An Egyptian woman obtained this week an official permit allowing the call to prayer to be raised through loudspeakers for the first time in mosques in the Astoria neighborhood, west of Queens, New York City, during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
In a post on her Facebook account, Rana Abdelhamid called the incident historic.
“Historic news!!! Just a New York Muslim girl in Ramadan with three Athan sound permits for the Astoria mosques,” Abdelhamid said.
She added that this means that people will be walking down Steinway Street and hearing the call to prayer out loud very soon.
“For those who don’t know, Muslims pray five times a day, in those prayers we have a beautiful call to prayer, that in Muslim majority contexts gets called out loud,” Abdelhamid explained.
She added that the call to prayer is often what Muslim communities abroad become most nostalgic for.
“For a neighbourhood that was targeted post 9/11, our ability to be unapologetic in our worship feels so powerful in this moment,” she said.
Abdelhamid added, “If church bells can ring, why cannot our prayers be made visible too?
“I remember someone saying, ‘Here’s to our streets being unapologetically reflective of our most authentic spaces. Here’s to building a Queens and NYC where all minoritised people can create their full and authentic communities,” the young woman said.
Mona Al-Baghdadi, Rana’s mother, posted on her personal Facebook page that, for years since they came to live in the US, they had not heard the call to prayer in the streets at all, expressing their longing to hear it.
The first daily fast of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan started last week as hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide enter a four-week period of worship.
The observance comes at a time when numerous countries and governments across the Middle East are taking tentative steps towards calming enduring conflicts and crises made more acute by the costly war in Ukraine and a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed over 52,000 people.
During the month, hundreds of millions of Muslims abstain from food and water from dawn to dusk, before gathering with family and friends for nighttime meals. According to Islam, fasting draws the faithful closer to God and reminds them of the suffering of the poor.
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