Alla-hu Akbar
Alla-hu Akbar
Alla-hu Akbar
Alla-hu Akbar
Ash-hadu alla- ila-ha illalla-h
Ash-hadu alla- ila-ha illalla-h
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadur rasu-lulla-h
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadur rasu-lulla-h
Hayya ‘alas-sala-t
Hayya ‘alas-sala-t
Hayya ‘alal-fala-h
Hayya ‘alal-fala-h
As.-s.ala-tu khayru min an-nau-m
As.-s.ala-tu khayru min an-nau-m
Alla-hu akbar
Alla-hu akbar
La- ila-ha illalla-h
Everyday the Call to Prayer takes places across the Muslim world. Here in Indonesia it takes place five times a day (Sunnis pray five times a day, Shiites three) and the first call starts at 04:00 — that’s four in the morning in case you were wondering. Below is an English translation, courtesy of the smart people over at Wikipedia.
God is the greatest
God is the greatest
God is the greatest
God is the greatest
I bear witness that there is no god except God
I bear witness that there is no god except God
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God
Make haste towards prayer
Make haste towards prayer
Make haste towards welfare
Make haste towards welfare
Prayer is better than sleep
Prayer is better than sleep
God is the greatest
God is the greatest
There is no god except Allah
There is no god except Allah
When the mosques starts the prayers, the above isn’t whispered amongst the devoted, huddled in street corners, rather it is recited by a muezzin from the minaret (though in practise it is often a recording). This recital is then pumped out of the mosques in varying degrees of volume, but always, and I mean always, with the volume dial spun to 11.
Our house is located in such a way that we get the Call to Prayer from at least four different mosques — on busy days I’ve managed to pick out as many as six. It is loud. Very loud — lines 13 and 14 — Prayer is better than sleep — they weren’t kidding — our bedroom is double-glazed and still it often wakes me up.
Unfortunately the calls are not really synchronised — some have great sound systems, while others must have pinched theirs from an early ’80s Bon Jovi concert. Some of the muezzin have excellent voices and the call can actually be a beautiful thing to hear, but others must have been at the back of the line when Allah was handing out vocal cords.
The result is a cacophany of beauty and ugliness pumped out at distorion levels five times a day.
So, what’s this post doing on a baby blog?
Well I was reading on the BBC, that doctors believe that babies can remember for up to a year what they heard in the womb. Now you’d need to wrap yourself up in kryptonite to be able to avoid the Call to Prayer, so as I’ve kept S away from the kryptonite I’ve no doubts the baby is hearing this call five times a day — in fact in the chaos of our daily lives — different noises, activities and so on, the ritual of this recital is probably one of the most regular sound inputs our baby is receiving (except for West Wing soundtracks — more about that on Sunday’s entry).
It reminds me of some trinkets I saw a guy selling on Ko Pha Ngan a few years ago — funnily enough the trinkets were from Bali. It was a little bell that a pregnant woman wore around her neck on a very long fine chain. The bell more or less hung around the woman’s belly-button. As she walked around the bell would make a faint ringing sound. The idea was the baby becomes accustomed to the sound of the tinkelling bell, and once born, if the baby starts to get upset, you just ring the bell and the baby would almost immediately calm down as he/she drew the connection between the faint bell and the safety and warmth of the womb.
I really regret not buying one, and have been looking for one ever since (the bell is easy to get, but a chain that long has been impossible to find). I guess if I can’t find one, I’ll just get a ghetto-blaster and pump out the call to prayer whenever our baby sheds a tear…