Clarice, I don’t think the bubble of comfort you ask for has. Ever since the dawn of human civilisation, people’s activities have impinged on their neighbours. “No man is an island” and all that. To say “everyone’s got to listen to it, and that isn’t fair” is cloud cuckoo land, since people make sounds for other people to hear all the time. That’s part of living in a city. The question is the degree to which the noise impacts on your day. A weekend of roadworks is acceptable where a year is not. A single afternoon of the Notting Hill Carniaval is OK, where a month is not. And - I say - a call to prayer of Friday afternoon is OK, where a five-times-a-day, seven days a week, probably isn’t.

Either go out for some ultra violent Paki bashing to get it out of your system, or stop the barely repressed racist under current nonsense. Even the BNP don’t come out with this claptrap.

A little alarmist, perhaps, but I think this could be a fair point. For some people, these are “traditions”, after all.

The question with the call to prayer is not just about people doing their own traditions for themselves without bothering anyone else. To which I don’t really object, except where they contravene british law. This one is about enforcing one group of people’s tradition on everyone. If they have the call to prayer, then everyone’s got to listen to it. And that isn’t fair.

I think you are being a bit disingenious. Hearing a call to prayers just isn’t british, it’s not cricket, it would particularly jar in Oxford, of all places which is the very essence of Englishness, dreaming spires, punts on the ox, toffs and all that .
It will create an aytmosphere that is well, islamic. I’m not islamic so I don’t want to live in that atmosphere. The deeper point is that this demand (and the kerfuffle over sharia law) is not going to be the end of muslim demands, it will be just the beggining. How long before alcohol is banned, women must be covered etc etc

Rob - If you lived near it and got woken up by a call to prayer at dawn I think you might have a different view.

Matt, that’s the point. I have lived near a cathedral and the bells woke me up every Sunday. At least on Friday mornings I’m getting up for work anyway, and not trying to get a lie in like I am on Sundays.

And what time are Friday prayers in a mosque anyway? I have a notion that they’re in the evening, in which case the point is moot.

nd on the basis of do as you would be done by I would not expect church bells to start in an area where they were not part of the tradition.

I take the opposite view for the same reasons. I would fully expect an Islamic country to allow church bells on a Sunday. If they don’t, then they’re clearly not as tolerant as they should be. But their intolerance should not excuse our own.

The riding rough-shod objection has nothing to do with the politeness of the request. It relates to one view of what granting the request would constitute.

The objection is not to do with volume per se. Other sounds are indeed noisier. But where they are not speech sounds, they are less cognitively intrusive. Unless we are talking really high-decibel such as road-works, which though undesirable are sometimes pragmatically necessary.

The objection is also not to do with the quality of amplification. It is to do with the fact, yes, fact, that speech sounds are by definition cognitively intrusive. In a seat of learning, as I have said, I do not feel this is fair or appropriate.

As for your “negative tradition” remark, I think this is disingenuous. Oxford has a tradition of being relatively quiet and tranquil, yes? That is a positive tradition. The reason for this tradition is because Oxford also has a tradition of some of the finest academic work in the land. As I said, amplified speech sounds (especially those which sound as though they have an emotional content) will distrupt this tradition, which I think is deeply unfair and disrespectful to the academics and students who are trying to study in peace, and not disturbing anyone.

I think I made my objections very clear in my first comment. It has nothing to do with the C of E, and everything to do with not seeing why a relatively recent tradition of a minority should have the right to distrupt a centuries-old and very productive intellectual tradition of a majority.
In Islamic countries, I am sure that Muslim academics are glad to work around their religious observances. I just don’t see why non-Muslim academics should be forced to do so, whether they like it or not, in a non-Islamic country.

While you’re mentioning the C of E though, you’d have to admit that where there is any religious tradition in this country, it is that of C of E and not Islam. To be completely fair and unbiassed, when considering the rights of one tradition over another, you’d have to be democratic about it. I think that’s only fair.