Amplifying Islam: Pluralism, Secularism, and Religious Sounds in The Netherlands

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the amplified azan, the Islamic call to prayer, in the Netherlands, adding a sonic dimension to analyses of the politics of Islamic aesthetics in the western world. Often rejected by opponents as noise pollution, facilitating the amplified azan is an example par excellence of state regulation of public religious presence in response to social and political religious intolerance. This research is mainly focused on the Dutch case, but the dissertation situates the study in a transnational trend across Western Europe and North America in which Muslim communities are using loudspeakers for the azan. Building on previous scholarship that takes religious materiality and the senses at heart, the dissertation begins with the metaphysical importance of hearing in Islam, as well as its contested status in the public domain. The call to prayer is furthermore embedded in a broader history of Dutch religious pluralism, in which a Protestant hegemony long demanded a silent piety of religious others, especially Catholics, and moved towards a pluralist understanding of liberal-democracy in the twentieth century. The dissertation shows how ex ante legislation enabled ubiquitous forms of religious presence, such as amplified calls to prayer. Having documented the history of Muslim soundscapes in the Netherlands, the author criticizes encompassing and uni-directional interpretations of the power relation between the secular and the religious, based on his analysis of current religious demands and social and political opposition to Islamic aural presence. The dissertation informs that while cultural forms of secularism exclude Muslim rights to public worship, political and constitutional secularism can enable Muslims demands for amplifying the azan. The study shows how this is effected in architectural proposals for mosques, media debates, law and policy, but also how these come together in negotiations on the ground between residents, municipality and mosque, effectively regulating competing nostalgic home feelings in the process. While opponents experienced the azan as noise pollution, a sound 'out of place,' it was a homemaking strategy for local Muslims. The dissertation ends with a reflection on religious tolerance, contemplating that a sober, morally minimalist conception and practice of tolerance is necessary for a just handling of the future of religious pluralism. In the Netherlands, tolerance is legitimized by the enforcement of equal rights and facilitated by benign forms of secularism, which furthers the actual accommodation process of religious others more effectively than utopian conceptions of living in harmony with difference.