The Arab communities in Israel demonstrated across the country on Friday, November 18, to protest a bill that would ban mosques from using loudspeakers to call Muslims to prayer in the early morning hours. Hundreds of people marched in the town of Kafr Qassem on Friday afternoon, the daily communist newspaper Al Ittihad reported. The marchers carried banners against the bill.

The Mahmoudiya Mosque in Jaffa (Photo: Wikipedia)

“We will not stop the muezzin [the person who the calls the faithful to prayer] and will not stop our prayers,” Kafr Qassem Mayor Adel Badir said. “Our right to a muezzin and to prayer is not derived from any law; it is a basic right, like the right to life, or the right to live under a roof. It is an inseparable part of our right to exist and to pray.”

In the southern city of Rahat, some 100 people held a rally against the bill, while more than 500 took part in various demonstrations in the north, police said. Other demonstrations were held in Umm El-Fahem, Kaboul in the Galilee and Jaffa.

Joint List MKs say the bill specifically aims to harm the Arab community. Joint List leader MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) said the bill was “another law in a series of racist and populist laws intended solely to create an atmosphere of hatred and incitement against the Arab public.” On Tuesday, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman of the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) party United Torah Judaism demanded that the Ministerial Committee for Legislation hold another discussion on the bill, saying that, in its current form, it could also harm the siren used to announce the onset of Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) on Fridays towards evening. A new version is likely to be brought back to parliament this week.

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