Footage has been circulating on social media claiming to show the Muslim call to prayer, or adhan being performed in a Jerusalem church. The action was supposedly in protest against the controversial new restriction passed by the Israeli Knesset last week which bans the use of loudspeakers to broadcast the adhan in the country.
However, it has emerged that the video was misleadingly labeled. In fact, it is a five-year-old clip showing an Algerian, Abdul Wahab bin Youcef, proclaiming the adhan in a church in Los Angeles. He did so as part of an interfaith project to promote peace among all peoples in 2011.
"I wanted to defend and show the world my faith. I wanted to tell people that Islam is a beautiful religion, but some people have misunderstood it and misused it, just as a Christian may misuse Christianity" bin Youcef told press at the time.
While the video is widely available on Youtube in its correctly identified form, it has recently been seized upon and falsely promoted as a sign of resistance to the Israeli ban on the five-times-daily call to prayer.
The so-called “Muezzin law”, named after the Muslim official who carries out the call to prayer, was applied for the first time yesterday in Lod, where an imam was fined around $200 for broadcasting the morning adhan on loudspeakers.
However, it is not hard to find actual instances of resistance to the new rules. Hundreds of Muslims, Christians and Jews defiantly raised the call to prayer together in Nablus on Sunday. Churches in Nazareth have also broadcast the evening adhan in contravention of the law, and in Jerusalem a video has emerged of Muslim proclaiming the call to prayer from their rooftops.
Despite being fake, the video has received praise as a sign of the struggle against the Israeli occupation, and as a symbol of interfaith tolerance:
استمع الى أجمل أذان
— Åňåň (@ananhosen6) November 22, 2016
من داخل #كنيسه
فى القدس المحتلة. ...وذلك ردا من الكنيسه
على منع الأذان فى المساجد
والله ما فى اى تعليق غير #الدموعpic.twitter.com/t0CxI6NUTO
Listen to the most beautiful adhan from inside a church in occupied Jerusalem in response to the ban on the call to prayer from mosques. I swear, there can be no response other than tears!
While the video might not be in Jerusalem, the unity between Christian and Muslim Palestinians is a brilliant example to the rest of us of peaceful coexistence.
RA
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