Radio Muezzin

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 17, 21 January 1937, Page 9

Radio Muezzin

LOUD SPEAKERS IN MOSQUE SINGAPORE, Jan. 4. Powerful loud-speakers, audible more than a mile away, have been installed on the minarets of the Masjid Sultan Mosque in Singapore’s Malay quarter. Every Friday, and on special holy days, the muezzin intones his summons from these minarets, enjoining the faithful to prayer. It is the same summons that has been heard for hundreds of years wherever the followers of Mohammed are joined together in the devout belief that * ‘ there is no god but God, and Mohammed is His Prophet.” Now in Singapore, these prayers will be repeated for the first time with the assistance of the amplifiers and microphones of radio science. Two loudspeakers and microphones are also being installed inside the mosque, in order to make services, lectures and addresses audible to the whole of the congregation. In future it will be possible to address congregations of between 4000 and 5000 people with a good margin of power still in hand. Loud-speakers are also installed on two of the four slender minarets, 90ft. above the ground. In the early mornings the summons to prayer will carry more than a mile. A few Singapore worshippers have been dubious in the past of the policy of installing an electric amplifying system, so incongruous with the romantic conception of tho holy cities of the East, where the sonorous tones of the muezzin and tinkle of camel bells are as old as recorded history. But the majority believe that the noises of a modern city demand an accompanying increase in the power of the muezzin’s voice. Singapore is the first city to try the experiment.