All the 780 mosques in Al Ain city here have been linked electronically, and a single azaan (prayer call) is being issued simultaneously from all the mosques under a directive of the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs and Auqaf of the Emirates. This is in order to unify the prayer call. The new system has been designed to avoid prayer alerts at different times from mosques in the same area. The regular call is broadcast by means of a wireless set network at the same time. Khalid Diab, the person responsible for unified Azaan in the Al Ain Auqaf, said that the move was to standardise azaan at all city mosques. The system was first applied in Abu Dhabi in October 2004 for the first time and was inaugurated at the Khalifa bin Zayed Mosque located in the Central Market. Al-Ain introduced it very recently. The pilot project was taken up under the stewardship of Mohammad bin Nakhira Al Dhaheri, Minister of Justice and Islamic Affairs and Auqaf. Diab said all mosques have to follow the decision of unifying the prayer call, but sometimes errors could occur or the Imam could be late in opening the system.
While muftis in some parts of the Islamic world consider the unified prayer call as heresy, the majority believe that it does not go against the laws of Islam or Shariah. Several Arab countries had implemented the unified prayer call successfully many years ago.
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November 2005 |