sounds at all, even though there’s a mosque down the street. For Muslims, the call to prayer is like a reminder, a visceral reminder, “come to prayer, come to success.” The translation of the Arabic is interesting to me as a non-native speaker. I think it’s saying there’s something more than this world… but I can imagine how annoying the call could be if you just need to sleep. There’s actually noise pollution all around us, every time we go to a store, a cafe, anywhere, but the athan is also over in less than 5 minutes which I like too. I loved hearing church bells as a kid but I never hear them anymore.
Thank you. I've wondered how strange it would be to grow up with the call to prayer, and then move somewhere where it's not there. Very strange, I bet!
I grew up in New York City, so never really heard the call to prayer outside in public except when I traveled abroad. The human voice — agh! It’s so powerful, it’s like a siren going off.
I liked your article for how it captured multiple perspectives rather than sticking to just one side, it showed understanding and open mindedness.
At a deeper level, I resonated strongly with the article because it reflected my ambivalence not just towards the azaan but towards religion itself.
There is so much beauty in the different expressions of faith - the haunting call of the azaan, beautiful mosques and churches, religious art, hymns in Orthodox churches.
And yet - is it beautiful if it involves imposition of one's own preferences on others?
No easy answers, are there?
Thank you! That's exactly what I was going for. Like most things in life, it's complicated. More than one thing is true.
I was born and raised in Iran before the Islamic Revolution. Back then 5 times a day someone from the mosque had to climb the minaret to sing the call to prayer. Seen anyone at the top of a minaret these days?
A singing voice is pleasant to hear and it carries so far. Now they have craggily loud speakers on auto-timers that serves no practical purpose. Devout muslims have iPhones and wake up for pray at home without a call.
Several years ago, I stayed in a hotel room directly across from a church in Venice where they rang the bell every morning. The first morning I jumped out of bed and nearly hit the ceiling, but after a few days I got used to it and end up liking it.
I spent a month in Istanbul and never got used to the call to prayer from the mosques' loudspeaker. It sounds awful and is just a nuisance. I hope you can find a way to get some rest.
Yes, I have mixed-to-negative feelings about these loudspeakers. I've climbed to the top of several minarets, and I think it would be quite the honor to do that every morning. Plus, the beauty of the "real" sound, as you say.
I am slowly adjusting, thank you. Funny how the brain works.
While visiting my friend in Istanbul, upon the commencement of the call to prayer, she looked up, then at me and said, “ these are our church bells.” That's how I've viewed the call to prayer ever since.
exactly true!
Tangentially connected: this makes me want to re-listen to The The's 1989 album MIND BOMB. One song begins with a recording of the call to prayer. I listened to that album A LOT in my first year of college.
LOL glad I could remind you
What a coincidence. I just picked up mind bomb from a charity shop. I had to wiki to find out
About it! So interesting something somewhat obscure has come to my life twice in just a few short days. 😻💚
What a gorgeous and thoughtful piece. I really enjoyed this - your epiphany at the end, about how travel leads you to realizing how many other ways there are to do things in the world, is very relatable too. For me, the "right way" to do things had always been the Western way and I had internalized so much inferiority as a Western Muslim. Travelling to Turkey in the summer of 2022 was only the second time I had been in a non-Western environment as an adult. And It gave me this epiphany that the things I did and believed didn't get their worth from their adjacency to white-centrism. Sounds obvious now, but it was life changing for me.
Thank you! Appreciate that -- Michael is a fan of your Substack too.
I've loved all of my travels, but my trips to Muslim countries have been among the most interesting. I guess it's because it's here that my attitudes have shifted the most.
Michael has been so kind about my Substack - I geeked out big time when I saw him engaging because I've been reading stuff from you guys for YEARS (and then I tried to collect myself and appear cool as a cucumber lol).
