CAIRO: The government has agreed to buy 4,000 wireless receivers for a project to synchronize the call to prayer from all state-run mosques in the Cairo area, the state news agency MENA said on Thursday. The government first floated the project in 2004, provoking some opposition from traditionalists. The news that it will sign a contract for the equipment on Sunday indicated that it is serious about putting the idea into practice. When the project starts, a single muezzin chosen for the quality of his voice will make the call to prayer from a central location and the call will be transmitted directly to loudspeakers at the top of the city s thousands of minarets. Under the current arrangements, the muezzin in one mosque might finish his call to prayer before the one in the nearest mosque has even started his version. Since most of the muezzins use loudspeakers and are audible for hundreds of meters, the result is a discordant mix stretched out over 10 to 15 minutes, five times a day. Proponents of the project have also complained that some of the existing muezzins do not have pleasant voices. The Grand Mufti of Egypt, the country s highest authority on Islamic law, has approved the project. But some religious scholars are worried it could eventually lead to standardization of the Friday sermon and the abolition of the pre-dawn call to prayer. Religious Endowments Minister Mahmoud Hamdi Zakzouk will announce at a ceremony on Sunday how the project will work, when it will start and who the new muezzins will be, MENA said. In 2004 Zakzouk said there was no threat to the jobs of some 45,000 muezzins as they can be retrained as the imams or prayer leaders of mosques, of which there is a shortage. The project will start in the Greater Cairo area and could be expanded. But each area would need its own system as the times of prayer differ from place to place. Reuters
