Recently I had the chance to visit, after a 7 year gap, one of my favourite cities in the world, Istanbul. The city is a perfect melange of East and West. For some reason it feels like home to me even though I am not from there or live there, It physicaly represents both my Western and Muslim identities. Its very modern and cosmopolitan, yet steeped in history and tradition.
Its been over 5 years since I have actually visited a Muslim-majority city and something did not feel right for the first few days. Then it occurred to me that this feeling of "something is not right" seemed to happen five times a day. Finally it hit me – the Adhan – the summoning of the observant for prayers was significantly corrleated with this sense of unease.
Now don’t get me wrong – the Recitation – vocalized correctly, ususally brings tears to my eyes. But this time my ears wanted a break. Here is what I would hear five times a day:
"Crrrracckle crackle crackle hizz hizzz hiss Allllllaaaa-crackle hizz hiss–hooo Ak—-hizz crackle hiss crackle bzzz-ber Alll-bzzzzzz–ooo Akber…"
On top, the Taksim neighborhood where I was staying has been blessed with a mosque every 339 meters, and the muezzin in the minarets of those mosques must be poorly paid because it seemed that the quartz crystals in their watches were of poor qualtiy, since invevitably there was a 17 second delay amongst all the muezzin. So for the duration of the Adhan – I would hear close to 10 voices – summoning me for prayer – with extremely poor sound quality. Enough for me to bring out my ipod and listen to some Nusrat instead.
So may I humbly propose that Muslims from around the world get together and start the "Bose Adhan Fun." The goal is very simple – improve the sound quality of every single Mosque in the WORLD. Yes every single one. From Allahbad to Islamabad, from Grozny to DC, from Vienna to Victoria – the goal of this fund will be to replace the old and poor sound quality audio systems with state of the art Bose speaker systems. Perhaps some rich Gulf prince will consider donating a few rupees to kick start the initiative – but please – we must do something to improve the phonic quality of muslim lives.
Anybody want to help me start this?
Here are some low res pictures of Istanbul from my phone camera:
assalamu alaykum
I love Istanbul. I know what you mean by ‘feeling at home’. I was there a few weeks ago with some friends. We were staying in Sirkeci but hung around Fatih with some Turkish Sufis.
I wish I could help out with the Adhan Bose Fund. I’ll certainly donate.