"Kaankar-paathar jori ke masjid lah chunnai/Ta chadni mulla baang de kya bahira huaKhudai?" - A mosque is built with stones and pebbles. A cleric from there calls; Is God hard of hearing? This is an oft-quoted doha (couplet) attributed to Kabir. But the great social reformer azaan - a call for Islamic prayer was invoking God or praying to the Almighty, despite his being a brilliant observer of social and religious aberrations and anomalies. Azaan is a call for prayer: The rauazzin (Arabic for the caller) calls the faithful to the mosque for offering namaz. Hazrat Mohani says, "Ek awaaz se bulaya daata ke darbar mein / Sawaab se hi milti hai ye gismat". Just one call can make devout followers rush to the mosque / Only great piety creates such sublime fate, the caller is imbued with. Here lies the relevance of irrelevance of azaan. Young Professor Hamilton Gibb wrote a letter to Allama Iqbal in Arabic. This letter can still be read at Lahore University's Department of Islamic Theology. Gibb asked Iqbal, "Shouldn't the faithful and devout Muslims come on their own to offer namaz to Allah? Why should they be called when it's their fundamental duty? This is like a shepherd calling his sheep when it's time to go back home in the evening. Human Beings aren't sheep". Iqbal wrote back with a Hadis (not Hadith as it is erroneously spelt by most: the compilation of Prophet Muhammad's teachings), though Imam Bukhari didn't mention his Hadis. Hadis Qudsi and Abu Dawud did mention this. Iqbal wrote to Gibb, quoting the Hadis that Prophet Muhammad said to Bilal - Islam's first muazzin, who was a slave from North Africa, freed by the Prophet - "Bilal, neo-Muslims need to be called to get accustomed to the new-found ways of Islam from their Pagan beliefs. But as they will evolve, they will come on their own. There might not be any calling in future because faith is a matter of heart and one listens to his inner voice when it comes to worship".
An evolved Muslim or any evolved worshipper needs no azaan or a call for prayer. Hakim Sanai writes in Persian, "Footsteps carry you to the mosque well before the muazzin gets ready to call you. Eventually, he gives up happily, seeing you there before he calls". So the issue of using loudspeakers or any modern technological equipment to call for prayer, gets redundant because elsewhere Prophet Muhammad himself opines that azaan should be so musical that it shouldn't break the slumber of others. During Prophet Muhammad's time, everyone didn't accept Islam and there were Christians and Jews in the vicinity. Moreover, Islam puts an accent on musicality of prayers and prayer related aspects. That's why Qeerat (why to recite the Quranic verses and there are seven ways of reciting them; Egyptian Qeerat being the most mellifluous) is so euphonic and when you get to hear the recital of Quranic verses, you are moved beyond words. Even a hardcore atheist like yours truly is moved by the musical cadences of Quranic creation. So it's really incongruous to use loudspeakers to call the faithful to the mosques. The problem with the followers of all religions is that they have not understood the symbolism and archaic practices of their faiths and they still cling on to them obstinately.
[Courtesy: An article written by Sumit Paul, published in The Times of India dated 21st April, 2017 (Friday)].
Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy, 11th February, 2020 (Tuesday).
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