No pressure whatsoever, but if you're interested in reading more about how my thinking changed, and what I discovered, I wrote this piece last fall about my experience of travelling through the Andalusian region in Spain. I've been a minority my whole life and I never realized what that did to my perception of my own identity:
https://nohabeshir.substack.com/p/muslim-in-3d-looking-beyond-faith
That's a lovely essay! Thank you for sharing. (History and ancient buildings are always interesting, but they're especially interesting when a building has had two different incarnations. Like you, perhaps!)
Thank you! And I love the idea of having had two different incarnations - I will hold onto it
I haven't been kind at all. You write a wonderful Substack about your life and I love how you share your story!
🥹🥹🥹🥹
I've heard it said, and I largely agree, that fundamentalists of any religion often have more in common with fundamentalists of different religions than with less-strict members of their own faiths. Behavioral controls, dress codes, strict gender roles, etc. Food for thought, anyway.
This remark of yours could use its own essay, I think: "And don't get me started on social media, which seems increasingly toxic. Was everyone always so self-centered?" It does seem to me that 40-50 years ago, and more, social pressure was on people to be more humble and courteous in public (superficially, at least). The prevailing attitude was a kind of, "Let's try to stay in our lanes and not impinge too much on those around us." Now the social public attitude seems to be, "Get the hell outta my way!!"
There has been a lot of pontificating about why that is. I have a few tentative thoughts:
1. Views on child-rearing have flipped 180 degrees. It used to be that any adult was presumed to be more deserving of authority than any child, and a general policing of child behavior--at school, camp, houses of worship, in the neighborhood--was tilted toward that perspective. When people became aware of just how widespread child abuse has been, it flipped to the point that most adults are highly suspicious of any other adult who might interact with their child, and their emphasis now is not on socializing the child to conform with adult expectations, but on protecting and defending the child from any possible harm.
2. The "greed is good" mentality of the 1980s, which I think grew out of Randian philosophy, did us a lot of harm, and is still with us. The idea that an individual should try to maximize individual wealth way beyond the point of individual need, and no matter what the cost to anyone else, is pervasive in our social policy. (In fact our social policies toward people in need have become so punitive and malicious that I would even call them sadistic.)
3. The huge and increasing income inequality here, coupled with the increasing powerlessness of people, leads nowhere good. Affordable housing is scarce. Good jobs are scarce. We're being spied on all the time. There's this feeling of desperation and competition and distrust.
4. Calling out egregious injustices has lost some of its power amid a sea of internet pile-ons about issues large and small. Some of this is the thrill of self-righteousness, but maybe some is also fear-driven safety-seeking: better to join the pilers-on than the piled-on.
I could be wrong, of course: just some theories!
All good theories! I've come to think that most social change starts with a key, important truth which eventually forces to society to change. But the change often results in an over-reaction that must then be corrected.
Unfortunately, I think social media has the incentives all wrong. It rewards the wrong behaviors and the wrong voices. The business models requires anger and scorn, not compromise and discussion.
"The business models requires anger and scorn, not compromise and discussion."
Unfortunately, outrage drives clicks.
Awesome read thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed my time in Istanbul. I went to various mosques to observe the prayers. I think it's beautiful to listen to. Inside its so peaceful and the artwork surreal. Enjoy the travels!
Thank you!
Yes, it's a wonderful city, isn't it?
The first time I visited my to-be in laws in Bangalore, India, I was given a room with an old grandfather clock that ding donged on the hour through the night starting midnight. Imagine my plight at midnight when I was deep asleep🤣.
I grew up in a Zoroastrian neighborhood in Mumbai, but even today, when I visit my mom (I live in the US), I hear the 5 am call for prayer. I have a more tolerant attitude now, as an adult living away from my country. Growing up, I used to be annoyed like a lot of other folks including area Muslims.
I loved “Which brings up one of the great ironies of my traveling the world for the last seven years: I’ve started seeing the flaws of my own culture much more clearly than before.” True, we grow up with world travel and also realize, it’s a small world after all and we are more alike than different.
https://anuprabhala.substack.com/p/its-a-small-world-after-all
It's lovely essay, and yes, it is a small world. But somehow travel expands one perspective! Love it.
