What Mr. Dhimmi fails to recognize is that Great Britain's Judeo-Christian values are at stake as the creeping Islamization of Europe draws ever closer. Would he find the chants of Allah Akhbar "romantic" as he's being decapitated? He may soon find out.....
Personally, I find the sound of the muezzin one of the most romantic and wonderful in the world.
Though I can't claim any enthusiasm for the forces of organised religion, and don't care for anything which increases the general noisiness of modern life, one does wonder why people are objecting so virulently. I very much doubt that the Oxford central mosque is a hotbed of anti-western hatred, and they themselves sound genuinely puzzled why such objection to one of their central traditions is so violent.
Personally, not caring about or indeed understanding what the muezzin is saying, I find the sound one of the most romantic and wonderful in the world.
To be deep in the winding mediaeval streets of old Cairo as dusk falls, to hear a single voice raised in song, from the minaret of al-Azhar, perhaps; and then another, answering, and another and another, in serene discordant rivalry across the rooftops and into the indigo sky; that is an unforgettably poetic experience. Every time it happens, for me, there is a little tug at the heart.
I don't suppose I will ever convert to Islam, but I like to have a glimpse, through what is only an aesthetic response, of the deep feelings of others. Well, the inhabitants of Oxford don't like it and don't want it, even once a week. And since, in this country, one person's freedom is limited by the significant nuisance it causes another, there does't seem to be any room for manoeuvre. There won't be an amplified call to prayer, and I would have thought that objections will be fairly strong against a muezzin standing on a minaret and singing without amplification, too, if he could be heard at all.
Oxford is famously rather self-absorbed, but can it really be true that nobody would find charm, interest and perhaps even some beauty in the call to prayer echoing, once a week (hey dip-shit, it's three to five time a DAY! -ed.) across its domes and spires? Hardly anyone agrees any more with what those church bells represent, but we go on enjoying them. Can Oxford really not take any pleasure in the outward and aesthetic form which other people's beliefs take? Do they have to be sanctioned by Gibbon first?
ZIP
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