Muting mosque bill gets initial thumbs up in Israel
ISRAEL - A law to muffle mosques’ amplified calls to prayer in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem won preliminary approval on Wednesday in a charged parliamentary session where Palestinian legislators denounced the measure as racist. The bill passed a preliminary reading with 55 votes in favor and 48 against as the assembly broke out into chaotic arguments.
Zuheir Bahloul, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, called the bill “a declaration of war... between sanity and racism” against Israel’s Palestinian minority. Palestinian lawmaker Ahmed Tibi told supporters of the legislation they were “committing a racist act”. Ayman Odeh, a member of the Joint List - a political bloc of parties representing Israel’s Palestinian minorities - was escorted out of the assembly hall after he stood up and ripped a copy of the bill into pieces. Supporters of the bill say it is aimed at improving the quality of life for people living near mosques who have been losing sleep with the early morning calls through loudspeakers mounted on minarets. “This is a socialminded law that aims to protect citizens’ sleep, without, God-forbid, harming anyone’s religious faith,” said legislator Motti Yogev, one of the bill’s sponsors. But critics of the bill say its legislation is redundant due to existing noise regulations, and that it was a clearly designed to further infringe on the basic rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, the majority of whom are Muslim.
Najwan Berekdar, a human rights activist from the city of Nazareth, told Al Jazeera the bill was “yet another racist bill targeting Palestinians”. “But unlike any of the other laws that infringe on our basic rights, this law specifically targets Muslims.”
(aljazeera.com)