The Muslim call to prayer will soon be heard every week across the campus of Duke University in North Carolina.
The chant, known as ‘adhan’, will be performed by members of the Muslim Students Association at a ‘moderately amplified’ level for three minutes each Friday at 1 p.m.
A Facebook event invite states that the adhan will be sung in Arabic, followed by an English translation, and will be audible immediately in front of the chapel.
The Muslim call to prayer will be heard every Friday at 1 p.m. from the Duke University Chapel bell tower in a move to promote further religious and cultural diversity at the private college
The Muslim call to prayer will be heard every Friday at 1 p.m. from the Duke University Chapel bell tower in a move to promote further religious and cultural diversity at the private college
This marks the start of the association’s Jummah prayer service, which has taken place in the chapel basement on Friday afternoons for the past two years.
A statement from the chapel said: ‘Just as the bells announce chapel worship in the building on Sundays, the adhan announces Muslim prayers on Fridays.’
‘The adhan is the call to prayer that brings Muslims back to their purpose in life, which is to worship God and serves as a reminder to serve our brothers and sisters in humanity,’ said Imam Adeel Zeb, Muslim chaplain at Duke.
‘The collective Muslim community is truly grateful and excited about Duke’s intentionality toward religious and cultural diversity.’
‘This opportunity represents a larger commitment to religious pluralism that is at the heart of Duke’s mission,’ added Christy Lohr Sapp, the chapel’s associate dean for religious life.
‘It connects the university to national trends in religious accommodation.’
The announcement by the Duke University Chapel, a private college originally set up in 1838 by Methodists and Quakers, is not without its critics.
Evangelist Franklin Graham called for donors and alumni to withhold support for Duke over the initiative
Reverend Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, denounced the move on his Facebook page on Wednesday calling for ‘donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed’.
‘As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism,’ he said.
Graham lives in Boone, North Carolina, 160 miles from Duke’s campus outside of Durham.
An opinion piece published by Lohr Sapp in the News Observer stated: ‘the Muslim community [at Duke] represents a strikingly different face of Islam than is seen on the nightly news: one that is peaceful and prayerful.’
The adhan is typically chanted from the minaret of the mosque to remind the faithful of prayer five times a day in majority Muslim countries. It is also broadcast on television and radio.
The Friday afternoon, Jummah, prayer is particularly important as this is the time that the Muslim community gathers together for corporate prayer.
A statement from the Chapel said: ‘Duke Chapel is a house of worship that is available for all campus Religious Life groups to hold prayer and worship services. Currently the Catholic Center, Graduate Christian Fellowship, Wesley Fellowship, Hindu, Presbyterian and Lutheran campus ministries hold prayers and services in the building.’
‘The Chapel also hosts interdenominational Christian prayer and worship services on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. In years past the Buddhist community also held meditation in the Chapel Crypt. There are also smaller dedicated worship spaces on campus for the Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu communities.’
There has been a Muslim Religious Life group present at Duke for many years. In 2009, the university created the Center for Muslim Life and hired Duke’s first full-time Muslim chaplain. This year the center will expand to have three full-time staff.
There are currently more than 700 students at Duke who identify as Muslim, as well as a number of faculty and staff.
The Duke University Chapel sits at the center of the campus and is an ecumenical Christian chapel with connections to the United Methodist Church. Constructed from 1930 to 1932, the Chapel seats about 1,800 people and stands 210 feet tall, making it one of the tallest buildings in Durham County.
Categories: Americas
Duke today taken out of my will!!!!!
You can put them back in … They have succumbed to your blackmail…
This would have made it the most well known chapel in the whole country. But alas:
Duke Nixes Plan to Use Chapel Tower for Muslim Prayer Call
DURHAM, N.C. — Jan 15, 2015, 8:00 PM ET
By JONATHAN DREW Associated Press
Associated Press
Days after announcing that a Muslim call to prayer would echo from its historic chapel tower, Duke University changed course Thursday following a flurry of calls and emails objecting to the plan.
Instead, Muslims will gather for their call to prayer in a grassy area near the 210-foot gothic tower before heading into a room in Duke Chapel for their weekly prayer service. The university had previously said a moderately amplified call to prayer would be read by members of the Muslim Students Association from the tower for about three minutes each Friday.
Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs and government relations, said it would be up to the students if they want to use some sort of amplification.
The original plan drew the ire of evangelist Franklin Graham, who urged Duke alumni to withhold support because of violence against Christians that he attributed to Muslims. Schoenfeld said emails and calls came from alumni and others in the community.
“There was considerable traffic and conversation and even a little bit of confusion, both within the campus and certainly outside, about what Duke was doing,” Schoenfeld said. “The purposes and goals and even the facts had been so mischaracterized as to turn it into a divisive situation, not a unifying situation.”
He also said there were concerns about safety and security, but he declined to elaborate on whether any specific threats had been received.
Graham, the son of the Rev. Billy Graham, wrote later in the day that the university made the right decision to cancel the plan to use the tower. However, Schoenfeld said the reversal was not due to Graham’s opposition.
Shalini Subbarao, 19, a sophomore from St. Louis, said she was disappointed with the school’s reversal as she walked past the chapel.
“I thought it was really progressive. It showed our openness to other religions,” she said of the original plan.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/duke-hold-weekly-muslim-call-prayer-chapel-tower-28247220
May be Dr. Carter’s will will be substantial. …