Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he backs a bill limiting the volume of calls to prayer from mosques, a proposal government watchdogs call a threat to religious freedom.
Israeli media reported on Sunday the bill would stop the use of public address systems for calls to prayer.
“I cannot count the times – they are simply too numerous – that citizens have turned to me from all parts of Israeli society, from all religions, with complaints about the noise and suffering caused them by the excessive noise coming to them from the public address systems of houses of prayer,” Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting.
While the draft bill applies to all houses of worship, it is seen as specifically targeting mosques.
Discrimination accusations
East Jerusalem is also mainly Palestinian and traditional calls to prayer by muezzins through public address systems can be heard in the city.Israel’s population is roughly 17.5 percent Arab, most of them Muslim, and they accuse the Jewish majority of badly discriminating against them.
The Israel Democracy Institute, a non-partisan think-tank, has spoken out against the proposal.
On Sunday, one of the group’s officials accused Israel’s right-wing politicians of dangerously using the issue to gain political points under the guise of improving quality of life.
Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya wrote in Israeli newspaper Maariv “the real aim” of the bill “is not to prevent noise, but rather to create noise that will hurt all of society and the efforts to establish a sane reality between Jews and Arabs”.
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