Yes, it’s when you travel you realize how small of a place the world is, in that we have so many common human experiences. I enjoy your posts!
Thank you for sharing the recording of the call to Prayer as well as the meaning of the Stained Glass Windows. I've always had a passion for history and culture so these were great nuggets.
It is also interesting that you have met those who are not active participants of Islam. It's such a good reminder of how many claim to be Jewish or Catholic or Christian who aren't actively involved in any of the communities and seldom attend their church, mass or Synagogue. It appears the world has more in common than not with a few exceptions. While I would not look forward to the early morning or late evening calls to prayer I absolutely respect the customs.
Most who came to America early did so to escape religious persecution and to sever the church and state controls. Many opposed the Catholic rule over the poor and the forbidding of reading the Bible for themselves and the Church of England had a stronghold on their Colonies as well. John Calvin literally had men killed who did not follow his belief's which were supposed to "free" the Christians from the persecution of the Jews, the Romans and others. His influence was far and wide and literally written into the covenants of Geneva.
There have been extremists throughout history all over the world. We must never forget that the root of most Faiths are good and to not confuse the "fringe militants" with the many.
It's an easy thing to forget, but extremists -- and loudmouths in general -- are, by definition, loud, and they get most of the attention. The counter is personal experience -- my aunt was a Catholic nun, for example -- and, of course, I attended Jesuit schools for 8 years of my education (and Catholic grade school before that. I think we all see nuance when it comes to our own experiences, and our own memberships. The challenge is to generalize, and to see that literally every group (and many issues) are complicated.
You bring up an important reminder that America is, in fact, very different from Europe. (And yet, it is not a perfect paradise, of course. People gonna be people.)
Nice to hear your thoughts on this. I've often found the call to prayer to be quite beautiful when I've stayed near mosques. I've never woken up to it either mind you, maybe because I haven't been close enough, so I can understand how that might play a part!
Thank you. 🙂
It can definitely be beautiful!
Oh, wow. I vote for soothing and calming sounds, for sure. Anything else would be a big adjustment. I would have to reframe my thinking about it so that it might bring a sense of peace. But, in this situation, is that even possible? 🙏🏼
So much is what you're used to, I guess.
Thanks for this. I vividly remember my first time in Istanbul, waking to the call to prayer. You raise the fundamental question. Freedom From religion should be our goal but probably Won’t happen in our lifetime
It's a complicated stew of different impulses. But there is still beauty in most religions, I think.
I didn't know that about the stained glass windows -- how beautiful!
I always enjoyed the Call to Prayer when I heard it, but imagine we all have different sound tolerances. When we lived in Boston, it was very close to a big hospital and there were ambulance sirens 24 hours a day. I kind of got used to it. But the growth of traffic noise in my small Montana town over the past 4 years has become a nighttime irritant I can't seem to adapt to, whereas I barely register the 10pm curfew siren that terrifies people visiting town.
Isn't it lovely?
It's funny things we adapt to, and the things we don't. One challenge of nomading is the challenges keep changing, making adaptation even more difficult...
I hear you, Brent (pun intended). Coming from Malaysia, thankfully when I was still living in my childhood home, there wasn't any mosque nearby. But after I've left for quite some time, the community decided to build one just one row down, and it's really strange how that happened cause the community that lives around there are mainly non Muslim. Nevertheless, I was shocked awake in the early dawn when I was back visiting, but luckily I learned to sleep through the sound quickly. Miraculously even my children! I agree that the blaring sound from a speaker, a bad one at that, is definitely not a pleasant way to be called to prayer or to be awaken to.
I do remember being struck by the wonder of the sounds from "everywhere" enveloping Istanbul during those calls each time. This collective calls can actually be transcendental.
It is quite something in Istanbul, isn't it? Definitely to be experienced, if not necessarily every morning hehe.
Where in Malaysia?
My hometown is Taiping, in north part of peninsular Malaysia ;) if you've been to Penang then it's only an hour away...