A new sound at Harvard

On Sunday afternoons, walking by Princeton's neo-Gothic chapel, I hear church bells ringing. Often I am struck by their beauty. This week, though, I've been thinking and reading more about their history and meaning because at Harvard, a different call to prayer has students up in arms.

The controversy began in February during Harvard's Islam Awareness Week, when for several days student members of the Harvard Islamic Society broadcast the noontime adhan, or Muslim call to prayer, from the steps of the Widener Library across Harvard Yard, as they have for several years. This year, however, the ritual has sparked "heated discussions" in dormitory chatrooms, according to The New York Times. Three graduate students  argued in The Harvard Crimson that the Arabic prayer - part of which translates as "There is no lord except God" and "Mohammad is the Messenger of God" - is a form of proselytizing and should be banned from campus. "Imagine, if you would, a Southern Baptist evangelist standing atop the steps of Widener Library, exhorting passersby to pray, denying the validity to other faiths, and declaring the divinity of Jesus," they suggested by way of comparison. "Would such an activity be congruent with Harvard's tradition of liberalism and tolerance?"

As a Princetonian, I am all for insulting Harvard students' intelligence, but this argument goes too far. I was approached on our campus just last week by a Bible-wielding woman confronting me about faith. To me her presence represented part of Princeton's own varied "tradition of liberalism and tolerance."  A more relevant comparison than the Crimson writers' would be between two less personalized religious messages: the adhan and those church bells I'm used to hearing.

According to the hadith - the sayings of Mohammed, assembled between the sixth and 12th centuries - the adhan found its voice when Mohammed and his followers were seeking a way to signal to the faithful of Medina that one of their five daily prayers was about to begin. Some followers suggested that they adopt bells like those used in Christian churches; others advocated a horn, like the ancient Jewish shofar that is still used on High Holy Days. Finally, they decided that one person would call the others to prayer.   

The kinship between the adhan and the bells is also borne out by Christian history, according to Adoremus, a society devoted to preserving Catholic traditions. Ringing church bells historically had three purposes. The bells called Christians to worship, made a joyful noise for the Christian God during services and alerted all Christians within hearing distance that something supernatural and divine was happening inside the church. That doesn't sound much different from "declaring the divinity of Jesus." The bells are intended, in other words, to let the listeners know what Christians believe - the same complaint the writers have about the adhan.

The counterargument, of course, is that church bells are now perceived as secular. But this is a matter of perspective. Church bells have not always seemed so innocuous: After the Russian Revolution in 1917, revolutionaries who saw Christianity as a threat to their power seized and destroyed church bells across Russia. For more than 70 years - nearly the whole duration of Soviet rule - the government banned the ringing of church bells. And last December, the BBC reported that while the Muslim call to prayer pealed across Gaza, Christians living under Hamas rule played bells on cassette tape in their churches - loud enough for the parishioners to hear but not loud enough to offend anyone on the street outside. Not surprisingly, the blogosphere lit up with condemnations of intolerance.

If we students seek to ban the Muslim call to prayer, aren't we being just as intolerant and missing an opportunity? Universities all over the country are in a tizzy about how to educate students about Islam. Enrollment in Arabic classes at American colleges more than doubled between 2002 and 2006, according to the Modern Language Association of America, and courses on Middle Eastern studies are also increasingly popular. Last year, the number of Americans studying in the Middle East rose by 31 percent, the latest uptick in a general upward trend since September 2001.

Clearly, students are eager to learn more about Islam and about Arabic culture. Here is an opportunity for them to do just that. The echo of the adhan across Harvard Yard could become a part of everyday life and broaden the experience of all Harvard students. Church bells, after all, are a natural piece of the auditory landscape for many Americans because they are so commonplace; they have evolved to signify religion to many devout Christians even as lay people hardly notice them. Encouraging the same evolution for the adhan - a call to prayer that is perhaps more threatening to American ears by virtue of being unfamiliar - would go a long way toward creating a hospitable atmosphere for religious pluralism.  

Of course embracing the call to prayer would change the feel of Harvard's campus. But part of what keeps our schools alive is that our customs evolve to reflect the world we're being educated for. In cherishing the beauty of campuses and traditions that date back to colonial times, let's not forget that our schools once banned black students, restricted the attendance of Jews and Catholics, and barred female students like me.

 

Laura Fitzpatrick is an English major from Ossining, N.Y. She can be reached at lfitzpa@princeton.edu.